Addressing the Criticism of Packaging

Walk down any supermarket aisle and you’ll notice something: almost nothing is sold naked. Biscuits sit inside trays inside wrappers inside boxes. A single mango can arrive wrapped in plastic netting and a foam sleeve. Packaging has become so central to how products reach us that it’s easy to forget it comes with real costs. Marketers love packaging for the protection and appeal it offers, but critics have been asking hard questions for decades. Is all this wrapping worth it?

Why packaging draws so much criticism 🔗

Packaging exists to protect goods, inform buyers, and make products easy to handle, store, and sell. But the same features that make packaging useful also create problems once you zoom out to the level of the environment, public health, and consumer trust. The criticism generally falls into five buckets: environmental damage, depletion of natural resources, rising product costs, health hazards, and deceptive practices. Each deserves a closer look.

Environmental degradation 🔗

Packaging waste is one of the most visible forms of pollution in Indian cities. Packaging accounts for roughly 30 percent of all plastic consumption in the country, and a large share of the 15.5 million tonnes of plastic waste generated in India each year comes directly from packaging, most of which has a usable life of less than twelve months before it’s discarded. India has also been identified as the fifth-largest producer of plastic waste globally, generating close to 9.46 million tonnes annually, of which a large share is poorly managed or simply uncollected.

The knock-on effects are visible everywhere: clogged drains that worsen urban flooding, plastic-choked rivers and coastlines, and open burning of waste that releases toxic pollutants into the air. India burns an estimated 5.8 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, a practice that worsens air quality rather than solving the disposal problem. An estimated 80 percent of marine litter along India’s coastline is plastic, much of it packaging material, and marine animals frequently ingest this waste, often fatally.

Beyond plastic, even “greener” materials like paper and cardboard have footprints. Producing paper packaging drives demand for pulpwood, while manufacturing any packaging material, plastic, glass, or metal, consumes energy and generates emissions. Recognising this, India tightened its rules through the Plastic Waste Management Amendment Rules, 2021, which banned several single-use plastic items and enforced Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), making manufacturers accountable for what happens to their packaging after a consumer discards it.

The economic cost of pollution 🔗

Environmental damage isn’t just an ecological issue, it’s an economic one too. A FICCI-backed estimate suggests India could lose more than USD 133 billion in material value by 2030 due to uncollected and unrecycled plastic packaging waste, of which roughly USD 68 billion is tied specifically to packaging that ends up as litter or in landfills instead of being recovered and reused.

Depletion of natural resources 🔗

Every unit of packaging is made from something, wood pulp, petroleum-derived plastic, bauxite for aluminium, or sand and soda ash for glass. As consumption rises, so does the pressure on these finite or slow-renewing resources. India’s plastic consumption has grown at a compound annual rate of around 7 percent over the past decade, a pace that outstrips the country’s ability to responsibly source raw material or manage the resulting waste stream.

Critics argue that a large share of this resource use is avoidable. Multiple layers of packaging for a single product, an outer carton, an inner tray, individual plastic wrapping for each unit, consume far more material than is strictly necessary for protection. This is sometimes referred to as over-packaging, and it sits at the heart of the resource-depletion argument: packaging that exists mainly to look impressive on a shelf still draws on the same limited raw materials as packaging that serves a genuine protective purpose.

Rising cost of the product 🔗

Packaging is not free, and its cost is built into what consumers pay. Materials, design, printing, and the technology needed for tamper-proofing or multi-layer protection all add to production expenses. For premium or gift-oriented products, elaborate packaging can account for a noticeable share of the final price, value that arguably has nothing to do with the product itself.

This creates a genuine tension for marketers. Good packaging can justify a premium price by improving shelf appeal or perceived quality, but if the packaging cost climbs too high relative to the product’s value, it can price out cost-sensitive buyers, a significant concern in a market as price-sensitive as India’s, where mass-market categories like biscuits, soaps, and snacks compete heavily on affordability.

Table: Where packaging cost typically goes 🔗

Health hazards from packaging materials 🔗

Not all packaging is chemically inert. Certain plastics used in food contact materials can leach chemicals into what they hold, particularly when exposed to heat or stored for long periods. Bisphenol A (BPA), commonly found in polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resin can linings, is an endocrine disruptor that has been linked to hormonal disruption, developmental issues in children, and increased cancer risk in scientific literature. Phthalates, used to make plastics more flexible in items like cling wrap, raise similar concerns.

