The problem with plastic packaging in Europe

How to address an industrial system inherently reluctant to change?

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Second in a series of articles featuring “live” coverage of Sustainability in Packaging, Europe 2017, conference in Barcelona.

Piotr Barczak, Policy Officer on Waste for the European Environmental Bureau, warned his audience that his ideas were challenging, disruptive, and radical. “We have a problem with packaging,” Barczak told the morning session of Sustainability In Packaging Europe 2017, in Barcelona. “We have a system that is turning into a failure and has to be radically changed.”

“If you find your home is flooded because you left your kitchen sink running,” he joked, “you don’t hold meetings and pass legislation to clean it up, the first thing you do is turn off the tap.

“Earth does not have time for small, incremental improvements. Innovative design is the key.”

The plastic bag, he said, has become the symbol for failure of design: “Why design something that lasts hundreds of years when you are going to use it for a few minutes?"

“Consumers have shown they prefer concentrated liquids for less packaging,” he mentioned, yet we still see giant jugs of detergent, etc.

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