Environmental protection: Online trade leads to more paper waste

Electrical appliances, clothes or shoes: What the mail order company supplies is mostly in cardboard boxes. Also a take-away pizza or the Asia menu on the go are packed in cardboard boxes and paper bags.

"It is barely registered that not only plastic but also paper packaging will increase significantly," says Kurt Schüler from the GVM Gesellschaft für Verpackungsmarktforschung mbH, which carries out numerous studies on the subject.

The term paper is used by experts to summarize the so-called PPK fraction, ie all packaging made of paper, corrugated board and cardboard. And these materials accounted for the lion's share of packaging waste in Germany in 2016, at just under 45 percent and 8.1 million tons. Plastic comes to 17 percent and 3.1 million tons.

More and more boxes

In both areas, the amount of waste increases rapidly. Over the past decade, plastic packaging waste has increased by 1.56 million tons, and paper by as much as 2.75 million tons.

Whereas in the past newspapers and magazines, in other words graphic papers, ended up in the waste paper bin, there are now tons of bags, boxes and boxes piling up there. "The consumption of graphic papers continues to decline while that of packaging paper is increasing," says Gregor Andreas Geiger from the Association of German Paper Factories. In this country, the paper industry already produces more than 50 percent of packaging papers, and the trend is rising.

Compared to plastic, paper is environmentally friendly because it is easy to recycle. The fibers are processed six times on average into new bags, boxes or paper. Given the high consumption of energy and water in papermaking, this is sensible and necessary.

Large resource expenditure

According to the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), 50 liters of water are needed to produce one kilogram of paper from fresh fibers. The energy consumption is about as high as in steel production. "The paper industry is one of the most energy-intensive industries in Germany," says Almut Reichart, UBA expert for the pulp and paper industry.

After all, 60 percent of energy and 80 percent of water can be saved in recycling. The effort is still immense - and it has risen steadily in recent years.

The growing mail order business is considered to be the main cause of growing paper waste. Some retailers work with only a few packaging sizes, so that the customer has to search the ordered wristwatch in a huge box like the pin in a haystack.

DPA

Parcels in a Deutsche Post delivery center (archive)

For electrical appliances, sales packaging is often geared to the needs of online commerce from the outset, observes Kurt Schüler. "Many manufacturers pack their goods in such a way that they can be sold both via the mail-order business and in the consumer electronics store." This leads to more complex packaging.

But also the buying behavior of the customers plays an important role. "Overall, more and more ordered and shipped, but the individual shipping units are smaller," said pupil.

The changed eating habits are also reflected in the packaging statistics. As more and more is eaten out of the house or ready portioned, the number of coffee mugs, paper plates and menu boxes is growing. They often consist of so-called composite paper-based materials that can only be recycled to a limited extent. And their consumption increased by more than 30 percent between 2009 and 2016.

Fee for packaging?

The increasing consumption of paper packaging will hardly change with the new packaging law. It comes into force on 1 January 2019 and introduces, among other things, new specifications for dealers and manufacturers. They will have to report their packaging to a central office in the future. Affected by this are also online retailers who ship packaged products to end customers and have not yet paid any fees for recycling.

However, the fact that manufacturers or retailers save on packaging does not make them believe. "The investment fees often only affect the product or packaging in the low percentage range, and few would think of changing their packaging system because of the fees."

Benjamin Bongardt, resource policy expert at the German Nature Conservation Union, also sees the new packaging law as critical. "The challenge with paper packaging is definitely the reduction of the material, not just the size of the packaging, but also less packaging, such as reusable shipping boxes," he says.

The Packaging Act does not provide any incentives for such models. And the dealers themselves have little interest in building a laborious reusable system.