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Environment
Confusion on sustainable packaging explained
‘The activity of packaging is essential for the sustainable development of our society. Focus on the packaging or label as a product itself without taking its application, the activity of packaging, into account can actually hamper sustainable development.’This point was made by Michaël Nieuwesteeg, managing director of the NVC
Netherlands Packaging Centre.
Nieuwesteeg warned the international press for the use of the English word
‘packaging’ as this can address both the activity (verb) as well as the ‘box’
(noun). For instance, the current buzzwords ‘sustainable packaging’
unfortunately are resulting in a lot of miscommunication these days.
Nieuwesteeg proposes as a definition for the activity of packaging: Packaging
is temporarily integrating an external function and a product to enable the use
of the product. A temporary label is part of the packaging material, a
permanent label is part of the product.
At the end it is the application that determines the physical characteristics of
the packaging material. Without taking this application into account, any
discussion on sustainable packaging becomes trivial, according to
Nieuwesteeg: ‘The most sustainable packaging without an application is not a
packaging at all!’
