For a packaging ethics

Well done and fully successful the two days full of appointments and events organized in Venice, May 26 and 27, 2022, by the Packaging Ethics Charter Foundation in collaboration with the Italian Packaging Institute. In particular, during the conference "Packaging: many faces one goal," flying high on contingent problems, ethical-sustainable development was discussed in times of unprecedented and indecipherable scenarios such as the present. But not only that. The lagoon meeting was also the occasion for the first encounter of the Steering Committee of the Ambassadors of the Ethical Packaging Charter, where the Foundation's future initiatives and projects were discussed: a debut that bodes well.

Stefano Lavorini

I've been writing about packaging for many years, but that's not why I've stopped imagining better packaging...for everyone. And in particular, for us consumers who make our purchasing choices every day, trying to disentangle ourselves from an offer as heterogeneous as ever, with a feeling of expectation in our hearts for products/packaging that are "good" for our needs, for society and for the environment.       

For this reason, we at ItaliaImballaggio magazine, after having promoted in 2015 the "Ethical Packaging Charter" which was intended to be a tool to help an increasingly informed and aware consumer in respecting the needs of the entire packaging supply chain, today (as Pack-Media) we are among Ambassadors of the Ethical Packaging Charter Foundation.

Credit to the Istituto Italiano Imballaggio for giving new impetus and new direction to this project, in the conviction that we cannot avoid coming to terms with the changing reality, which has already changed.

Credit to the newly appointed president of the Institute and Foundation, Alessandra Fazio, who coordinated the first meeting of the Ambassadors Steering Committee with conviction, and from which she derived some program directions.

The Foundation I Wish to See

Starting from the assumption that the Foundation's task is to promote packaging as a tool at the service of the consumer, Alessandra Fazio proposes to create paths of development by working on mentoring young professionals in the sector and collaborating with start-ups that provide services, based on the values of the Ethical Packaging Charter, that are useful and innovative for the actors in the supply chain.

But also to continue the work of spreading the term "Packaging Ethics" «Let's think about how many times we now encounter the word ethics in industry debates and purely technological fields such as ours. It is central, in its different declinations, to the analysis of the present and the future. It is a term that forces us to understand new needs».

«In fact, it should not be forgotten - she argues - that in the contemporary world there are "ethical" urgencies for which packaging plays a primary role, such as proper nutrition, food waste, the need for proper recycling, Design for All, immediacy and accessibility...».

Of course, I would add, today stimulating reflection is a difficult task, immersed as we are in a stream of communication that, through excess and redundancy, is often experienced as inevitable background noise.

In this babel of lost stimuli, we have evidence that consumers, in general, recognize packaging as having a functionality and necessity that make it a fundamental part of the product itself. And precisely because of this, we cannot fail to commit ourselves - all of us - to support packaging as a tool of civilization and to counter, with honesty, the hostility, the prejudices it is made the object of through ignorance or bad faith.