Packaging is a synthesis of performance, functions and responsibilities of all and for all: making it a ‘responsible’ good means giving a voice to businesses and citizens.
Luca De Nardo
May 10, 2021
If we look at its history from the time of Nicolas Appert, the inventor of canned food for the Napoleonic army, we see that packaging was first a necessity, then a means of communication and marketing, at the end of the twentieth century an indispensable logistic tool for globalization and today an environmental problem, to the point that shared responsibility in managing its end of life is often at the center of the debate for each new standard that is issued, at European or national level.
The Ethical Packaging Charter, the Foundation’s guiding tool chaired by Anna Paola Cavanna, indicates as Value no. 1 associated with packaging being responsible, a prerogative that summarizes all the 9 values examined in previous meetings with the Foundation and which is not limited to the environmental aspect. “It is produced and used by many, but it is neither easy nor simple to distinguish and attribute the responsibilities of those who design it, of those who make the materials, of those who produce it, of those who fill it, of those who sell it full, of those who use it and of those who recycle it – warns the President Cavanna – Ethics is the prerogative of people and companies, but it is not improper to attribute it to an object if it is the sum of the interventions of several subjects. And then, are we not experiencing the fourth industrial revolution, that of the ‘Internet of Things’, of talking objects, which are increasingly playing an active role? “
Packaging is, among the artifacts of the contemporary era, one of the most complex for the transversality of the actors, for the plurality of functions, for the multiplicity of roles.
Therefore, thinking him active allows us to attribute economic, environmental and social responsibilities to him. “If we are willing to attribute these responsibilities to him, each for his part – specifies Anna Paola Cavanna – it will be easier to ensure that he performs responsibly in a simultaneous and correct way, and I would also add almost automatically, the individual functions for which it was designed and designed.”
“The journey I wanted to make through the Values of the Charter is intended to motivate entrepreneurs to be Ambassadors by joining the Foundation’s project – concludes the President – Being Ambassadors means creating culture, creating ‘value’ around packaging, changing its perception of a problem to resource, from cost to solution, from product to service. Without taking dogmatic and definitive positions but recognizing what is really hidden behind a problem, an emergency, an alarm; and favor, without however giving, the solution through knowledge and comparison. “
How to do it? Just ask how to become an ambassador. How much? Less than you imagine and in any case much less than what it costs not to be …
https://www.compacknews.news/it/news/2021/perche-progettarlo-come-bene-collettivo/
