Walk into any sustainable packaging conference and you will hear the same conversation. Better substrates. Mono-materials. Compostable films. Water-based inks. And all of it matters. The materials revolution is real, and the progress over the last decade has been remarkable.
But there is a problem that no amount of material innovation can solve. It is the problem of packaging that is printed, shipped, warehoused, and then thrown away without ever reaching a consumer. Not because the material failed. Because the quantity was wrong from the start.
The sustainability cost of “just in case”
Traditional packaging printing rewards volume. The longer the run, the lower the unit cost. So brands overorder. They print 50,000 holiday sleeves in September because the economics of flexo demand it, knowing full well that 15,000 will still be sitting in a warehouse come February. They produce identical packaging for twelve markets when only eight will use it. They stockpile, because restocking means reprinting, and reprinting means paying setup costs all over again.
This is not a failure of intent. Most brands genuinely want to reduce waste. It is a failure of the production model itself. When your printing process requires you to commit to high volumes months in advance, overproduction is not a mistake. It is a structural inevitability.
What if you only printed what you actually needed?
This is the question that on-demand digital printing answers. And it is also the question that connects sustainability to a trend the packaging industry has been watching closely: personalization.
Personalized packaging, by definition, cannot be overproduced. Every unit is different. A name on a label. A regional design. A campaign-specific graphic. There is no incentive to print 50,000 of something when every order is unique. You print what the customer ordered, when they ordered it, and nothing more.
This is not a theoretical benefit. Plants that have moved to digital report 30 to 60% less make-ready waste on short jobs. And the demand for personalized, short-run packaging is growing fast. According to Packaging Dive, 55% of brands now cite cost-effective short runs as a primary driver of their digital printing investment. Personalization and sustainability are converging, and the brands that see it are moving.
The hidden waste in the approval process
There is another layer to this that rarely gets discussed. Even when a brand commits to shorter, more targeted runs, the traditional prepress workflow generates its own waste. Proof prints that get discarded after a single review. Files reworked three or four times because the customer’s design didn’t meet production specs. Test runs scrapped because the colors were off. Every manual step in the approval chain is a potential source of wasted material, energy, and time.
Personalization makes this problem worse if the workflow hasn’t evolved to support it. A hundred unique orders processed through an email-and-Photoshop pipeline means a hundred individual file handoffs, a hundred proof cycles, and a hundred opportunities for something to go wrong. The sustainability gains of short-run production get eaten alive by the inefficiency of the process that feeds it.
The solution is not to avoid personalization. It is to automate the path from design to production so that customization does not create new waste in the process of eliminating old waste. Platforms that let customers finalize designs online, with built-in production guardrails and automatic generation of print-ready files, close this gap entirely. The file that reaches the press is correct the first time. No rejected proofs. No reprints. No surplus.
Circularity needs the right production model
The sustainable packaging industry has rightly focused on what happens after a package is used. Can it be recycled? Is it compostable? Does it fit into a circular material flow? But circularity also has a production side that deserves more attention. The most recyclable package in the world is still waste if it was never needed in the first place.
On-demand, personalized production completes the sustainability equation. It aligns output with demand. It eliminates the surplus that circular systems then have to process. And it gives brands a way to offer more relevant, more engaging packaging to consumers while actually reducing their environmental footprint, not just shifting it to a different part of the lifecycle.
Zakeke is one platform built on this principle. It enables customers to personalize products directly on a brand’s website, automatically generating production-ready files with full print specifications. For brands and converters trying to make sustainable packaging operational (not just aspirational), the combination of on-demand production and automated prepress removes the friction that has kept overproduction in place for decades.
The sustainable packaging conversation has always been about making better choices. The next chapter is about making fewer unnecessary ones. When every package printed is a package that was actually needed, sustainability stops being a material decision and becomes a production reality.
About Zakeke
Zakeke is a SaaS platform that enables brands and printing businesses to offer real-time product customization directly on their e-commerce websites, with automatic generation of print-ready files (PDF, SVG, PNG, DXF) including CMYK and Pantone support. Rated 4.9 on Capterra and recognized by G2 for Best Usability and Most Implementable, Zakeke integrates natively with Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and other major platforms. Learn more at zakeke.com