Digital for packaging sustainability: the environmental label goes digital

As everybody knows, sustainability will lead the future economic development for environmental protection and not only. Talking packaging, sustainability is a pre-requisite, since packaging, because of its nature, turns into waste the moment we buy a product. That is why its proper disposal is a must.

The difficulty of untangling materials and waste separation systems urged the legislator to release Legislative Decree n° 116/2020, stating from 1st January 2023 the obligation to  include on packaging all information to facilitate the collection, reuse, recovery and recycling of packaging. Identification of the packaging material composition becomes mandatory.

Also published on 22nd November 2022 a decree defines the Guideline on environmental labelling of packaging for a correct fulfilment of labelling obligations, which follows the contents of the Guidelines on Compulsory Environmental Labelling of Packaging by Conai (National Packaging Consortium) already widely adopted by companies in the last few months.

Further, in compliance with the principle of free circulation of goods, the Guidelines emphasize the possibility of adopting – for all packaging – digital channels to transfer compulsory information.

Launch of the digital environmental label

Hence, the Mite, Minister of Ecological Transition fully acknowledged the possibility to go digital, thus opening the way to the digital environmental labelling.

No need of space on the label; it is easily accessible, cheap and more informative, customisable and multi-language, it looks very interesting mainly for more complex applications. Let us consider neutral, pre-wrapped, multilingual, tiny packaging, or already full of information, imported goods or products for export.

When the market anticipates the legislator…

EAD is the digital environmental label conceived by Giunko – a former, innovative start-up, now a small & medium enterprise, specialising in the development of cloud-based solutions for the mobile and web universe. The label enables operators to comply immediately with the regulations, as it uses the barcode, an element already available on traditional labels, to offer a larger and more complete digital extension to disposal information printed on packaging.

All that is possible thanks to the platform of Junker app, for over 5 years now the major reference in the country in terms of separate collection. Thanks to its integration with the Junker app, EAD goes far beyond the law requirements, offering disposal information validated and geo-localised for each single Italian municipality. This function, impossible to implement with a paper label, uses a smartphone’s GSM, that geo-localises the device from which the inquiry originates. 

EAD works also while directly reading a QR code for the product.