The social component of sustainable packaging

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R. Wever and E. Tempelman: The Social Component of Sustainable Packaging

Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology 1 of 8

The Social Component of Sustainable Packaging

R. Wever MSc and E. Tempelman, PhD MSc

Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology Landbergstraat 15, 2628 CE Delft, the Netherlands

Abstract

These days, sustainability is widely understood to address three components; economic, environmental and social sustainability. Ongoing research efforts in the field of

sustainable packaging focus on the development of tools and methodologies that address multiple criteria decision making in the packaging design process. These efforts mainly apply to simultaneously addressing environmental and economical considerations using eco-efficiency considerations. The social component of sustainability has not yet found its way into such efficiency considerations, and designers do not have a tool repertoire at their disposal when making trade-offs including social considerations. This does not mean that social sustainability is not an element of packaging design. In this paper, the question is raised whether social sustainability needs to be considered in the context of regular packaging development, and if so, how? Different aspects that may be related to socially sustainable packaging will be discussed, and a definition will be proposed. This paper is intended as a discussion paper, reflecting in part the outcomes of the Packaging and Environment Working Group (WG) session at IAPRI’s Bangkok 2008 Conference.

1. Introduction

Literature gives many examples of the economical and environmental aspects of packaging and product-packaging combinations. However, the social side has so far received little attention. At the Working Group for Sustainable Packaging at the IAPRI 2008 conference in Bangkok, participants felt the need to address this issue further. Several projects were discussed that are at least related to the social side of sustainable packaging—although not carried out as a social sustainability project. This paper

elaborates on that IAPRI working group meeting. As such it is an elaboration of the first report on this working group meeting that was published in the IAPRI newsletter

(Gander, 2008a). The Working Group session was attended by a dozen representatives of IAPRI member organizations, and lasted for 2 hours.

This paper starts with a need articulation: an attempt at demonstrating the relevance for packaging developers and brand managers alike to seriously consider the social

component of sustainable packaging. It then moves on to an overview of relevant literature regarding design and sustainability and subsequently examines to what extent this is reflected in the packaging literature. Next, several ongoing research projects that touch upon the social component sustainable packaging are discussed briefly, thus leading to a working definition of Socially Responsive Packaging. It is hoped that this

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will be the start of a lively discussion within the packaging research community about the social component of sustainable packaging that will culminate in multiple contributions to future IAPRI symposia and conferences.

2. Need articulation

The relevance of social component of sustainability on the level of an organization is well established in literature (e.g. fair wages, workforce diversity). On a product level

however, this is less evident. Of course, one can (and should) translate the social

component to the processes used to produce a product and its packaging (for an example regarding product service systems, see Tukker and Tischner, 2006, p. 387). However, these supply chain issues are not the focus of this paper. The focus of this paper is on packaging as an agent of social change. Oki and Sasaki (2000) already implicitly argue that there is a link between developments in packaging and social change, although they do not explicitly explore which causes which.

An illustration of why organizations need to address this issue can be found in the sustainability strategy of Unilever, one of the world’s major packaged goods companies. It is highly skewed towards the social component of sustainability (Unilever, 2008). They call it their Vitality Mission, which is worked out into a framework, which “sets out an

approach to help brand managers explore opportunities to innovate and improve their brands in three ways.” (Unilever, 2008):

boosting people's personal vitality and well-being,

addressing social issues,

reducing environmental impacts.

Here, they explicitly acknowledge the potential of brands as social change agents; think of their Dove campaign focused on boosting self-esteem. While in this program their published goals regarding packaging do not progress beyond the minimization of the use of PVC across the portfolio, it is not hard to see the potential of packaging as a social change agent as well. If companies, like Unilever want to pursue such an social agenda, they would do well to explicitly include the potential enablers and/or hurdles that packaging might provide.

3. Review of relevant literature

The first concerns about the impact of products and packaging let to what can be termed ‘design for environment’, which was limited to reducing the impact on the planet. It was soon realized that many of these projects were not successful, because they failed to take the business aspects into full account. That led to the emergence of EcoDesign, which strives to balance ‘planet’ with ‘profit’ (with the ‘Eco’ standing for both economy and ecology). Finally, the term sustainable design was coined, which is all about the triple bottom line: People, Planet and Profit (coined by John Elkington in the mid 1990s (see

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Elkington, 1997)). These 3 Ps can be extended to 5 Ps, by including the packed product and the packaging (see Figure 1). Note that it is essential to include the packed product as well. Packaging cannot be sustainable by itself. Only the combination of a certain product with a particular packaging may be sustainable.

