The brief: Recreate Packaging 2021

Background

Since people today want to live greener lives, they look for choices that can make the world a better place. With renewable materials and circular design, the environmental impact of packaging can be reduced and valuable raw materials saved and recycled into new products. Designs and material choices enabling plastic reduction and waste removal during production and at the end-of-life can unlock value for brands as consumers prefer eco-friendly products.

Our world needs a new approach to materials: taking care of our natural resources, and ensuring a second life for the materials consumed. That approach is a circular bioeconomy. In a circular bioeconomy, fossil-based materials are replaced with sustainably produced renewable alternatives, waste is designed out, and everything is recycled for new use. Trees are raw material that can be sustainably regrown while they absorb CO2 from the earth's atmosphere. After use, renewable materials made of trees are highly valuable for recycling into new products.

How to get started

Your task is to create a packaging solution that reduces or removes fossil-based materials in food packaging or other consumer packaging by using our renewable paperboard materials innovatively. Use the following as food for thought to kickstart your creative process:

• Think of the everyday situations where you’ve been bothered by a packaging design, where your inner designer has stopped you in your tracks to examine a product.
• Think of the unnecessary additions or features to packaging designs and the changes you would make to improve them, to simplify them or to reduce the amount of plastic.
• Think of how the shape and functionality could be reconstructed in order to refine both its material use and its ease-of-use.
• Think of how to improve the overall design in order to make it more recyclable and to enable better and more advised recycling among consumers.
• Think of the story you want to convey with your concept, how it will affect the consumer in a positive way and in turn the brand as well.

Keep in mind that in the first phase you will be presenting your ideas and concepts digitally. However, don’t focus solely on the digital presentation, as your idea also needs to translate into a working packaging solution to be considered for selection. We recommend focusing on the concept, form and function of the packaging rather than on graphic design.

All contestants should be able to account for their entries from a sustainability point of view and state which considerations have been made to make the packaging more sustainable, or how the packaging promotes sustainable behaviour.

For legal reasons, you’re not allowed to feature an existing brand in your design. If you want to include a brand in your design, please design one yourself or use imagery with a free for use creative commons license.