Marketing professionals will be able to get a crash course in the guiding principles and basic concepts of sustainable packaging design with the launch of the Australian Food and Grocery Council's (AFGC) new Sustainable Packaging Toolkit.
Produced in collaboration with such food, retail and packaging companies as Wrigley, Kimberly Clark, Coca-Cola South Pacific, Amcor, Tetra Pak, Unilever, Nestlé and Woolworths, the toolkit is designed to arm marketing professionals with the knowledge they need to have a greater understanding, and positive influence on, decisions about sustainable packaging design and marketing.
Speaking at an RMIT-Sustainable Packaging Alliance roundtable in Melbourne on the Marketing Impacts of Packaging Sustainability last week, the AFGC's manager sustainability, Angela McClowry, previewed the kit, which is now available on the AFGC's website.
She said the kit is designed as an interactive tool, incorporating the guiding principles, scientific background and case studies about packaging sustainability.
“We wanted to highlight sustainable packaging guidelines that were relevant to marketers,” she told the forum, which included speakers and delegates from academia, the marketing sphere and such food and packaging companies as Treasury Estate Wines, CHEP and Amcor.
McClowry said the toolkit had collated data gathered from discussions with industry professionals.
“We had two reference workshops where we tried to denote what sustainable packaging is and what people needed to know about it,” she said.
“We wanted to produce a guide that would inspire packaging designers, as well as give them a broad background on sustainability issues.”
Developed to be highly interactive, the toolkit will contain information fact boxes and short texts than can be clicked on to provide more detailed information.
“It will also contain click-through case studies with a particular emphasis on building sales or market share through sustainable packaging,” McClowry said.
She said the AFGC planned to expand it further, with more case studies from AFGC members in the future.
The toolkit is now available for download on the AFGC website: www.packagingcovenant.org.au/toolkit.
