For the very reason that it affects an entire community, we also talk about the social responsibility of packaging.
All of us, to varying degrees and in different ways, are and feel part of this common responsibility (every action has an impact on the individuals that comprise our society).
This is reflected in the principle of ethical responsibility that concerns the designer choices, who has to put the user and his or her needs and requirements at the heart of their design. Designing packaging involves the analysis of its instrumental functions, which are closely related to the communicative functions of medium and interface with the user.

Each product’s characteristics should steer and define the packaging according to the qualities, weaknesses and functions of the content, whether they are practical or symbolic.
Balanced packaging means avoiding overpackaging, if it exclusively aims at guaranteeing product visibility.
Balanced packaging does not over-promise, but it is able to balance what it says with what it contains and communicates. Balanced packaging avoids information overload which confuses the receiver: it finds the right communication to meet the information needs. Balanced packaging takes on the natural role of content provider. Thus, it is perceived as a necessary and essential device.

When it is time to choose a product and its packaging, consumers rely on it and entrust their own safety to it. As consumers we must be informed, but we definitely have the right to believe in what the packaging tells us: packaging sets off that “implicit agreement” proposed by the brand.
Safe packaging becomes the essence and the realization of the guarantee of product conformity: it implies a supervised production process and controls that ensure the product adequacy. Packaging is safe if all the individuals along the supply chain respect the legal standards, but it is even safer if the consumer is made aware of it.

Packaging is accessible when it is easy to understand even beyond the user’s experience, knowledge or skills of the users and their level of attentiveness and regardless of the set conditions and the context. When it guarantees a flexible use, including left-handed and right-handed people; when it communicates effectively even with physically or mentally impaired users. Accessible packaging guarantees access to the product; packaging seen as a whole, via all the elements that comprise it, favours the use/consumption of the product. Its sensorial and tactile aspects, and their quality, actively contribute to making packaging accessible in all its aspects: accessible thanks to the graphic design of the texts which ensures its readability; accessible because the space organization and the layout allow the information to be quickly available; accessible because the contents are expressed through a vocabulary that does not raise barriers and uses an easy-to-read language; it is accessible because it offers an immediate interaction that enables its use.

Packaging must talk about its content without any alteration, and must communicate in a direct, immediately comprehensible and unequivocal way. It should not create any form of communication that might deceive or appear ambiguous, though in compliance with the principle of error tolerance. It must use a common language to ensure effective communication.
A transparent communication minimizes the risks of erroneous interpretation, the occurrence of accidental or unintentional actions with not always foreseeable consequences. Packaging that speaks plainly to its recipients is unambiguously identified within the sales or promotional context or within the context of its use. Transparent packaging is the packaging with a low error risk: it helps the recipient in its use, both in the daily contexts, as well as in any particular emergency context in which the distribution and use of the goods may occur.

Packaging becomes our information interface because it allows us to relate with the product. It allows us to acquire knowledge on the content and its container. It informs us on the product composition, the origin of the materials, the preservation methods, the nutritional value and the food chain: from the information for the preparation and administration of the contents to those of an environmental nature, indicating how to dispose of it and attesting to its sustainability.
It should inform in a forthright manner, with the awareness that product information is a right and priority of the discerning consumer.
The information must be proposed in order to facilitate the perception of its importance, i.e., through a clear organization of the contents and clearly showing the information needed to respect the environment.
Similarly, it must ensure maximum readability of essential information, to allow the recipient to gain a good knowledge and understanding of the product.

This is why packaging has to be aware of its own potential as a vehicle of communication, of the power that arises from its dissemination. Packaging must be sensitive to the values and messages that it transmits, avoiding participating in the spread of offensive or stereotyped messages which might somehow offend people’s sensitivity.
Packaging conveys dietary habits, luxury and models social life models: that is why it must avoid spreading stereotypes that may in any form represent obstacles to a fair society, it must avoid gender stereotypes which might inhibit the development of a fair and equal society, especially when children are concerned.

Forward-looking packaging is capable of grasping impending changes, favouring new consumption and behaviour models capable of evolving over time.
Thus, packaging is aware that it has to change over time: it has to experiment on itself to be able to favour its own future transformations. Packaging should be able to embrace all necessary changes: being the subject of research and forms of experimentation that make it evolve; it must be capable of foreseeing the changes that will affect it.
Packaging should imply a constant commitment in terms of research and innovation. As consumers, we are thus aware that we are facing an object capable of reinvent itself for the users of tomorrow.

Packaging participates in formulating and spreading our everyday aesthetics and as such should perform an exemplary function. It must put quality at its core, and indeed become a messenger of aesthetic quality, capable of educating our visual perception; it must speak with a model language, without turning to distorted languages. It should have an educative function, inducing virtuous behaviour with its messages, increasing the user’s knowledge and awareness on issues recognised as priority or emergencies true and proper as the case may have it.
It should indicate the way how to dispose of, recycle or reuse packaging and how to reduce waste. Every packaging, regardless of the economic value of its contents and the product field represented, is a bearer of values: quality communication does not cost more than bad communication, but it makes the difference in the eyes and the mind of the recipient user.

Sustainable packaging is designed, manufactured, transported and recycled by using, where possible, renewable and clean energy.
Sustainable packaging protects the product throughout its journey to the end user with the least environmental impact and the lowest production of waste resulting from the product and the packaging used, causing the lowest production of waste in general and the least environmental emissions.
Sustainable packaging is obtained from responsible sources and renewable raw materials; it is effectively recovered after use.
It is environmentally responsible because it is manufactured with the least consumption of resources and energy. The choice of the material which it is made of is consistent with the product scope and its distribution. Sustainable packaging is designed and manufactured with a prospect of reducing the number of materials used and the number of components, making it easily separable. It must be designed and manufactured according to a principle of recyclability and should be primarily based on recycled materials.
Sustainable packaging aims to extend its own lifecycle and that of the product, it includes reusability among its guiding principles, as well as other possible uses before the end of its lifecycle.
Finally, sustainable packaging should prevent waste production and be designed to optimise its storage and transportation. All of us, stakeholders of this industry, should feel constantly committed to reducing the impact in each step of the production cycle, from reducing weight to saving energy and raw materials.