Hardware

Paper Packaging Promotes Sustainability Initiatives in Higher Education

Logitech’s transition to using only paper packaging on tens of millions of products will significantly reduce the company’s carbon emissions.

EdTech Staff

The artificial intelligence boom and the resulting increase in data center power consumption has thrust sustainability into the minds of technology professionals everywhere. Not only is generative AI itself forcing data centers to use more electricity, there’s also an urgent need to properly cool those overworked data centers without threatening the planet’s water supply.

Fortunately, efforts are already underway to reduce generative AI’s footprint. Things like small language models consume significantly fewer resources than their more well-known counterparts, large language models, and efforts to more efficiently cool data centers can help as well.

But sustainability doesn’t start and end with data centers. Product packaging has long been dominated by plastics, including single-use plastics, that can take hundreds of years to decompose. Even the process of plastic recycling is less environmentally friendly than it was once thought to be.

The more climate-friendly solution is paper packaging. And as sustainability remains a high priority in higher education, tech companies are catching on and making moves to redesign how their products are packaged.

Logitech Is Transitioning to Paper Packaging in 2025

By the end of 2025, the tech company Logitech is expected to transition from plastic clamshell to paper packaging for its popular mice, a move that the company says will save 660 tons of plastic from landfills and prevent 6,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the air.

The move, and others like it throughout the tech industry, serves to both improve Logitech’s environmental position and give customers what they want. GlobeScan’s 2024 Health and Sustainable Living report found that half of global consumers had purchased a sustainable product in 2024 and another 39% reported they “would have liked to” do so. And a recent McKinsey report revealed that 77% of U.S. consumers rate recyclable packaging as “extremely important” or “very important.”

LEARN MORE: These are the top six technology resources to reduce environmental impact.

“People increasingly value and actively seek packaging less harmful to the environment. Using paper instead of single-use plastic enhances the customer experience by making packaging easier to open, visually appealing and informative,” said Bliss Buter-Thompson, Logitech’s head of packaging, in a press release. “At the same time, we can optimize the weight and size of the package and lower the product carbon footprint — all in alignment with meeting our customers’ needs.”

Beyond paper packaging, Logitech has undertaken a broad Design for Sustainability initiative that is measuring the company’s environmental impact in a number of ways. Partners including CDW have also embraced sustainability and can offer expert advice on how to make everything from procurement to recycling more sustainable.

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