35 Recyclable and Eco-Friendly Packaging Designs for Inspiration

Nowadays, the most popular practice in packaging design is towards the use of eco-friendly materials.

These are the ones that which are biodegradable and also recyclable. Indeed, investing in this kind of packaging is worthwhile as are own very existence is under a threat due to our own disregard of our environment. Among the companies, the trend now is to adopt recyclable and eco-friendly packaging designs as part of their thrust to become socially responsible business operators.

In this article, we are sharing with you some of the recyclable and eco-friendly packaging designs that you can use as inspiration. These are ideas encompasses packaging for different types of products. Here you will find that the usual approach in making earth-friendly packaging designs is to use biodegradable, carton or paper-based material to create a variety of packaging. Also pervasive is designing for dual, multi purpose or reusable containers after the same has served its primary function. We are inviting you to share more packaging along this line if you feel that there are still more packaging whose design and materials are eco-friendly. Enjoy!

If you like product mockups, make sure to check out the thousands of fully-licensed premium examples found over at Envato Market. 

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Cuppow

This is Cuppow – a new lid that lets you drink like a boss from virtually any wide-mouth canning jar. It’s a simple, eco-friendly alternative to poor-performing and messy disposable hot cups, and over-built and expensive travel mugs.

Designed by Natalya Zahn

Mode Tea Identity and Package Design

The Mode Tea project was an exploration in sustainable packaging methods and processes. Through extensive research of the principle of sustainability, a packaging scheme was devised which could be fully recycled or reused. The materials proposed would all come from sustainable sources and would not be harmful to the environment.

Designed by Adam Law

M13 Functional Juice

Betterdaze Press did this packaging design for M13 Functional Juice, a small company based in Vancouver. Mark Gainor, the designer says, “We managed to fit an enormous amount of functional ingredients into each bottle and we have incorporated recycled products into our design
palette from day one.”

Designed by Mark Gainor

Litl

The Litl webbook packaging is simple, straightforward and designed to appeal to a wide range of ages, embodying Litl’s mission as technology for everyone. The entire package is made from recyclable paper with no plastics or foams used, and the packaging doubles as its own shipping box.

Designed by Litl

Disposable food bowl

This awesome disposable bowl can be used a seed pot that degrades after some time the seedling has been transplanted.

Designed by Michal Marko

Teatul

The brief was to create a package for three varieties of tea (black, green and hibiscus). Natural, eco-friendly colors and textures were used requiring less energy and chemicals. Designed with the utmost care of nature in mind.

Designed by Khadia Ulumbekova

360 Paper Bottle

The 360 Paper Bottle is the first of its kind in the world, and a true environmentally-friendly solution to the problem of plastic water bottles. The 360 Paper Bottle is a sustainable vision of the future. It is the first totally recyclable
paper container made from 100% renewable resources. Versatile in its range of consumer
applications and made from food-safe and fully recyclable materials, it decreases energy
consumed throughout the product life cycle without sacrificing functionality. It is paper
packaging that stands up to all liquid categories.

Designed by Brandimage

Cardboard Laptop Stand

This is a small piece of cardboard that with simple creases becomes a strong laptop cooler, that you can use on the meeting and take with you to your home or office.

Designed by Pedro Andre

Starbucks Recycled Mugs

The Starbucks design team says about these mugs, “This recycled ceramic mug was brought to life in a zero-waste factory in Japan, which reuses the clay of former mugs and dishes to create new ones. It’s a story of reuse and renewal that is told from mug to package. The particles coming together to form words and shapes represent a renewed respect for resources. For from broken bits of ceramic, we can make beautiful things.”

Designed by Alice Friedel

Sennheiser Eco-Friendly Packaging

The packaging is made from cardboard and is 100% recyclable – no nasty plastic clam shell to clog up land fills.”

Designed by Design Muse

Lacoste Eco/Techno Polo Shirts

This are branding and packaging for two very different types of polo shirts commissioned by Lacoste. The most eco-friendly way to package a shirt was not to print on the packaging at all but use embossing instead.

