Why Glass Is Slowly Discovering Its Mojo Back Into The Packaging Game

Post date: 20-02-2021 Author: HNG

Several factors has led to newer brands and products adopting Glass as their preferred packaging material.

Glass started falling out of favor as a packaging material decades ago with the rise of lightweight, unbreakable plastic. However, since the mid-2000s, glass has made a comeback in the mainstream CPG market. Foods, beverages, and beauty brands are now using glass containers more extensively, and consumers are taking notice.

Consumer sentiment has always been on the side of glass, with consumers ranking glass bottles as number one for taste of foods and beverages. Since glass has a near-zero rate of chemical interaction, when you eat or drink something from a glass container, you’re tasting the product and not the packaging. Other factors are converging to make glass containers a more popular choice for packaging. Maybe you should consider it for your brand too.

The reasons why Glass is now regaining its popularity are –

Health Reasons - People are concerned with potential health implications of plastic packaging of foods and beverages. Glass falls into the category of Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) by the FDA, and it can be safely microwaved and washed at high temperatures. What’s more, it can be reused extensively and eventually degraded back into sand, which can then be made back into glass.

Economic Reasons - Some industries – notably smaller craft breweries and local dairies – are using refillable glass bottles. With beer bottling, refilling glass bottles produces 66 times less carbon dioxide emission compared to aluminum cans, and over the lifetime of a glass bottle (25 refills before being recycled into new glass containers), the cost per fill is also reduced.

Concerns with competitors - Concerns over plastics in the environment have played a role in the resurgence of glass too. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that plastics in the oceans will outweigh fish by the year 2050, and since 1950, more than 90 percent of discarded plastic has not been recycled.

Though there are multiple other factors such as aesthetic appeal, non-reaction with chemicals and durability to name a few, the above factors remain crucial ones from a consumer as well as business point of view, which is leading a growing trend of adopting glass across industries and economies.