A fiction of the future about the future of packaging. An interesting exercise in storytelling and foresight to imagine futures. 

“ Design fiction or speculative design, or even critical design, is a design practice that explores the implications of future developments. It can relate to a probable, possible, or completely speculative future. ” – Wikipedia

WHAT IF PACKAGING BECAME INTELLIGENT, NON-POLLUTING, OR EVEN NON-EXISTENT TOMORROW?

You find yourself in the food zone of your neighborhood. There are now several in the city, and yours is less than 2 kilometers from your home. Bulk, cultivated fields, self-service horizontal farms, a cemetery of recyclable and compostable packaging that brings life to a non-polluting material reused to grow fruits and vegetables, everything has been designed with short circuits in mind.

Honestly, 30 years ago, you had little hope. The seas of plastic and the frenzied consumption of over-packaged products offered little cheerful prospects for the future. Your eco-anxiety kept growing.

Today, you need to run some small errands. In your cart, you’ve slipped some bags for dry products, a bottle for oil, and 2 trays to recycle. The vegetables, on the other hand, do not need packaging. It has now become a reflex to bring your own containers since the generalized ban on single-use packaging. By the way, you were told that your great-grandmother did the same in her time: she went grocery shopping with her jars, her glass bottle, and her net. #TrueStory

“Looks to the future”. Collectible cards for the aperitif Byrrh - ArcheoSF 

Upon arriving at the food space, you will collect some vegetables from the ground to benefit from a discount at the checkout. Last week, you had less time and chose your products directly available on the shelves.

Fresh products like plant-based cheese are now packaged in fully compostable trays that preserve the quality and freshness of the products very well. On this one, an intelligent chip covered with a plant protein reacts to the gas content of the container. Thanks to a mobile application, you can know if the expiration date is approaching and whether the product should be eaten just by scanning the sensor.

You place your 2 trays in the compost bin. Notification! You have accumulated 2 copek. With your 15 copek available on your anti-waste account, you take a dish for this noon. It has been cooked on-site by a chef from products nearing the end of their life.

Your cart is full. You will return next week.

SOME ARTICLES THAT INSPIRED THIS FICTION

1 – Smart packaging with sensors to monitor the freshness of a product.

2 – Vertical farms or the utopia of a soil-less ecology – Usbek and Rica

3 – Papkot, a biodegradable coating as an alternative to plastic – LesEchos

4 – Arm wrestling over the end of plastic packaging for fruits and vegetables – LesEchos

5 – Papkot : Packaging can finally be totally biodegradable, recyclable, plastic-free, and fluorine-free thanks to Papkot’s paper coating.

DOWNLOAD OUR COMPLETE FILE ON THE FUTURE OF PACKAGING

This fiction of the future comes from our special file on packaging.