Packaging has become an increasingly important marketing tool in our experience-oriented consumerism. Seen from a sustainability perspective, packaging is one of our time's greatest curses, but it is in many cases necessary, hence the parentheses in the project title. The project aims to provide rationales for why packages look and act like they do. The focus is on the increasingly difficult dilemma of packaging design: to deliver innovative packaging solutions with high attention value and simultaneously satisfy different consumer preferences and demands for minimal environmental impact.

The project deals with the design of Swedish consumer packaging from the 1930s to the present and takes several sustainability aspects into account: environmental, economic (eg packaging that prolongs the shelf-life of food), social (such as handling and gender aspects), ethics (eg confidence in eco-labelling) and cultural. The cultural aspects mainly concern analysing and making a cultural heritage visible that has been very little explored.

Through three in-depth studies, some problem complexes will be analysed, such as packaging systems, the perception of luxury and budget, disposable and reusable packaging and packaging iconography. The in-depth studies are complementary but different. The first deals with milk packaging as an example of a type of food with simple packaging. At the same time, milk places very high demands on the packaging. In the second study pharmaceutical packaging is in focus, a category that is characterised by consistently high safety standards and the third study examines luxury packaging that will offer consumers something special.

Results
The quest for holistic knowledge was decisive in our choice of Bruno Latour's actor-network theory. It has served as a tool to understand the role of packaging in the network with designers, advertising agencies, software programs, laws and regulations, packaging materials, chemicals, the packaging industry, retailers, consumers and at the end of the life cycle producer responsibility and the recycling industry. The packages play different roles: to protect the product during transportation, to preserve the content, to seduce/inform the client, in order to finally be disposed of with a greater or lesser environmental impact. The project's three sub-studies highlight different aspects of this complex system and put together, they form a whole picture.

We have noted that return systems have not been able to compete with disposable food packaging, due to increased hygiene requirements and convenience. This becomes particularly evident in the study of the history of milk packaging. Depressed prices coupled with consumer demands have given rise to more complex packaging systems. This favours the major food producers while small producers have difficulties accessing attractive packaging solutions that require large volumes. At the same time, costly machinery with long amortization periods prevent the development of new sustainable packaging solutions.

The packaging materials preferred by environmentally conscious consumers are paper and glass. Today's non-transparent cartons for milk and other foods have meant that we have alienated ourselves from the goods we consume. In return packaging systems we could examine, for example, the fat content of milk and milk acidity. Today we are forced to rely on labelling and symbols that require a considerable effort to understand. Shelf visibility has become increasingly important particularly when department stores are reducing their staff and are turned into exhibition halls. Trademarks are nowadays often exposed on secondary packaging in the form of trays or other so-called shelf-ready solutions. Even when there are few packages left on the shelf, the brand is still there, as a reminder to the consumer.

Packaging is often seen as an unnecessary source of waste, but compared to food waste, food packaging represents a small part of the total environmental impact, which suggests an optimization of packaging use rather than a decrease. In accordance with the sociologist Franck Cochoy we regard packaging as an extension of the content. Just like the other actors in the network, packaging has agency. Packages are brand carriers that help us choose. They make us see the difference between one vodka brand and another, between bottled water and maybe even perfumes. Indefinable aromas and flavours require expressive packaging. With the help of different packaging design exactly the same product can be sold at totally different price ranges.

The visual communication shows that gender is everywhere, even in the packages we carry home from the grocery store. They reflect what products are aimed at male and female consumers: even milk cartons are gender-coded. Older easily perceived market segments such as the housewife and the professional have in contemporary packaging been replaced by a variety of new ways to present gender. Power differences are hidden when gender and packaging design have become intertwined processes that evolve concurrently. The pharmaceutical rhetoric that can be found on certain food packages is a similar process, but in this case the aim is to confer scientific status to the food. Similarly, the vineyards and the coat of arms of the traditional wine label reappear on new types of wine packaging, such as the bag-in-box.

Many packages are perceived as frustrating: the brick-like package Tetra Brik has sometimes been the target of much consumer criticism when compared with the more easy-to-open and resealable gabletop package. Milk packaging battles have taken place at several locations in Sweden and they have meant a lot for the advancement of consumer influence.

Pharmaceuticals with similar names and packaging design entail a risk of confusion. The system of automatic generic substitution means that patients have to switch to the medicine that currently has the lowest price, and thus constantly get used to new packaging. Another case is the pharmaceutical storeroom in hospitals, where similar packages are often placed next to each other, which means that confusions can arise when staff is stressed. Due to price competition there exist original, generic as well as parallel imported pharmaceuticals on the market. The latter requires re-packaging, just as novel distribution systems such as Dosett and ApoDos. All the above involves confusion risks.

Increased safety focus combined with greater design awareness has led to a series of new ergonomic solutions for the opening and closing of packages, including grip-friendly angular tablet containers and ribbed closures. The combination of easy-to-open and childproof packaging has not been a priority for manufacturers of pharmaceutical packaging. Without legislation, it seems more natural to stimulate consumption than to create barriers. Only recently childproof tablet strips have appeared on the market, based on the principle of two different opening operations that have to be carried out simultaneously.

New research questions
Packaging is a volatile cultural heritage that has not to any great extent been preserved in company archives. Many companies regularly change their packaging design and a prerequisite for studying packaging design's evolution over time is systematic collection and preservation. Some material can be found in museums, but it is rarely or never catalogued or for other reasons unavailable for research. It would be desirable to introduce a system of legal deposit, at least in the form of photo documentation and information about launch date etc. Many large companies already have image databases with their current packaging, which could be transferred to a national research database. This is something we have lacked and that would facilitate future research, especially the historical perspective on packaging innovation and packaging material.

Women's relation to consumer goods such as clothing and accessories has long been understood in terms of desire and lack of control. Ecstasy, intemperance and sexual satisfaction, determined by objects such as perfume packages, rarely appear in ads targeted to men. Although a sexual relationship can be inferred between men and things, it is always the man who is in control. Why are women's and men's relationships to consumer goods described so differently and what does this entail for the understanding of gender?

People are a common motif on food labels. Fair trade products often show satisfied workers who have obtained decent working conditions by being connected to Fair trade. An interesting question from a postcolonial perspective is whether it is possible to depict people from other cultures on packages without exoticising them?

International connections
Results from the project have been presented at the following international conferences:
6th International Conference of Design History and Design Studies, Osaka, 2008
Current issues in European Cultural Studies, Linköping, 2011
International Conference of Engineering Design, Copenhagen, 2011
Nordic Conference on Consumer Research, Gothenburg, 2012
Helsinki Photomedia, Helsinki, 2012

The project has generated courses and lectures in the international master's programs Business & Design and Interaction Design and Technologies. Workshops have been conducted with foreign visiting researchers at the Centre for Consumer Science, among others the sociologist Franck Cochoy. We have also published articles in international journals.
Research information and publishing
Project members have appeared in radio shows, been interviewed in trade magazines, given popular science lectures, given lectures in packaging fairs and participated in the Gothenburg University Science Festival.

In addition to a number of peer-reviewed articles in international journals, the project's most important publication is the monograph "The (un)sustainable package" of approximately 500 pages and 300 images(forthcoming in 2014.