ECO-DESIGN: CONAI’s call for proposals - Episode 1

Numbers are growing for the eighth edition of the CONAI call for proposals for eco-design, which registered 10% more entries. The analysis of the cases will last until the end of October, after which a jury of technicians will choose the winners.

Good news comes from the world of Italian companies: CONAI, the Consorzio Nazionale Imballaggi (National Packaging Consortium), which groups together more than 750,000 Italian companies, testifies that the number of cases of packaging revised in a sustainable key has increased in the last two years. Registrations for the 2021 edition of the CONAI call for entries for eco-design, which each year rewards packaging solutions that have been improved through interventions that reduce their environmental impact, closed on May 31 with a respectable balance sheet that reveals a 10% increase in the number of cases submitted compared to the last edition: 319 candidates from 156 companies.

A sustainable path

As Luca Ruini, CONAI’s president, points out: “The cases are not few, especially in such a tormented year and also considering that the Call for Proposals requires the timely adoption of specific prevention levers. Despite the difficulties encountered by the entrepreneurial fabric of our country in 2020, the path towards sustainability has not therefore been interrupted, on the contrary: companies have invested in eco-design and have continued to present us with their new packaging solutions. Attention to environmental protection continues to grow, as well as the desire to create a real database of cases of excellence, which can represent valid examples for the companies of today and tomorrow”.

Preliminary data will be confirmed at the end of the analysis phase that will last until the end of October, when the meeting with the certification body to verify the procedures of analysis and validation of the ranking will end the evaluation process.

A new edition with a plus sign

“The interest of companies was confirmed to be lively from the day the applications were opened in March until May 31” explains Simona Fontana, head of CONAI’s Prevention Area. “The 2020 edition, marked by the first lockdown, had closed with an astonishing 18% more applications, many of which arrived in the running in June, after our decision to extend the period for submissions by a month. This year, on the other hand, dialogue with companies has been constant, despite the difficulties linked to a pandemic that has not yet ended. A new demonstration of the fact that Italian companies are increasingly keen to be sustainable: they know that even their packaging can be ambassadors of their attention to the environment”.

The awards

The candidate companies will now compete for a prize fund of 500,000 euros. 450,000 will be divided among all the cases awarded in the final ranking. 50,000 euros will be divided among the five winners of the 10,000-euro Circular Innovation Super Prizes. One of them will also receive a special mention from Legambiente. All the cases submitted to the Call - which received the patronage of the Ministry of Ecological Transition - will be analyzed through the CONAI Eco Tool, a simplified Life Cycle Assessment tool capable of calculating the effects of prevention actions in terms of energy savings, water savings and reduction of CO₂ emissions, as well as (for the cases of packaging that facilitates recycling activities) the amount of secondary raw material generated. Then a jury of technicians will intervene. The winners will be announced during November 2021.