Miklós Nagy: “We need to find the place of plant-based and compostable plastics as soon as possible”

– 2021 brought packaging material shortage in every packaging type, and because of this prices rose sharply. When the Ukraine-Russia war started, things became even worse. Combined with the strict environmental regulations, the above factors have led to a “revolution” in the packaging industry: a new way of thinking must be adopted by designers, developers and marketing managers alike.

– What are the biggest challenges in the sector at the moment?

– Not only supply problems and rising prices make life difficult for packaging material manufacturers, but also skyrocketing energy prices. The European Union’s single-use plastics (SUP) directive doesn’t make things better either for the packaging industry. I think that the new rules were adopted hastily, and the legislators didn’t give enough consideration to the consequences. For instance the soon to be introduced new plastic caps, which can’t be separated from the PET bottle, will require significantly more plastic to be used in production. As for packaging food in recycled plastics, this practice raises food safety concerns.

– A growing number of large companies are introducing sustainability measures that affect packaging. Which of these are useful and what other steps would be necessary in your opinion?

– Basically all of the large companies, especially the multinational ones, have sustainability objectives and actions plans. They are cutting down on plastic use and they do it wisely. As far as I can see it, there are two directions “competing” – it should be decided what the main goal is: the recycling of used packaging and achieving the circular economy, or reducing emissions by finding packaging solutions that work better from a CO2 emission perspective; the latter doesn’t rule out recyclability either. CSAOSZ helps smaller businesses – those that don’t have their own research and development team – with a guide book, titled “Packaging design with a recycling approach”. It can be downloaded from our website for free.

– How much do you agree with the strengthening plastic reduction trend? Will it achieve its goal and what would you do to improve these efforts?

– I absolutely don’t agree with blaming plastics for everything. The world simply doesn’t know how much humanity can thank plastics for. In most parameters plastics are usually better than alternative packaging solutions – if there are any. As for plastics polluting nature, it isn’t the material’s fault but people’s. On the other hand, we need to find the place of plant-based and compostable plastics as soon as possible. This would substitute fossil resources with renewable ones, and solve the problem of microplastics too.

– CSAOSZ organised the hungaropack Hungarian Packaging Competition for the 39th time this year. What kinds of packaging solutions did you see there?

– There were lots of innovative designs. I was surprised to see that numerous entries were inserts, which are to be used in the inside of packaging solutions. It is definitely a trend now to use one type of material only, and to utilise more recycled material in designs.

– What are the most recent packaging innovations?

– Innovation work now concentrates on substituting plastic composites with single-material solutions. It is quite probable that we will have to learn new plastic names soon. //