From the tubes that paint comes in to the caps that keep it from drying out, from the labels identifying the colours to the boxes that paint sets arrive in, the art world has traditionally had an unhealthy relationship with single-use plastics.
“Every year the United Kingdom alone generates more than two million metric tons of plastic packaging waste”
It’s a relationship that has to change though. Since plastic manufacturing took off in the 1950s, global production of the non-biodegradable substance has now topped 9 billion metric tons, more than half of which ends up as waste. Of that a sizeable proportion is packaging waste. Every year the United Kingdom alone generates more than two million metric tons of plastic packaging waste, equating to roughly 36 kilograms of plastic packaging waste per person.
Elephant is committed to reducing art’s contribution to this total, starting with our new range of sustainably packaged paints. Aluminium tubes replace plastic ones, the labelling is now recyclable paper from FSC-certified sources and all plastic mouldings and wrappings have been removed. We’ve also eliminated all unnecessary outer packaging. The letterbox friendly set effectively halves the amount of packaging normally used.
“Aluminium tubes replace plastic ones, the labelling is now recyclable paper, and all plastic mouldings and wrappings have been removed”
And that packaging leads more than one life too. If customers hang on to it, they can send the used paint tubes back to Elephant for free for safe and responsible disposal.
