Plastic bags – they’re everywhere. In order to keep our products safe and clean until they reach your favorite store or your doorstep by post, our products have to be packed. There is currently no real alternative to this kind of plastic.
As with all single-use products, the biggest problem is not the valuable, highly functional, resource-intensive plastic material itself, but the fact that it is only used once for a short period of time. 95 % of all plastic packaging is neither recycled nor reused. What a waste! Even though the EU already bans individual single-use plastic products, packaging has not yet been affected.
Above all, the problem is transparent foil bags. Every single product is packed in one:
- to protect it from moisture, mold and damage during transport
- because the shipping companies and warehouse logistics need them for bar code labels, etc.
- because many dealers demand them from us in order to protect the product during their processes and to simplify things
At the moment, we can’t just eliminate them.
Nevertheless, thanks to the German Packaging Act, every company that places packaging on the market must record its quantities per material. This leads to a greater awareness of the problem among decision-makers in the economy, because all packaging that ends up in the customer's household must be licensed. The less packaging waste we generate, the more money we save.
Our goal at VAUDE is to convert all foil bags to 100 % post consumer recycled material as quickly as possible, for example from used packaging that ends up in Germany’s "yellow bag" street side recycling program.
Technically, however, this means that the bags would no longer be transparent, but milky. Is that a problem? We don't know yet! We are in talks with our retailers and logistics partners to find out whether this kind of plastic is acceptable to them.
A paradox from an ecological perspective – unfortunately, it is still the case that recycled materials are usually much more expensive than new ones. This also applies to packaging.
We know that, as a whole, the textile industry has a major problem here. And all of us – packaging manufacturers, outdoor brands, wholesalers and retailers, logistics partners and you as consumers – must all work together to solve it.
VAUDE is therefore working under the umbrella of the European Outdoor Group, the European outdoor association, together with other brands and retailers, to find alternatives for film bags made of disposable plastic. It is not just a matter of replacing one material with another. Rather, our goal is to completely rethink packaging solutions and to change the "single-use packaging" system. We will continue to report on this here.
The best packaging is that which we simply don’t use. If it were only as easy as it sounds... If you have any ideas, please share them with us! Just use the contact link on this page.
We have already long done away with plastic shopping bags in VAUDE stores. If you really need something to carry your purchases in, you can buy a paper bag.
- Avoid plastic packaging, plastic bags and single-use items. Put your garbage where it belongs.
- Don’t use toothpaste and cosmetics with microplastic beads.
- Become informed about the toxins in plastics and avoid products made of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and PC (polycarbonate).
More information directly from the WWF can be found here.
