SUSTAIN-AGILITY

Why sustainability in secondary packaging is not about recipes, but about decisions.

 

 

In secondary packaging, sustainability rarely fails because of a lack of intention.
It fails because of oversimplification.

 

Too often, sustainability is treated as a property of the material itself,
when in reality it is the outcome of a chain of decisions that runs through the entire system: design, engineering, production, logistics, use and end of life.

 

That is why, before talking about solutions, it is essential to talk about how decisions are made.

 

FROM CAPABILITY TO DECISION AGILITY

 

For years, sustainability in packaging has been understood mainly in terms of SUSTAIN-ABILITY:
the ability to meet requirements and adopt more sustainable options when the change is obvious and straightforward.

 

This is a necessary starting point.
But it is not always sufficient.

 

SUSTAIN-ABILITY works well in stable contexts and with standard solutions.

SUSTAIN-AGILITY emerges when a project requires judgement, trade-offs and context-specific decisions.

 

The difference can be clearly expressed as follows:

The question changes entirely:

• SUSTAIN-ABILITY asks: Can we be more sustainable?
• SUSTAIN-AGILITY asks: Which decision generates the greatest positive impact in this specific packaging system?

At that point, sustainability stops being an attribute
and becomes a decision-making framework.

 

WHERE IMPACT IS REALLY DECIDED

In secondary packaging, a significant part of the environmental impact is not determined by what is visible,
but by structure and processes.

 

Talking about sustainability without addressing the full life cycle is simply not enough.

SUSTAIN-AGILITY requires an integrated analysis of:

• the real efficiency of materials in use
• the energy consumption of production processes (and the role of renewable energy)
• the optimisation of in-house industrial processes
• the full valorisation of generated waste
• supplier approval based on ESG criteria
• logistics distances
• and the actual end-of-life performance of the packaging

It is not only about which material is used,
but about how the entire system that makes it possible actually works.

 

CASE STUDY

 

SUSTAIN-AGILITY applied to a luxury packaging project

This approach is best understood through a real case.

In a luxury microflute board packaging project for Valentino, the ECODESIGNCLOUD platform was implemented — a tool that allows the environmental performance of packaging to be assessed from the design phase.

The objective was not to “make the pack greener”,
but to compare decisions using objective data: material use, carbon footprint, recyclability and end-of-life impacts.

The analysis revealed a key insight:
the greatest improvement potential was not in the visible finishes, but in the structure.

 

Printing, embossing and premium details were left unchanged.
What was optimised was what cannot be seen:

• board grammage
• fibre type
• structural efficiency
• overall material performance

The result was a total reduction of 32 tonnes of material compared to the previous campaign, with no loss in perceived premium quality.

 

Sustainability was not added at the end.
It was decided at the beginning.

 

Only afterwards did the client choose to communicate this achievement directly on the packaging, integrating it into their narrative towards the consumer.

 

That sequence changes everything.

 

Projects like this also require practising the intelligent “no”.

Not every solution works for every packaging project.
Recognising this is not a limitation — it is a sign of maturity.

 

Making the right decision also means knowing when not to apply a solution,
in order to find the one that truly generates real impact.

 

CONCLUSION

 

This project demonstrates that sustainability in packaging does not work as a recipe, nor as a sequence of milestones that can be replicated without context.

It works as a complex decision.

 

A decision that begins with the commitment to take this path seriously, and that materialises through deep analysis, objective measurement and partnerships with strategic partners capable of providing judgement, engineering expertise and system-level vision.

 

But there is more.

 

Each project of this kind does not only reduce impact.
It also generates experience, learning and know-how.

 

That accumulated knowledge feeds back into our decision-making capabilityand allows us to become, project by project, increasingly SUSTAIN-AGILE.

 

Sustainability is not applied.
It is decided.
And it is learned.

 

 

Readings that inspire this approach

This article forms part of a broader reflection on how to address sustainability in packaging through decision-making, rather than through the application of standard solutions.

Some recent publications that have directly influenced the concept of SUSTAIN-AGILITY include:

• Journal of Cleaner Production — Life cycle-based decision-making for sustainable packaging design
  A key paper demonstrating that sustainable packaging decisions are only effective when analysed across the full product life cycle, integrating environmental, technical and economic criteria, and recognising that universal solutions do not exist.
  (ScienceDirect, 2024)
• ScienceDirect — Sustainable material selection and trade-offs in packaging systems
  Research showing that sustainable material selection inevitably involves trade-offs, which must be evaluated using multicriteria methodologies and impact analysis, rather than decisions based solely on perception or market trends.
• Elsevier — Decision-making frameworks for sustainable product development
  Studies reinforcing the idea that effective sustainability depends not only on materials, but on the ability of the industrial and technological system to absorb change without degrading performance or product experience.