Participants - i.e. both the 170,000 visitors and the 4,000 exhibitors - at the interpack packaging exhibition (7-13 May 2020) will soon be able to contribute to the end of packaging as an environmental problem worldwide by expressing their support for the PUMA Manifesto. In doing so, they endorse the PUMA vision on the activity of packaging and promise to share their relevant information and insights in the field of packaging in all fairness and reasonableness. The PUMA Manifesto is open to read directly at the North Entrance of the interpack at booth ENB/03 and there everybody can also express his/her support via the PUMA Register of Support.

The PUMA project is an initiative of the NVC Netherlands Packaging Centre (NVC). NVC (founded in 1953) is the association of more than five hundred internationally oriented companies that recognize the importance of the packaging activity. The NVC membership, the innovation projects (including packaging innovation contest De Gouden Noot), information services and education (workshops, courses) stimulate the continuous improvement of packaging.

Every second, the world packs 300,000 products per second, resulting in 300,000 emptied packs per second. As a result, packaging as an activity, for example, is eight times larger than Google, which processes around 40,000 searches per second worldwide. The increases in prosperity and growing world population are leading to further growth of packaging worldwide. For a sustainable future of packaging on this scale, it is an absolute requirement that an end is made to packaging as an environmental issue.

Building on decades of experience (including the drafting of the ISO world standards in the field of packaging and the environment), NVC launched the PUMA project on 27 March 2017 [1]. On the basis of a series of inspiring PUMA meetings with a total of several hundred participants, in Rotterdam (NL), Eindhoven (NL), Nuremberg (DE), Reading (UK), Boston (USA) and Tokyo (JP), the time has now come, as far as NVC is concerned, for the global packaging community to actually put an end to packaging as an environmental issue worldwide.

To this end, the PUMA Manifesto offers a holistic, coherent vision of the activity of packaging and the materials used for that purpose in the front-end, back-end and collect & control phases [2]. In addition, the PUMA Manifesto is a shared source of inspiration and cooperation, supported by NVC as a leading, transparent and reliable association of internationally oriented companies that are willing to take their social responsibility when it comes to packaging.