Designed by Mind Design

Yellow and Blue

Yellow+Blue = Green, as in organic wines in recyclable, eco-friendly Tetra Paks. Spear Design Group developed the new packaging that tells the Yellow+Blue story for the company’s four eco-friendly, organic wines: Malbec, Torrontes, Sauvignon Blanc and Rosé.

Designed by Spear Design Group

Nooka Glue-less Custom Box

“Nooka is continuing its tradition of green packaging with the introduction of the Nooka Glue-less custom box. This paper packaging is truly eco-friendly, requiring minimal material, minimal labor and is biodegradable. The new packaging will be shipping with the Zub 40 line as part of our fall 2011 collection,” Nooka, the designer says.

Designed by Nooka

Student Work – Niamh Richardson

The designer of this packaging has this to say, “The text on the front of the packaging was die-cut by hand into rough brown paper, chosen to suggest the organic chocolate. This reveals the bright aluminum foil beneath, which distinguishes each flavour of chocolate. The minimal design reflects the simple, honest ethics of the brand: organic, fairtrade and eco-friendly.”

Designed by Niamh Richardson

Dream Ball Project

To the children in The Third World; Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Congo and etc, who can’t enjoy football freely because of poverty, war and natural disaster, having a football means a lot and can be a dream and hope to escape from their poor life. However, the children are so poor that they can not buy a football. In the aspect of material, we considered children playing football with bare foot. So, we use paper that can be recycled and its thickness changes the intensity and elasticity of the Dream Ball, Unplug Design says.

Designed by Unplug Design

Toni’s Goat’s Milk Yogurt

Typography, illustrations and colors of this package design is 100% recyclable for ewe’s and goat’s milk yoghurt have high brand recognition and are also connected with the theme of freedom. Other issues such as health, nature and animal protection are conveyed in a beastly funny way.

Designed by Moodley

Colorless Coke Can

This innovative Coke can from Coca Cola uses a convex logo instead of a colorfully sprayed can. Thus is reduces air and water pollution occurred in its coloring process. It also reduces energy and effort to separate toxic color paint from aluminum in recycling process. Huge amount of energy and paint required to manufacture colored cans will be saved. Instead of toxic paint, manufacturers process aluminum with a pressing machine that indicates brand identity on surface.

Designed by Harc Lee

60BAG

60BAGS are the perfect natural answer to the environment’s needs. They are biodegradable carrier bags made out of flax-viscose non-woven fabric.

Designed by 60BAG

Jute Cases

Jute Cases are a more eco-friendly alternative to the nylon cases for Mac Book Pro’s and Ipad cases and the goal for it’s package design was to use less and give more information. Burlap is made usually of the Jute plant, and because Jute isn’t really known, the gaol was to give information to the consumer.

Designed by Joshua Hernandez

Light Bulb Package Redesign

This package is designed based on recycled material. The color scheme is meant to promote environmental design. The material chosen is much stronger than the original, which helps protect the fragile bulbs. All of the information is cleanly incorporated into a label system to reduce printing over the whole package. In terms of structure, this is designed for easy transport and stocking. This product can also be displayed in many positions.

Designed by Mongkol Praneenit

Martha Stewart Eco Friendly Re-Design

This project is a theoretical redesign for a line of Martha Stewart baking products to market towards an environmentally conscious audience.

Designed by Rachael Katra

The Body Shop

The packaging is made from an extensive range of eco-friendly materials, while the patterned illustrations draw attention to The Body Shop’s notable use of organic and fair trade ingredients.

Designed by Kelsey Heinrichs

Peanut & Co. Ecopackaging

Design a packaging for dried fruits market vendors to use in their daily bulk sales. The approach consisted in identifying a safe material disposed by the vendors and finding a creative way to reuse it.
The bag is made from sacks that distributors use to deliver the fruits to the market. Because the sacks are often disposed by the vendors, the use of this material minimizes the amount of waste and presents an economic way to differentiate the product, a feat rarely achieved in street markets.

