Elevators in public buildings in the U.S. typically have Braille-coded buttons to assist visually impaired riders. Packages here usually don’t.

In Europe, it’s different.

There, pharmaceutical packagers as well as marketers of wine and other consumer products, emboss packages with Braille labels to help blind consumers identify the contents of their packages. Printed and embossed Braille coding technologies that apply the tactile codes on carton blanks before they’re erected have been around for some time. Now, in addition to those technologies, packagers can choose 3-D codes applied as dots of hot melt glue at the end of the unit packaging line. Still, packager resistance because of the cost of applying the codes and the requirement to slow down the line to apply some codes, suggests it will be some time before Braille-coded packages will be as common as Braille-coded elevators.

In the context of today's discourse on the environmental sustainability of packaging, we probably shouldn't be talking about "end of life" scenarios.

"End of FIRST life" would be more fitting.

After all, "end of life" implies a single useful existence for the material. A better term for the life of virgin material might be "first life" which, when it comes to an end might lead to an "after life.” This would be the basic "cradle to cradle" paradigm. In its ideal embodiment, cradle to cradle manufacturing generates no waste. The effluent of the first process would be used as the feedstock for subsequent processes. It's nature's way. Birds drop seeds from the berries they've eaten and new berry plants sprout up.

Unfortunately, most cradle to cradle packaging material process flows are resource compromised in some respect. The after life of virgin paper and board packaging is characterized by shorter fibers and a diminishing of strength. And the resources expended to collect, transport, clean and reprocess metal, glass and plastics back to the point where they can be used to contain food can approach the amounts used to process first life, virgin packaging materials.

Absolute sustainability consists of comprehensive resource conservation and replenishment – not just the husbanding of visible materials. Since we can’t think of any manufacturing process – packaging or otherwise – that’s absolutely sustainable, we have to accept as valid every honest claim of sustainability being made today. Even those that offer no improvement over the past at least establish a base from which future progress can be measured.

The Food and Drug Administration’s food safety assurance ability has fallen… and it can’t get up – at least not the way it’s currently staffed, organized and funded.

That’s hardly a surprise to those who’ve been watching the agency grapple with the challenges of an increasingly complex and international food supply chain. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) – official Congressional watchdog of all government goings on – weighed in on the subject last week, telling the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the FDA is currently overwhelmed and offering several recommendations for fixing things – including putting a Chief Operating Officer or Chief Management Officer in charge of FDA’s food safety assurance mission. And, with 15 government agencies with fingers in the food safety pie, GAO calls on the President to reconvene his Council on Food Safety to straighten out the mess by facilitating interagency coordination on the issue.

Beverage packaging is constantly striving for shelf distinction and none stands out on the shelf more than the PET “canister” for Coke’s NOS energy drink.

In the crowded retail market, the look of a nitrous oxide canister surely will stand out, garnering double takes and perhaps some shelf grabs. What’s inside, of course, will determine if customers come back for another shot.

We’d call meeting customer and consumer needs in a package that reduces material consumption a win, win, win.

For ConAgra’s Hunt’s catsup and Constar International, customer satisfaction certainly ranks as the best win. Still, they’ll probably happy to add another win to their trophy case – this one the first 3M Sustainable Packaging Award, launched as part of the 2007 AmeriStar awards of Institute of Packaging Professionals (IoPP).