Every brand ought to ensure that its products are fully protected during storage, handling, and transportation. The type, thickness, contents, and quality of the packaging are critical to preventing damage, but there are also many other decision-making factors to consider when choosing the best material for your packaging needs.
Characteristics like environmental impact, aesthetic looks, practicality, functionality, and ease of transport should be on top of your priority list. The good news is cardboard ticks all boxes.
As a packaging material, cardboard is consistently considered to be an excellent packaging choice for a number of reasons we will cover in this article.
The sustainable-way-of-living trend
More and more consumers are embracing the sustainable way of living to save the environment and create a better world for future generations. Their personal values are shaping up the way they make purchases. Meaning that they are constantly looking for eco-friendly packaging to lower their eco-footprint and prevent excessive pollution.
No wonder cardboard is one of the most preferred packaging materials. After all, cardboard has 100% natural contents, preserves non-renewable resources, and significantly lowers toxic gas emissions from packaging manufacturing and transportation.
And when the time comes for disposal, people can choose whether to recycle, compost, or simply throw away the cardboard that will fully dissolve safely and naturally.
Pros of cardboard packaging
Durability
Packaging materials such as cardboard are ideal for transportation due to their durability.
Cardboard is made of vigorous and resilient wood fibers which is why it is so strong and long-lasting. The material is also a thermal isolator, puncture resistant, hard-to-tear, and protects from external factors such as direct sunlight and moisture.
Reusability
Since cardboard is naturally a very durable and versatile material that hardly wears off, it is quite easy to repurpose it. Cardboard boxes are hardy and can be reused by your customers to store things at home or to conveniently transport personal items.
The fact that cardboard packaging is recyclable is another significant advantage of the material. That means old cardboard can be processed and reused by companies as packaging over and over again, after many recycling cycles.
Prevention of moisture
Products that need to withstand long transportation periods as well as food products need to be protected from moisture infiltration. Cardboard packaging is perfect for this job since its moisture-protective qualities are simply outstanding.
High flexibility
Flexibility also deserves a place in this list of cardboard advantages. Thanks to its flexibile characteristics, the packaging can be manufactured in any style or size, while ensuring robust product protection. On top of that, most cardboard boxes are collapsable, so they take minimum space when not in use.
Lightweight
The cardboard packaging material is extremely lightweight. A fact leads to many additional benefits for brands, consumers, and the environment. The biggest advantage for businesses who use cardboard packaging is the lower logistics costs. It is also quite convenient to carry, store, and transport. From an environmental standpoint, the lightweight qualities of cardboard drastically lower carbon emissions from transportation.
Cost-effectiveness
Sticking to cardboard boxes as your go-to type of product packaging will prove to be extremely cost-effective in the long term. Compared to plastic alternatives, cardboard is often referred to as one of the most affordable packaging products that are easily attainable by companies of any size. And as we already mentioned, with cardboard you can significantly cut transportation costs.
Easy to design
Cardboard is one of the easiest eco-friendly materials to customize. It is compatible with almost any type of design and method of printing. With the right tailoring techniques, captivating colors, fonts imagery, and the power of branding you can easily shape up and transform your plain shipping boxes into vivid eye-catching packaging. This is a very important quality because good design is what makes you different, unique, and special and makes your brand recognizable on the shelves.