The packaging waste reduction and green packaging design is promoted in recent years worldwide to meet multiple-objects of reducing environmental impacts from governmental sectors, reducing production costs from manufacturing sectors and green marketing strategies from product marketing sectors. The key issues for green packaging design promotion include the development of viable assessment processes, simplified packaging evaluation tools and viable green packaging design case studies. In order to develop a localized green packaging model, this project did a comprehensive review on EU packaging prevention policies and business strategies (Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Tesco, Walmart and ASUSTeK Computer) and learned that benefit maximization was the upmost rule most sectors focused. Under Taiwan’s limited market scale, export-oriented businesses and globalized manufacturing, the development of a systematic green packaging assessment process with evaluation should be a priority. The first edition of green packaging evaluation tool was programmed after reviewing PIQET (Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool), Walmart’s Packaging Model, EU EN 13428 and ISO 14025 (Type III lable) standards. Furthermore, the tool was piloted in 32 product manufacturers and revised in accordance with returned opinions. A green packaging design assessment website was also constructed to promote green packaging design and its assessment. Meanwhile, 2008 Green Packaging Contest and 5 workshops were held to promote green packaging design and feedback and recommendations form participants were collected. Totally 86 packaging designs contested in the contest and 269 participants attended the workshops. This showed the society’s high expectation for green packaging design. This project estimated that 6,572 metric tons of packaging waste would be reduced (reduction rate of 28%) each year after the enforcement of Excessive Packaging Restriction (EPR) Regulation. To map out the third stage of packaging minimization policy implementation, we suggested that the integration of EPR’s performance, packaging reduction plan, viable green packaging design assessment process and simplified green packaging design evaluation tool is necessary. Furthermore, the green packaging design assessment on electrical equipment, electronic devices and toy products by the manufacturers / importers and the packaging environmental impact declaration by the retailers were suggested as major green packaging design promotional strategies in the future.

packaging, green design, packaging evaluation