2030 there we are! A systemic review on the role of packaging design to reach the Sustainable Development Goals

The idea that designers solve social and environmental problems is not new; we are in 1971, when Papanek, in his provocative book Design for the real world, described through practical experiences how much responsibility design action can have. Since 2015, when the United Nations defined the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN, 2015), the commitment to sustainability has become the key to defining the near future and an essential element of the agenda of every committed designer. In this sense, the role of design is strategic, as it is capable of finding real and futuristic feasible solutions to the problems posed to us in the SDGs through its innate and deep understanding of the needs of people and territories. Specifically, the packaging has great importance if considered, a complex artefact (Ciravegna, 2010) capable of influencing the productive, socio-cultural, political, economic and environmental aspects of the entire value chain of most products and their respective life cycles. In this sense, packaging design accentuates its function as a facilitator of sustainable and systemic innovation, making possible, thanks to its mediating role, the access and the appearance of initiatives at the corporate level, of implementations in the field of production, of communicative strategies of social inclusion, the diffusion of good habits, behaviours, and much more. The contribution, therefore, through a critical review of case studies, conducts an in-depth exploration of the relationships between the packaging sector and the grammar of the SDG's highlighting the potential for innovative and sustainable planning already upstream of the process.