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Are we witnessing the start of packaging’s fightback against misinformation?

I ask the question because of the very public acknowledgment of the importance of packaging last month by Sainsbury’s chief Justin King, in an article for the Daily Telegraph.

Coupled with a favourable Financial Times piece on plastic packaging, the debate has suddenly started to look more balanced.

There’s still a way to go, though, and one of the first steps the industry and government should take is to revise the Courtauld Commitment. As the results of our exclusive survey highlight, there is broad support for the principle of having such an agreement in place and for the role it has played in sharing best practice on packaging materials choice.

However, I would argue – and our survey results seem to support this – that it has also contributed to a public perception that all we have to do is reduce packaging and all our problems will go away.

Significantly, more than 60% of respondents to our survey thought Wrap should change the focus of the Courtauld Commitment to look at packaging optimisation and recycled content, rather than reduction.

There have been encouraging noises from the industry about Wrap’s willingness to reform Courtauld, and to up the focus on food waste, which was deemed by 60% of our respondents to be a greater environmental concern than packaging.

Even if a Courtauld Mark 2 takes these points on board, it is unrealistic to expect that our major retailers and brands will not continue to make hay out of reductions in their packaging. But this would be easier to accept if they were working to a more rounded framework – and a few more contributions in the spirit of Justin King’s wouldn’t go amiss either.