On the 18th October 2023, the President of the World Packaging organisation participated as a key note speaker in an event organised by Neapolis University. The Director of ideopsis Ltd, Mrs Anthi Charalambous participated in the panel discussion. The participants had the opportunity to address questions to panellists and the key note speaker.

Our current linear economy is not sustainable. Moving to a more circular economy could bring benefits, including reduced pressures on the environment by decoupling resource consumption, improved security of supply of raw materials and increased competitiveness, innovation, growth and new jobs.
In a circular economy, packaging is recovered rather than discarded after a product is used/consumed. The material should be returned to the production stage to recover its value and minimise the consumption of new resources, energy and other environmental impacts.

As regards the supply of raw materials for packaging the use recycled packaging, packaging made from organic materials where possible, refusing to use single-use packaging or products that use less packaging, should be taken into account. With regard to packaging redesign: redesign can be done to reduce unnecessary packaging, use of less raw materials, longer-life packaging, reusable packaging, recyclable packaging and alternatives to the use of materials. With regard to certain circular economy measures when using packaging, it may be purchasing products with less raw material, possibility of recovery for reuse, recovery for recycling, new delivery models based on reusable packaging, enhancing the use of reusable packaging in business-to-business services, e.g. large rigid packaging, pallet wrapping, etc., possibility of returning product with prepaid shipping.

The Extended Producer Responsibility schemes can be designed to encourage the implementation of Circular Economy measures, such as the use of differentiated charges, for packaging with recycled content.