Clean and Protected: How the Cleaning Industry Can Achieve Safety & Sustainability with Flexible Packaging

Spring cleaning has been cast in a new light. As thousands of American families adjust to the new normal of higher health standards, we have been challenged to improve and adopt more routine cleaning behaviors to stay safe and protect each other.

According to the American Cleaning Institute (ACI), the average American spends six hours cleaning a week. We believe that number will increase throughout 2020 and beyond as the importance of frequent cleaning increases to keep our household surfaces free of harmful germs.

Beyond the functional attributes of the product, what are customers looking for from the CPG household cleaning brands they purchase? And how can brands use product packaging to differentiate in areas to bring value to customers and the environment?

This is where adopting a flexible packaging format can help. Currently in the cleaning industry, flexible packaging formats largely comprise refill packs for household cleaners, as opposed to the primary packaging. Today, few CPG brands have transitioned to a reclosable flexible pouch as the primary product package, but they should consider it.

Recent innovations in flexible packaging offer value-added benefits to the consumer and the brand.

Child Safety

This is a big one. Consumers know that cleaning products need to be kept up and out of the hands of little ones, but unfortunately it only takes a brief moment for an accident to happen. That’s where the innovative Child-Guard^® comes in. Child-Guard is the first child-resistant slider closure system for pouches developed specifically to help packages meet the Poison Prevention Packaging Act standards. This allows CPG household cleaning brands to move from a rigid to flexible format and add a layer of child-resistance to the packaging, which is a win in the minds of target consumers.

Sustainability

Whether a consumer or a business, we are all looking for ways to be more environmentally conscious. In the cleaning industry, plastic packaging offers many benefits like product protection, especially with today’s e-commerce driven supply chain. So how can a cleaning industry brand improve upon sustainability efforts with plastic packaging?

The answer is source reduction.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed what it calls a waste management hierarchy for sustainable materials management, which can be used to prioritize manufacturing efforts. Among the most preferred option in this hierarchy is source reduction, which means eliminating waste at the start of a product lifecycle by using less raw material.

Source reduction in packaging presents a major opportunity for CPG household cleaning brands, and it’s a benefit that flexible packaging has long provided. Not only is less material used to produce the package, the lightweight format also means less energy is needed to manufacture the packaging, and there is a reduction in carbon emissions from transportation in comparison to rigid plastic.

Get in Touch

If you are a household cleaning brand or simply have interest in this topic, contact us today to learn more about how packaging can impact the cleaning industry.