The Vetipak site in Zeewolde is home to our successful long-term partnership with Bakker Logistics, part of the STEF group. It’s also where we work for Dynamic Products Factory, which develops creative products for the retail sector. We recently ensured that a multitude of party items in 3,300 displays reached their destinations with a well-known German retail chain. We joined forces to run the whole process from A to Z for D.P. Factory.
Rens van de Rakt guest at Sustainable Packaging Day
For the second year in a row, HAS students collaborated with the municipality of Oss to organize the Sustainable Packaging Day. This online knowledge event was attended by more than 200 interested parties. One of the guests in the pop-up studio was Vetipak packaging technologist Rens van de Rakt. He reports on the event.
Three students
“My compliments to Amber van Bakel, Juul van Rooij and Pien Wielens – three fourth-year Food Innovation students at HAS University of Applied Sciences, majoring in Packaging and Design. They organized an interesting event with an enjoyable and varied program in which they also participated, alongside others such as alderman Frank den Brok, Oss consumers and six experts. I was one of the *ahem* experts.”
One specialist before the break
“Bjorn de Koeijer from Packalicious kicked off. After filling in viewers on circular packaging, he received a number of questions via the chat. These questions revealed that the viewers at home had completely different associations with themes such as recyclability, the protection of products and saving on materials. For example, they believe glass is extremely sustainable, while it’s actually one of the least sustainable materials in terms of Life Cycle Assessment.”
“All stakeholders must work together more intensively: government, entrepreneurs and end users.”
Five experts followed
“First up after the break was Roel Vink, sustainable packaging innovator at Now Next. Together with student Pien and discussion leader Rick van Asperen, he sought to answer the question: ‘How do you, as an individual or a company, deal with the consumer’s vision?’ Pieter Imhof (TNO Eindhoven), Leo Klapwijk (Nutripack), Jan van Munster (Van Munster Recyclers) and I then joined in to discuss two circularity statements: ‘100% circular packaging is a realistic prospect’ and ‘Increasing the sustainability of materials is the main solution for sustainable packaging’.”
Three conclusions
“We managed to draw a number of conclusions from this and from all of the discussions. First of all, all stakeholders must work together more intensively, including government, entrepreneurs and end users. But that also makes it more complex, because – conclusion two – consumers are still laboring under many misconceptions. Knowledge transfer is therefore still a priority. The third conclusion is that it’s very worthwhile to view the whole knowledge event again. Everyone can learn something from it.”
Watch the video of the Day of Sustainable Packaging here:
(with the panel discussion starting at 1:57:00)