Figure 1: The five Ps of sustainable packaging: People, Planet, Profit, Packed product and Packaging. (adapted from Crul and Diehl, 2006, p.21).

With the evolving of the jargon of the research field, people started using the term ‘sustainability’ for any project that had to do with environment. Many of the definitions of ‘sustainable packaging’ are restricted to the environmental and economical

components, as for instance the definition by the Sustainable Packaging Alliance in Australia (Sonneveld, et al 2005) and the US-based sustainable Packaging Coalition (Robertson, 2008). Within general design-for-sustainability literature and practice, the social component of sustainability is ill-addressed as well. The inability of financial and environmental assessment tools to adequately incorporate the social component may well have contributed to the limited attention that has so far been paid to this issue. The social component of sustainability is often seen as a human resource and supply chain issue, which is hard to effectively translate into design criteria. However, for better or worse, design can be a social change agent (Ehrenfeld, 2008, e.g. p.65)

Impacts versus gains

To an uninformed observer it may seem that the economic component of sustainability is only about ‘profit’ (i.e. positive economic results), while the environmental component (and the social component) are about impacts (i.e. negative effects). However, for all three components there are both positives and negatives; there are both impacts and gains. Table 1 gives an overview of the impacts and gains of packaging related to the three components of sustainability.

Profit Planet

People

Product Packaging

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Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology 4 of 8 Table 1: The impacts/costs and gains of packaging in relation to the three components of sustainability.

4. The 2008 IAPRI Working Group on Sustainability

As stated, during the Working Group session at the IAPRI conference in Bangkok, several aspects were discussed that, at least to some extent, could be seen as contributing to the social component of sustainable packaging. This section discusses several of these and additional aspects, in order to build a platform for a definition of the social

component of packaging. Relevant references to existing literature are added as well. Besides the obvious social issues of labor conditions and fair wages there are several other aspects where packaging has a social impact. A first aspect is that of food availability. A major issue in this world is food availability to a large part of the world population. This is not only an issue of insufficient food, but also of insufficient

packaging; too much food goes bad (Oki and Sasaki, 2000). A second point, also related to food being wasted, is whether packaging fits household sizes and life styles of

consumers, i.e. whether it is culturally and socially appropriate. “Recent research by the

government-funded Waste & Resources Action Group (WRAP) in the UK found that the nation’s households throw away 6.7m tonnes of food every year, or around one third of purchases by weight - around a seventh of it still unopened.” (Gander, 2008a)

Sustainability component

(Potential) impact / costs (Potential) gains

Economic (profit) − Purchasing of materials, energy. − Cost of processing, converting, printing, transportation, etc.

Improving market potential through:

− Extended shelf life − Inducing sales through

marketing − Convenience Environmental (Planet) − Impact of materials − Impact of processing, converting, printing, transportation, etc.

− Reducing wastage of food (Oki and Sasaki, 2000) − Reducing damage to products Social

(People)

− “Fosters unsustainable

consumption habits, such as not valuing materials and a ‘throw-away mentality’.”

(Lewis, 2005)

− Enabling food availability in developing regions

− Providing employment (Lewis, 2005)

− Enabling life styles (e.g. single household portions) − Protecting children from

harmful substances − Inducing proper wasting

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Besides fitting existing consumption patterns, packaging should also fit the physical abilities of its intended users. This is the area of universal design or inclusive design (for work by IAPRI members in this field, see Gander, 2008b). Related to this is the opposite, namely that the packaging should be unopenable for those that might be harmed by the content (e.g. child-resistant packaging).

Arguing that packaging should be culturally and socially appropriate, is accepting culture as a given. However, one can also pursue a change in culture, and try to achieve this true the package. This would mean to truly utilize the packaging as a social change agent. This does however wander off into the realm of ethics. To what extent is it acceptable or even ethical to steer behavior through design, and who determines what is preferable? (for a general discussion see Pettersen and Boks, 2008). An example of packaging that could be classified as socially unsustainable in this sense would be TV-dinner packaging, which – in one interpretation – has contributed to the disruption of family life. An

example of packaging that would be socially sustainable in this sense could be packaging developed to allow people to retain their independence (e.g. enabling elderly to continue living in their homes and not having to move to a retirement home).

