The new Kraft salad dressing bottles

In this morning’s GreenSpace column, I wrote about grocery shopping with packaging in mind. I had considered myself somewhat savvy, but after going on a field trip to a local Genuardi’s with recycling pro Linda Birtel, I realized how many opportunities I was missing!

I also realized packaging itself was far more interesting that I could have imagined.

The whole industry is undergoing a sea change.

Have you noticed how most laundry detergent is now concentrated so you get more washloads from the same size bottle? It saves on transportation costs, which means fewer emissions of greenhouse gases.

Water bottle companies are reducing the amount of plastic and using recycled materials.

At a packaging conference last month sponsored by DuPont in Wilmington, vice president of performance materials Diane Gulyas said a recent survey showed that more than 60 percent of package goods companies plan to redesign their packaging within the next year to make it greener.

The event included awards for packaging — after 20 years of the annual awards, they decided this year to focus on sustainability. The winners, selected from around the world, included a package insert for chocolates that was not only compostable, but also dissolved in water, an attribute the judges had fun exploring with their water glasses.

Another winner was a new Kraft salad dressing bottle that weighs 19 percent less, saving shipping costs and more than 3 million pounds of plastic a year.

Although these bottles are recyclable — Birtel and I found them and checked — this isn’t always the case.

The materials sometimes used to make packages smaller and lighter — resulting in big energy savings when it comes to materials reduction and transporting the goods, all important in addressing climate change — aren’t recyclable.

I realized there are a lot of things to weigh in thinking about the overall impact of packaging. For instance, packaging that’s not recyclable might be better than something that is, if it means the food inside doesn’t have to be refrigerated.

Here’s DuPont’s website about the packaging awards.