“Plastic is fantastic”, those are the words of a Danish television campaign to encourage the recycling of plastic products, aimed at consumers to recycle their plastic packaging. But despite efforts to bring consumers to recycle their plastic, plastic packaging amounts to 40% of all plastic ever produced. Therefore, a lot of efforts have been put into creating new ways to rethink our plastic packaging, to increase its lifespan and to reduce the amount of single-use plastic packaging that goes around.
Initiatives covered in this study have moved to make innovative changes in how we act around plastic packaging and find new methods of consuming goods without needing the dreaded plastic packaging. But plastic is a useful material, and therein lies the problem. New solutions often hit barriers of past systems, thus preventing innovations from taking place.
In this case, innovations should be able to overcome the barriers provided by older systems, either by replacing them, or to create enough consumer drive to force changes around them.
Danish Innovative solutions will deliver a driving power that can bring about change but needs to address their shortcomings to bring about meaningful change. Non-packaging schemes and reuse schemes are only as effective as their accessibility to its consumers.