Designed by Monica Lopez

Natural Packaging for Tea

The materials used for this packaging are 100% recyclable. For those 2 loose-leaves products, the designer used gunny to wrap the loose leaves tea safely and keep them dry. For the potbags materials, he used natural cotton cloth materials to wrap them up.  As for the secondary packaging, he used a simple box which easy to open. The box are made from recycled materials. Beside its environmental friendly packaging, it’s also  multi-functional and reusable packaging. They can be used for flower vase / any small plantation pot in order to support the world’s green campaign. Furthermore, it also can be used as your home potpourri materials, to give you a better air circulation. Just simply add your favorite essential oil into the box and the gunny.

Designed by Riska Tiofani

FUNE – Sushi Takeaway Packaging

Biodegradable PET-coated cardboard for this packaging was chosen, as it’s an eco-friendly material that can be recycled along with normal waste paper. It gives the finished product a clean look. Red and black were picked as they are strong colours associated with Japanese culture.
This packaging design is called FUNE – Japanese for ship.

Designed by Gerlinde Gruber

No glue box

This packaging uses no glue in an eco-friendly box designed to fit 2 color matching liquid bottles.

Designed by Sandi Chen

Olive Poop Bags

US dogs produce enough waste to fill an 800-foot-tall football field every year and plastic bags can take over 100 years to decompose. Scooping all that poop into petroleum-based plastic bags leaches toxic chemicals as they slooowly break down over thousands of years in landfills. Alternatively, leaving scat on the ground isn’t an eco-friendly (nor neighbor-friendly) option either, as 20-30% of all pollutants in waterways can be attributed to canine waste. Olive poop bags are made naturally from GMO-free corn starch and vegetable oil, are certified 100% biodegradable and compost in as little as 40 days. Poop and parcel can be buried for micro-organisms to consume or combined with yard waste for curbside collection in communities that compost biodegradable waste.

Designed by Nate Williams

Flicker

Flicker takes a package for a light kit and transforms it into an interactive lamp which is also 100% recyclable. The design removes the need for additional packaging, filler material and instructions cutting down on waste.

Designed by Randy Chiang

Brand Extension – Amazon Kindle

This packaging design is focused on Amazon’s “Frustration-Free Packaging” that uses recycled papers as primary material.

Designed by Michelle Hang Bui

Student Work – Carli Shipley

This package design would enable the HP Ink consumer to send back their empty ink cartridge in the self addressed, same box that the new ink cartridge is bought in. Conceptually, HP would start a “refilling” option, where the user would order their next cartridge online ahead of time and receive a discount by entering a the code found on the box.

Designed by Carli Shipley

Hampi Natural Tableware

Hampi natural tableware is a range of natural design disposables, made out of fallen palm leaves. The design depicts the story of this special product by showing the transformation of the leaf into reusable natural plates. The sides and top of the packs show the beautiful patterns of the plates. The shapes used in the logo were used as a source of inspiration for inspiration for the actual boxes.

Designed by Brandnew Design

Cologne Bottle and Box

Bottle and packaging design for an all-natural, eco-friendly, recycled cologne concept.

Designed by Nicole Denton

Package design for ECO towel

Designed by Natalia Kuchumova

Sustainable Bagless Take-Out Packaging

Focusing on sustainability, this packaging attempts to eliminate the need for a plastic bag.

Designed by JoAnn Arello

Ecologic Brands

Ecologic Brands designs and manufactures innovative and sustainable packaging solutions. With the first molded paper bottle made from recycled cardboard, Ecologic Brands connects brands and people through smarter packaging choices.

Designed by Ecologic

Sonny M. Day

Sonny M. Day is a passionate SEO and web design enthusiast who loves photography, mountain climbing, snorkeling and dirt bike riding.