Documentary looks at how ‘we love to hate' packaging

Portland, Ore. — Some well-known documentaries have looked at the challenges of plastic and packaging waste in the environment. Think about the BBC's Blue Planet II or The Story of Plastic. But few have examined the problem through the professional lens of the packaging and product designer — until now.

A team of Canadian designers funded by an organization of packaging producers are out with a documentary called Unwrapping — or by its French name, Tout Déballer — that aims to do that.

The professionally produced 54-minute documentary, available in both French and English on the film's website and YouTube, explores the role packaging designers play in looking for solutions to the environmental problems that come from single-use packaging.

In part, the film is asking whether we as consumers need all the packaging that's in the marketplace. But the organizers also said they aim to present a nuanced look at packaging, calling it something "we love to hate despite needing it."

To that end, the film examines the benefits of packaging, like protecting and preserving products, and asks the audience to envision a world without packaging, as it also explores problems with recycling materials like plastic wrapping, multilayer potato chip bags and polystyrene.

"One of the messages we want to say is that design is a bit more complex than you think it is," said Geneviève Dionne, one of the creators of the documentary and the director of ecodesign and circular economy at Eco Enterprises Quebec, which paid for the film.

Dionne spoke in an interview at the Product Stewardship Institute's 2023 U.S. Product Stewardship Forum Sept. 11-14 in Portland, where the English-language version was unveiled.

Her employer, EEQ, is financing the film as an outgrowth of its work administering the money that container makers and packaging companies pay into Quebec's extended producer responsibility program to support curbside recycling. Those companies want the film to build awareness.

Dionne worked on the project with co-lead Sylvain Allard, who is head of the School of Design at the Université du Québec à Montréal and the main on-camera narrator.

"We wanted to present a more nuanced discussion surrounding packaging, which we love to hate despite needing it," Dionne said. "We both thought a documentary would widen our audience and increase awareness in terms of packaging, ecodesign and, more importantly, the role and importance of the design process.

"It's financed by our brand owners, by producers," she said. "They know that there's a problem, and we need to have that conversation."

At one point in the film, Allard tells the audience the documentary's thesis: that change can happen if focus shifts from managing waste to better design on the front end.

"The systems we have in place focus on the end of life of packaging," Allard said. "But when we look at a garbage dump, or when we hear about the ocean of plastic, and when we are shown an image of a turtle with a straw stuck in its nose, we start wondering maybe we should address the beginning of the process where we design the packaging."

In the Portland interview, Dionne agreed, saying that ecodesign is "not well understood in packaging; we just talk about waste."

The documentary is aimed at both industry professionals and the general public.

"The primary [audience] for us was companies and the stakeholders around them," Dionne said. "But we said we will do a product … that has a broader audience. My mum can watch it. A teenager, a student, they can watch it."

The documentary took several years to come together.

Dionne and Allard, who started working together on books and design projects in 2014, first talked about doing the film in 2018, before the COVID-19 pandemic. But when the coronavirus made filming in grocery stores and other places almost impossible, work slowed down.

By the end of 2021, they had a draft version that stretched nearly 90 minutes. Dionne said no one on the small team had a background in filmmaking, and they quickly realized the documentary needed a more refined eye.

"When we looked at the raw version, we were like, 'Oh my god, we're going everywhere at the same time. The storyline is not that aligned,'" Dionne said.

So they approached a documentary filmmaker and friend of Allard's, Sophie Lambert, whose company Sofa Media agreed to take on the project. With editing and postproduction work, Lambert produced the final version. The French version was released in 2022.

Dionne said she and Allard want the film to explore the complexities of packaging.

At one point in the documentary, Allard notes that plastic is the packaging material that's most criticized, which is followed by experts debating its pros and cons. It's a durable material that doesn't need much energy to produce, they said, but that durability can make it a poor choice for single-use applications.

As one on-camera interviewee offers, "It's the use of plastic that is the culprit. But it's not the plastic itself. It's the industries that use it recklessly, too much of it and too often. And consumers haven't learned to dispose of it properly."

At another point, the film looks at consumer confusion around compostable packaging and recyclability, and Allard is seen telling a classroom of design students that, in his opinion, polystyrene packaging should not be allowed because it's "almost impossible to recycle here in Quebec."

As it wraps up, the documentary offers some possible solutions: looking at zero waste and rethinking overconsumption, fostering better design, encouraging reusable packaging, requiring packaging to be 100 percent recycled, and setting standards for containers and packaging.

Dionne said she hoped the film helps people understand the collaborative nature of good packaging design.

"For me, packaging design is a relay race," she said. "You cannot do it by yourself without considering what's going on at the [materials recovery facility], what's going on in the market and what's going on with consumers."