A special case of trying to utilize packaging as a social change agent can be found in the waste behavior, in particular littering. Packaging design can be utilized to steer the behavior of consumers into the right direction. Littering is a packaging related problem that clearly combines the environmental and social sides of sustainability. Many attempts have been made to reduce litter. These attempts have mainly focused on influencing littering behavior either through general campaigns or through manipulating the environment. So far, little or no attention has been paid to the influence of the littered object itself. One of the authors executed a research project, looking at the relation between a package design and the changes of it being littered (Wever et al, 2008, Wever,

et al, forthcoming). Conclusions show that there is indeed a significant relation between

pack design and waste behavior, but that it is not easy to translate those into guidelines for packaging design. This research project was specifically aimed at littering, but it can easily be imagined that design could induce consumer to dispose of their packaging waste in the correct way.

In addition to these topics that were discussed during the Working Group session in Bangkok some additional examples of what might constitute ‘socially sustainable packaging design’ have since been identified. One example is the inclusion of information regarding allergy-related ingredients on the packaging of food products (Tempelman, et al, 2006), which can be classified under inclusive design. A second example is the design of the ‘Y Water’ packaging (designed by Yves Behar), which turns into a toy after use, or even stronger, is a toy that is first used temporarily as a water bottle. This type of packaging can be classified as a social enabler. Finally, one could classify oversized clamshell packaging, which are intended to prevent pilferage (and thereby signal that the customer is not to be trusted), but are also unopenable, as an example of socially unsustainable packaging (see also Del Castillo C., 2007).

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Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology 6 of 8 5. Working definition and proposal research

In general sustainability literature, the term sustainable has become more or less

equivalent to the 3P concept. One cannot address sustainable packaging without a notion of what the social part of sustainable constitutes. Hence, based on the relevant literature, the IAPRI Working Group discussion, the following working definition of what we would like to call Socially Responsive Packaging is proposed: Within the wider context of Sustainable Packaging, Socially Responsive Packaging is packaging that:

is used in a socially just and transparent supply chain (regarding issues such as child labor, work force diversity, labor conditions, fair wages etc.);

is socially and culturally appropriate (e.g. portion sizes reflect household sizes and life styles of the target group, hence preventing (part of) the packed product going to waste);

is a social enabler (i.e. assists on allowing social set-ups that society as a whole finds desirable);

assists in providing food availability and safety (worldwide);

is usable by all members of the intended target group (universal design), while excluding or warning people to whom the contents may be harmful;

stimulates consumers to find alternative uses of- or failing that, dispose of the packaging in an environmentally sound way.

It should be noted that this definition can be split into two sets of arguments (Gander, 2008a): (1) generic aspects that are not packaging-specific (e.g. the socially responsible supply chain); and (2) aspects that can be brought under the umbrella of socially

responsible packaging, which may already be pursued for different reasons (e.g. universal design).

Even though research is carried out on most of the separate components of this definition, specific research may be required on a holistic level. Such research could aim at

answering two key questions: (1) to what extent does “socially responsive” equate to “socially sustainable?”, and (2) how can this definition be rephrased as useful design guidelines? To start with the last one, the authors intend to use the working definition as input for second- and third-year BSc student design projects at their faculty, to be executed in course year 2009-2010. By realizing the more promising designs and introducing them into controlled settings, their success in affecting e.g. consumer behavior will then be empirically determined. This is expected to provide a sound basis for more elaborate research projects and the beginning of an answer to the first key question.

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Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology 7 of 8 6. Conclusions

Packaging can be a social change agent—be it for better or worse. As Oki and Sasaki (2000) already argue: “… it is necessary to clarify the impacts that the product functions

have on our life style and eventually on society. For manufacturers, this means that their responsibilities are not only for their products but also for the social impacts their

products make.” Organizations that make, use or sell packaging and that want to pursue a

triple bottom line strategy for their entire business, are well-advised to evaluate their packaging as a potential enabler (or hurdle) for achieving their goals.

Socially Responsible Packaging has been defined in this paper. It consists of components that either are general sustainable supply chain issues or that are already receiving

attention from researchers from different perspectives. However, on a holistic level, there is a need for the development of a tool repertoire to enable designers to make trade-offs including social considerations.

It is hoped that this paper triggers a discussion within the packaging community

regarding the social component of sustainability, and leads to research that will help bring social sustainable design into industry practice.

References

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