Packaging Sustainability:
Tools, Systems and Strategies for
Innovative Package Design

The classic role of packaging is to "Protect, Inform, and Sell." Today, packaging must do all that — but with minimal eco-impact. Packaging Sustainability: Tools, Systems, and Strategies for Innovative Package Design is a comprehensive guide to thinking outside the box to create practical, cost-effective, and eco-responsible packaging.

With a broad range of contributions from pioneers of sustainability, Packaging Sustainability not only describes the concepts of sustainability but reveals the logic behind them, providing you with the tools to sift through and adapt to the ever changing barrage of materials, services, regulations, and mandates. The book:

• Enables the designer to make smart, informed decisions at all points throughout the packaging design process
  
  
• Offers a comprehensive overview of sustainable packaging design issues from leading practitioners, designers, engineers, marketers, psychologists, and environmental practitioners
  
  
• Describes materials and processes in current use and helps the reader understand how they interconnect

With solid information and actionable ideas, Packaging Sustainability gives you the tools you need for maximizing a product's shelf impact — while minimizing its ecological footprint.

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Inside:

Contents
Full Table of Contents from the book. [download PDF]

Chapter 1: Taking the First Step
A look at sustainable business ethics and packaging.

Wendy Jedlicka, CPP
Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Sustainable Design Certificate Program
(mcad.edu/sustainable)

With additional contributions from:
Caux Round Table, Ceres, Packaging Strategies, Sustainable Is Good

Chapter 2: The Mechanics of Human Behavior
Understanding the mechanisms of choice, and how they apply
to market greening.

Dr. Elise L. Amel
Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, University of St. Thomas

Dr. Christie Manning
Cognitive and Biological Psychologist, Macalester College

Chapter 3: Marketing and Truth
What it takes to tell an honest story.

Wendy Jedlicka, CPP
Jedlicka Design, Ltd.

Jacquelyn Ottman
J. Ottman Consulting

With additional contributions from:
Dr. Paul H. Ray, Arlene Birt and Fred Haberman, Jeremy Faludi,
TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, Co-op America,
US Federal Trade Commission

Chapter 4: Laws and Economics
Understanding packaging's position and impacts in a global market.

Garth Hickle
Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Sustainable Design Certificate Program

Dr. Pamela Smith
University of Minnesota
Department of Applied Economics

Chapter 5: Systems Thinking
Learning to look at packaging as a system, not just a thing.

Curt McNamara
Minneapolis College of Art and Design
Sustainable Design Certificate Program

With additional contributions from:
Tim McGee and Dr. Dayna Baumeister, Dan Halsey, Terry Gips,
Sustainable Packaging Coalition, MBDC’s Cradle to Cradle

Chapter 6: Materials and Processes
An overview of materials and processes related to packaging.

Wendy Jedlicka, CPP
o2 International Network for Sustainable Design (o2.org)

With additional contributions from:
Jeremy Faludi, Eureka Recycling, National Recycling Coalition,
Environmental Paper Network, Organic Design Operatives,
Sustainable Packaging Coalition, Packaging Strategies

Chapter 7: Innovation Toolbox
A handy Field Guide format collection of ideas and resources
from the book.

Additional contributions for the book were made by:
John Moes, Holly Robbins, Dennis Salazar, Dion Zuess,
and Package Design Magazine

Creative Contributors:
Tom Nelson (photography)
Amelia McNamara (illustration)
Sharon Sudman (book design)

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Editor's Note:

When Wiley approached our group (o2umw.org and mcad.edu/sustainable) about putting a book together, we only agreed to do it if they allowed us to present sustainable design related to packaging in a completely new way. The book needed to not only look at systems thinking, vs. just be a collection of materials and to-do lists, but would look deeply at business and packaging's stakeholders.

In addition, rather than be the outpouring of a single voice, the book needed to be a collection of many voices. This chorus of voices allows people new to sustainable design to experience the broad range of contributions the pioneers of sustainability and today’s eco-practitioners draw from. We wanted readers to be able to hit the ground running, as they race to catch-up with the overwhelming flow of sustainability information coming out daily. This required a book that would help them understand — why — we do the things we do, to allow them to become proactive partners in this paradigm shift.

For those in academia, this book is representative of the core approach of Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s Sustainable Design Certificate Program. Most of the key contributors to this book are Certificate faculty, who welcome the opportunity to open a dialogue about higher education’s roll and responsibility in reshaping industry.

So I hope, dear reader, you will forgive me for giving our book five out of five stars. But as a working designer and teacher of sustainable design just trying to do right by my clients and students, this is the book we who worked on it wish had come out years ago.

W-