Tougher regulations on excessive packaging in China

The Chinese government has increasingly realized the negative impact of excessive packaging, and issued regulations to ban over packaging and reduce wastage.

The issue of excessive packaging relates to the unnecessary use of packaging, mainly secondary packaging. It originally arose in relation to, amongst other things, the packaging of moon cake, a traditional Chinese food that is popular as a gift during the mid-autumn festival season. This soon expanded to other categories, including Chinese wine, chocolate and other products that are popular as gifts, prior to extending to various other packaged goods.

The new regulations will directly impact gift packaging across all categories and therefore the usage of secondary packaging and unnecessary primary packaging. As the issue of over packaging has been high on the agenda of Chinese government, the cosmetic industry has also caught the authority’s eyes recently.

Shanghai Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau, a government quality watchdog is reported to say that some of the products from big brand like Olay, L'Oreal and Nivea at local supermarkets were found over packaged.

The bureau checked 105 batches of cosmetics and 22 of them failed packaging checks. Six batches of Olay cosmetics produced by Procter & Gamble Guangzhou and sold at some local outlets were found to have an over packaging problem, and the same problem was found in a batch of L'Oreal products made in Suzhou and sold at an outlet of Carrefour. Some Garnier and Chando cosmetics also contained excess amount of empty space in its packaging.

According to the latest packaging regulations, the amount of packaging layers and the ratio of empty space inside the boxes are the major criteria in determining excessive packaging. The allowed ratio should be within 50 percent for cosmetics.

As Chinese government is beginning take a tough stance on environmental issues, it is expected to push stringent packaging regulations in order to reduce packaging waste and pollution, and this as a result will force the packaging industry to solve its excessive packaging problem.

In its latest packaging report ‘Packaging Industry in China’, Euromonitor pinpoints five megatrends in China packaging industry, and environment protection and product safety are among them.

According to Euromonitor, over the review period, the Chinese government made efforts to address the situation through the issuance of a series of regulations related to the entire packaging value chain, encompassing packaging materials, the regulation of packagers, the country’s return system and consumer education.