Leadership & Innovation Challenges in Adoption of Sustainable Packaging

The importance & relevance of sustainable packaging emanates from the UN established seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which aim towards achieving sustainable future. Sustainable Packaging impacts many of these SDG’s like sustainable consumption & production (SDG 12), conserving marine resources (SDG 14), achieving food security (SDG 2) etc. Sustainable Packaging implies integrating & implementing the objectives of Sustainable Development to packaging’s complete life cycle, encompassing its raw materials, their sources to the end-of-life disposal of the packaging material, while considering the Triple Bottom Line impacts of packaging, i.e. Environmental, Social & Economic. Sustainable Packaging is a continuously evolving concept and has been facing multi-pronged challenges. Its facets include absence of an absolute definition, multitude of actors’ involved, technical complexity of materials used, diverse functional requirements and sophisticated technologies. Using Stakeholder Theory as framework, a systematic literature study is conducted to identify challenges being faced in ‘leadership’ and ‘innovation’ dimensions in effectuating Sustainable Packaging. Study elicits lack of motivation & commitment, scepticism about potential benefits, long gestation or perceived lower return on investment, risk avoidance as the challenges being faced by the leadership dimension. Innovation challenges include risk of new technology, existing technological lock-in’s in the supply chain, insignificant collaboration within value chain, high cost structures, potential competitive disadvantage and missing suitable infrastructure. This study guides appropriately, organisational resources & industry efforts to eliminate/ mitigate the challenges and reinforces need for greater collaboration of stakeholders to continuously improve sustainable packaging & contribute towards to a sustainable future.