Metsä Board and Kathryn Kellogg Launch the "Inboxing" Initiative for Packaging Decisions
The new initiative highlights the decisions made prior to production that shape a package's safety, cost, and sustainability
The packaging that consumers use every day tells only part of the story. Behind it lie many decisions, big and small, that influence everything—from product protection and the consumer experience to costs and environmental impact. With the new “Inboxing” initiative, Metsä Board, together with Kathryn Kellogg, is shining a spotlight on these decisions and showing what happens before packaging is produced—and why these early decisions matter.
“Inboxing is about making the invisible visible,” says Kathryn Kellogg. “Consumers see the finished packaging, but the real story lies in the decisions behind it. If we understand these, we can have more informed conversations about sustainable packaging.” The founder of Going Zero Waste is known for translating complex sustainability topics into language that resonates with consumers. With Inboxing, she is now helping to bridge the gap between packaging experts, brands, and consumers. She highlights the decisions and trade-offs that shape the performance, sustainability, and user experience of packaging—long before it reaches the market.
Beyond the question of which material is best
Brands are under pressure to reduce the environmental impact of packaging without compromising safety, performance, or consumer expectations. That’s why it’s essential to look beyond individual properties and understand how each decision affects the overall packaging solution.
Inboxing examines packaging decisions from various perspectives and recognizes that the right solution depends on the product, the value chain, and the available facts—not on a predetermined preference for a specific material. Instead of asking which material is best, Inboxing encourages us to ask a different question: What must this packaging accomplish, and what facts support the decisions made?
After all, improving a single characteristic does not automatically lead to a better overall result. Packaging must protect the product, function efficiently throughout the entire value chain, meet consumer expectations, and support sustainability goals.
“The best packaging solutions balance multiple objectives and are rarely the result of a single decision. However, the starting point should always be what the packaging must achieve throughout its entire life cycle and what facts underpin the individual decisions,” says Erja Hyrsky, SVP, Commercial Operations at Metsä Board.
“With Inboxing, we aim to bring brands, designers, packaging experts, and sustainability specialists together early on so that assumptions can be questioned, options compared, and better packaging solutions developed,” Hyrsky concludes.
Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
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