Why packaging
Packaging is everywhere. It is an object so widespread that it is truly universally manifest; each year everyone going about their daily business comes into contact with at least 8000 packaging items. It is a powerful means, even more so than might often be considered.
It is truly cross-sectorial, a true and proper mass object, that concedes itself to use by everyone; it is an emblem of our model of consumption, of a consumption that needs to be ever more responsible. It lures us with its seductive capacity, drawing us into the net of purchase; it flatters us. At the same time it is a necessary tool without which we would be unable to enjoy essential products: delicate foods, lifesaving drugs, fragile products.
It is an indispensable tool for allowing the products that we consume to safely circulate in time and in space, it guarantees commodities, satisfies our needs, it transmits information about the product, on how it should be used, its benefits and limitations, offering services that accompany consumption and use.
Why a charter
Packaging, an essential and at times contradictory object, is going through a phase of full maturity; as such, it demands that we all embark on a process of shared reflection to enable an evolution in the needs of the consumer, the user, the environment, and society as a whole.
The ethical Packaging Charter wishes to be a tool of reflection and commitment, around which to converge. A document of principles to be shared to accompany packaging towards a future of greater awareness. The Ethical Packaging Charter offers itself as a tool promoting a “system-culture”: it wishes to relate duties, rights and obligations that bind the moment of production to that of use and consumption, featuring subjects that are bearers of obligations and subjects that enjoy rights and expectations.
The ethical Packaging Charter relates the level of rights, the level of principles with the level of values in order to sanction an ideal contract between the stakeholders of the system: so that they might commit themselves towards principles to be shared, without superimposing themselves on regulations, this by making their choice public.