I was recently invited onto BBC local radio to argue the point about packaging (again), in this case with the mother of an Olympic athlete who had a bee in her bonnet about the amount of packaging that we apparently don’t need. It was a bit of a no-win situation; it would have been easy to make her look foolish, which wouldn’t have been fair, she had an honestly held position, or I could be conciliatory and do the industry a disservice. In the event the piece was run non-confrontationally and the interviewer even conceded a point or two, which was a turn-up for the books. Let’s be clear:

Packaging. Was. Already. Green. And. Always. Has. Been.

There. That’s a weight off my chest. Packaging gives a net reduction in waste, so it’s a green technology. QED. Overpackaging is illegal. Not unknown, I accept, but technically illegal. Yes, recyclability has increased from 30% ten years ago to 60% now, but that’s beside the point. By improving recyclability as new materials and new designs come along, we are developing from what was already a very strong position. Packaging was already green, it’s just getting even greener. Unfortunately, the first time most people become aware of packaging is when it’s in their bin, when it has become ‘rubbish’. Maybe one day people will truly appreciate that what they describe as rubbish is in fact a complex technical product that has delivered the goods they have purchased safely and in one piece to their homes. There are 60 million people in the UK. Assuming that everyone wants to eat three times a day, that’s 180 million meals, not to mention the millions of other items we buy. The major retailers like to present themselves as large corner shops, but of course anyone who has even a slight understanding of what lies behind the shop front appreciates the sheer scale that these enterprises and the businesses that supply them need to efficiently and safely deliver products to us. If the entire UK population decided next weekend to do their shopping at the local street market or their nearest farm shop, both of which would immediately collapse under the pressure, they may quite quickly change their tune and start to appreciate that modern urban life wouldn’t be possible without modern retailing and modern packaging.

The government’s Advisory Committee on Packaging released a substantial report at the end of last year called Packaging in Perspective, available for download from the Incpen website among others (www.incpen.org). I recommend everyone get hold of a copy. The report sets out in a very readable form the key benefits of packaging particularly with reference to food, the challenges that still face the industry and where we should be going. The only thing I would like to add to the document is the vital importance of training for the future. If we are going to be able to understand our own industry properly, and if we are going to be able to have these debates from a position of strength, then we need to have people who have a solid knowledge of packaging technologies and applications across the board. Not just to join debates on radio programmes, but to be able to choose the right materials, develop the best specifications and deliver the best packaging, so that the packaging industry can continue to make sure that it continues to follow the green agenda as well as it has for the last hundred years or so.