DS Smith axes over 300 million problematic plastic pieces in fiber design transition

19 Jul 2022 --- DS Smith says it has removed over 313 million pieces of harmful plastic from circulation in the past two years by replacing plastics with fiber-based alternatives in the design stages of development.

This transition equates to more than three million units per week and the company affirms that this is due to customers’ and consumers’ demonstrated demand for fiber-based packaging as an alternative to hard-to-recycle plastics.

The e-commerce packaging specialist says it will continue to drive the adoption of fiber-based alternatives among customers in response to consumer demand for plastic alternatives. 

Innova Market Insights shows that nearly 35% of consumers in the UK would purchase products that contain less plastic even if it costs more than a similar product with regular packaging.

DS Smith believes it is important to remove harmful plastics during the design phase.Preventative from inception
To meet consumer demands, DS Smith designers and customers have cooperated to create thousands of alternatives to replace plastic in product packaging. This includes the removal of plastic in everyday items from ready-meal trays, to plastic fruit and vegetable punnets and plastic six-pack rings that contribute to the pollution of the planet. 

Campaign groups have reached an all-time high in spotlighting the amount of plastic that ends up as waste, according to the company. It believes that it is more important now more than ever to remove these plastics at the design phase.

Samantha Upham, a sustainability business partner in sales, marketing and innovation at DS Smith, explains that customers are accelerating their ambitions to remove problematic plastics from their products with the company’s help.

“By using our Circular Design Metrics, we can easily show not just where plastic can be replaced, but how circular [the company’s] packaging is right now and where we can make improvements together,” she says.

Upham adds that 700 DS Smith designers have been trained in circular design principles. This training means that they can design out problem plastics at the inception stage and find alternative fiber-based solutions that deliver the required attributes.

UK consumers are willing to spend more on products that are sustainably packaged.A multi-generational outlook
As part of DS Smith’s Now & Next sustainability targets that equip people to lead the transition to a circular economy, the company has the ambition to take one billion pieces of problem plastics off supermarket shelves by replacing them with alternatives. 

DS Smith’s sustainability progress – including its 29% reduction in GHG emissions per metric ton of production – is not limited to the plastic replacement schemes. The company presents a statistic of achieving 100% recyclable or reusable packaging this year. 

The company also researched oversized packaging and found that it is exacerbating climate change and damaging brand perception. Their research showed that excess packaging generates 86,071 metric tons of unnecessary CO2 emissions annually, equivalent to nearly 5 million online delivery journeys. 

The overpackaging trend also presents an economic burden, especially amid rising raw material prices. Stefano Rossi, DS Smith Packaging CEO, said that raw materials are more expensive than ever, so now is the time to design-out excess packaging space.

By Mieke Meintjes