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Innovation and sustainability-- two parts of a whole

Big buzz words in today’s packaging lexicon, “innovation” and “sustainability” are too often viewed as mutually incompatible. This is a mistake.

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They should instead be viewed as complementary components of an enlightened management strategy, a strategy that recognizes that you have to involve as many players as possible along the packaging value chain. Put another way, it’s a strategy that recognizes the importance of innovating sustainably.

If a manufacturing firm is to embrace this strategy as its own, every professional who touches packaging must get involved. It has to involve marketing, production, engineering, legal, and all the other in-house functions. It has to involve such outside resources as designers and consultants. Sometimes it involves a retailer who can add a unique view to innovation or sustainable packaging.

One thing that is a must is support from the CEO. Packaging professionals have seen that grow in recent years. Evidence is the growing number of packaging professionals who have a “vice president” title. Just a few years ago you could count them on the fingers of one hand.

One perspective on this evolution is in IoPP’s Fundamentals of Packaging Technology Seminar. The seminar’s sustainable packaging module looks at how the packaging value chain has changed.

The most common way of looking at the value chain has been as a linear connection. At the beginning was the raw materials supplier talking to converters. They, in turn, presented ideas to companies involved in packaging who in turn sold the ideas to customers—often retailers or other members of the distribution network. Finally the consumer was at the end of the value chain. Figure 1 illustrates this chain.

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