The Problem Is Not Packaging Design, It's Systems Design

INFERENCE

Start with all the different substrates for packaging, then add in the complexities of sustainable design, and you've got a nuanced study in systems thinking. Think of it like a computer keyboard. It's not a single button (everyone wants that "easy button"), it's a combination of keys, and how you press them. Companies hoping to make a change must renegotiate their product's appearance as part of an entire system overhaul, a process that most of them aren't willing to undertake.

Packaging is more than the wrapping or container we see on the supermarket shelf. It is also the box, tray or outer wrapping that protects and groups together products during distribution and the container or pallet that collates the groups into larger loads for transport. Most of the times, packaging is unavoidable. Moreover its wasteful after the product is consumed or is being used. There is a lot of excess packaging which is leading to increasing areas under landfills and oceans full of waste on the earth.

Misinformed decisions in changing packaging can lead to catastrophic results. For example- PLA (Polyactic acid) a plant based plastic that can be used instead of PET. When used in a place or on a product that doesn't have the proper recycling system set up, a PLA bottle can contaminate the otherwise-effective PET recycling system. It has become such an issue that some recyclers declared a moratorium on PLA until systems to collect the PLA properly

are in place.

Companies need to start with a radical idea: No packaging. Start with nothing as your goal, and just start adding on only what you really need. Just to say, Procter & Gamble sells

shampoo under their sub-brand Head & Shoulders. They sell shampoo, not shampoo bottles. Introducing re-fill stands or packets will save a lot of packaging.

Society has always needed and used packaging. We just need to find a solution which reduces packaging and is till functional. This may or may not be possible with all consumer

goods manufactured by FMCG companies, but if we really look at it up close, some products can have the packaging within it.

Revised problem statement
~ Excess tertiary packaging of consumer goods
(not necessarily in food packaging)