Many people wring their hands over excessive packaging (and it is outrageously abused and excessive) but the way to deal with packaging is not to ban it, since it serves a purpose. The Zero Waste way to deal with the excesses of packaging is to redesign packaging to be reusable over and over.

I am not going to go into great detail here, but it should be noted that any product which is reused over and over enjoys greater resource efficiency than low level recycling of just its materials after tearing or crushing it to pieces. Specifically, imagine a cardboard type box which is more robust than present designs and which can be easily separated into pieces (sides, tops etc.) and easily reassembled as needed. This is not hard to design. Not only could one box be used fifty times but a deteriorated top can be renewed with a new one.

An obvious advantage to a robust design is that the packaging can incorporate special features which might be too expensive for a throwaway design. Things like special labeling features, windows, reinforced corners etc. spring to mind. Expensive surfaces (wood, metal, plastic etc.) can replace the cardboard and the expense would be justified by the large number of uses that it will be put to.

When packaging is being discussed, the first and most important response is to design a new generation of packages that can be reused over and over. A key feature of this design is also designing the entire system in which the package is created, filled, distributed, protects its product, can be used in multiple ways, can be franchised, can be disassembled and the market arrangements for farming out these functions.