One of my “must attend” events at the 2012 Terra Madre is Slowpack – being held for the first time in October.

This tackles one of the many challenges around packaged foods – the waste involved in packaging individual items. The aim of the awards is to foster greater use of ecological and sustainable packaging options and there are 4 categories:

1) Traditional techniques and materials: This award will recognize a form of packaging that consists of materials that recover a traditional way of packaging and conservation.

2) Innovative techniques and materials: this award will recognize a form of packaging that is both eco-friendly and eco-sustainable, made with innovative, reusable, recyclable and biodegradable materials that are derived from efficient production processes from an energy point of view, with low levels of harmful emissions.

3) Communication of the product’s quality: this award will recognize a label with highly effective communication that helps that consumer understand the product’s characteristics that distinguish it from the competition by describing, for example, the traceability of its ingredients, the history of the product or its uniqueness and indicating the correct way to reuse or dispose of the packaging

4) Chain of primary, secondary and tertiary packaging: this award will recognize a label whose choice of all levels of packaging fully respects the environment.

More information here (closing date for entries 31st Aug)

/ Keith