Unpacking Society by Renee Wever, IAPRI Vice President

Unpacking society
 
At the Symposium in June, when we meet at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, I will be stepping down as Vice-President of IAPRI, having served a full three-year term. Even though this is by no means a farewell to IAPRI, it is in a certain way an end to a journey starting for me with my first Conference in Japan in 2006, where I presented a paper on the unpacking experience and a poster on packaging and littering behaviour.
 
Since then, over the past 13 years, I have worked to increase the amount of attention given to human-packaging interaction within IAPRI, in particular in relation to sustainability issues. I have, I hope, helped this process first by forming an IAPRI Working Group and subsequently as a Board member.
 
Looking now at the scope of IAPRI conferences and symposia, I see a healthy community around these topics, currently with packaging and its relation to food-waste in particular receiving substantial attention. But in general, packaging design, human factors, and (soft) sustainability are receiving far more attention than they did a decade ago.
 
Obviously, I cannot and will not claim sole credit for this development, but I do look back with a lot of satisfaction at what has been built. There are still many human-packaging interaction questions to be researched, and I hope to engage in some of those over the coming years. Meanwhile, I will continue to follow with great interest what fresh directions are taken by new and incumbent Board members, together with the Working Groups and wider IAPRI community.
 
Renee Wever
Retiring Vice-President