Iggesund kicks off challenge to improve packaging

The project involves designers suggesting ways to make everyday consumer packaging more sustainable by replacing plastic, glass and metal with paperboard. Iggesund uses the example of sandwich packaging, which a decade ago was almost exclusively made of plastic but now paperboard packaging is increasingly common .

The Crowdspring platform is being used as a means to collect these ideas, which Iggesund said are being collated to present a picture of how global designers as a collective group believe they can steer packaging development in a more sustainable direction.

Staffan Sjöberg, who is in charge of the project at Iggesund Paperboard, said: ‘Every day we all see examples of packaging that could be improved by a better choice of materials or a better design. Now we’re giving designers all over the world the chance to contribute their ideas on how to replace packaging made of glass, plastic or metal with solutions that use paperboard.

‘We will not claim any commercial rights to the ideas that come in. We’re just interested in getting a snapshot of how designers believe they can improve the packaging they see in the shops they visit on a daily basis. We want to publish the ideas and maybe reproduce some of them in physical form but we are not interested in exploiting them commercially.’

Crowdspring’s services are normally used when someone wants either a number of inexpensive design proposals or a wide range of ideas, so its collaboration with Iggesund Paperboard is ‘unusual’.

‘This is an unusual reason for initiating a project with us,’ said Crowdspring co-founder Mike Samson, who is coordinating the project with Iggesund ‘But we believe its combination of sustainability and innovative thinking will attract many of the thousands of designers listed in our database.’