Regulators have started responding. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has proposed a draft amendment to the Food Safety and Standards (Packaging) Regulations, 2018, that would ban PFAS (“forever chemicals”) entirely and require food contact materials made from polycarbonate and epoxy resins to be completely BPA-free. This move is meant to bring Indian packaging standards closer to international benchmarks and reduce consumer exposure to chemicals that migrate from packaging into food.

Infants, children, and pregnant women are considered particularly vulnerable to these chemical migrations, since even low-level exposure during early development has been associated with long-term effects. This is one reason food-grade packaging standards receive so much regulatory attention compared to packaging for non-consumable goods.

Deception regarding quality 🔗

Perhaps the most consumer-facing criticism of packaging is that it can mislead rather than inform. Oversized boxes with mostly empty space, a phenomenon often called slack fill, can make a product appear larger or more generous than it actually is. Bold claims printed on the front of a pack, like “100%” natural, whole, or pure, can create an impression that doesn’t match what’s actually inside.

India’s Consumer Protection Act, 2019 takes this seriously. It empowers the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) to act against misleading advertisements and unfair trade practices, which the Act defines as any representation that falsely describes a product, gives a false guarantee, or deliberately conceals important information. In a recent enforcement action, the CCPA fined two major food companies for using “100%” claims on packaging that didn’t match the actual product composition, one bread product labelled “100% Atta” was found to contain only 87 percent atta, while a beverage marketed as “100% Tender Coconut Water” turned out to be reconstituted from concentrate.

What makes this ruling notable for marketing students is the reasoning behind it: a technically accurate claim can still be judged misleading if its overall impression, combined with other claims or fine print, creates a false picture in the ordinary consumer’s mind. Burying a disclaimer in small text while making a bold claim in large type does not satisfy the requirement of honest, verifiable communication under the CCPA’s Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisements, 2022.

Why this matters for marketers 🔗

Packaging sits at the intersection of design and disclosure. It has to sell the product, but it also has to inform the buyer honestly about what’s inside. Regulatory scrutiny is only increasing, the CCPA can levy penalties running into lakhs of rupees per violation, order the withdrawal of misleading claims from packaging and all other platforms, and even restrict repeat offenders. For a brand, the reputational cost of a public penalty often outweighs the fine itself.

Balancing criticism with the genuine benefits of packaging 🔗

None of this means packaging is inherently bad. It performs functions that are hard to replace: protecting products from damage during transport, extending shelf life and reducing spoilage, preventing tampering, and communicating essential information like ingredients, expiry dates, and usage instructions. Reduced spoilage alone has significant economic value in a country where a meaningful share of perishable produce is lost before it ever reaches a consumer.

The real challenge for marketers and policymakers is finding the balance point, using enough packaging to protect and inform, without tipping into excess, deception, or avoidable environmental harm. This is where concepts like right-sizing (matching pack size to product volume), EPR compliance, and clearer labelling standards come in. They aren’t just regulatory checkboxes; they represent an industry-wide attempt to keep packaging’s benefits while addressing the very criticisms outlined above.

Practical shifts already underway 🔗

• Material substitution: Companies moving toward recyclable mono-materials instead of multi-layer composites that are difficult to recycle.
• Lightweighting: Reducing the amount of material used per unit without compromising protection.
• Chemical restrictions: Phasing out BPA and PFAS from food-contact packaging ahead of regulatory deadlines.
• Honest labelling: Aligning front-of-pack claims with actual product composition to avoid CCPA action.

What do you think? Next time you unbox a product with several layers of packaging, do you think the extra material was there to protect the product, or mainly to make it look more appealing on the shelf? And should the cost of “eco-friendly” packaging be passed on to consumers, or absorbed by the company as a cost of doing responsible business?

References

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10163-024-02060-z
2. https://thecsruniverse.com/articles/india-s-plastic-dilemma-closing-the-loop-on-packaging-waste
3. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/india-as-the-world-largest-plastic-polluter
4. https://www.plasticsforchange.org/blog/india-emerges-as-the-worlds-largest-plastic-polluter-what-went-wrong-and-whats-next
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12096275/
6. https://www.packaging-gateway.com/news/fssai-proposes-ban-pfas-bpa/
7. https://vajiramandravi.com/current-affairs/ccpa-fines-misleading-labels/
8. https://ssrana.in/articles/ccpa-penalises-100-claims-what-indias-latest-misleading-advertising-ruling-means-for-fmcg-and-consumer-brands/