Packaging Materials Comparison in the Contemporary Era, Essay

Packaging Materials Comparison

In the contemporary era, there is a hot debate going on regarding the usage of paper-based shipping container, wood-based shipping container, plastic-based shipping container or retail shipping package. Thus, this controversial issue regarding the usage of the mentioned containers and packaging in a variety of supply chains in the commodities' shipment has led to numerous dissimilar views about the appropriateness of the methods. This is the reason why it is exceedingly necessary to do a critical analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the four packaging items.

Paper-Based Shipping Container: Different commodities are packaged in paper materials that possess different levels of strength. It depends on the items/commodities that which type of paper packaging would be used for their packing. In general, paper-bags, cartons and corrugated papers are used as paper-based containers. As a consequence, the importance of a paper-based shipping container for a majority of can be understood from the fact that it makes sure that the space in the shipping container is utilized completely. It is an incredible feature of paper cartons that they can be easily redesigned to the containers' shapes. In this manner, this unique characteristic allows a majority of cartons to fill up a container fully with no trouble. As a result, when the maximum numbers of cartons are packaged in a shipping container and completely fill up the container's space, the importer gets the advantage of saving a lot of capital and time on the transportation of the commodities as it just takes a single fright to transport the items from one place to another. It is important to mention here that in any kind of transportation method, one of the most significant things is the reduction of cost. Thus, using paper-based containers is really advantageous for the importers as it is a less expensive way of shipping commodities (Levesque, 2011). On the other hand, the most significant disadvantage of using paper-based shipping containers is that there may be a quantity of contaminated substances that could be dangerous incase the packaging is used for packing foodstuffs.Wood-Based Shipping Container: In general, wooden boxes that are shaped as pellets and crates are used as containers for the shipment of different commodities. The use of wood-based shipping containers has been declared as the most preferred shipping method leaving behind the paper-based shipping containers and plastic-based shipping containers. It has been revealed by a survey that in the United States of America alone, more or less ninety-three percent of all shipments use wood-based shipping containers. One of the most important advantages of the wooden-based shipping containers is that it has more strength as compared to the other materials used for shipping purposes. On the other hand, the disadvantages of wooden-based shipping containers include extensive plant pests' infestation such as Asian long horn beetle and a rise in illegitimate wood logging with the increase in its demand. Moreover, it is not possible to recycle the wooden pellets and crates in case they wear.

Plastic-Based Shipping Containers: In current times, wood-based shipping containers and paper-based shipping containers have been replaced by plastic-based shipping containers as they have certain advantages over the former ones. One of the main advantages of using plastics instead of wood and paper for packaging is that they are pest-free meaning plastics are the type of material that could not be infested by any pest at all that might be brought in the supply chain. On the other hand, wood has great tendency to be infested by pest and may further distribute it. Secondly, using plastics in the shipping supply chain is advantageous for the reason that tracking devices like radio frequency identification tags can easily fix these kinds of shipping containers. Thus, plastic-based shipping containers may reduce….....