PUMA: working together to the end of packaging as an environmental issue

The PUMA Project is the collective effort of the packaging business community to end packaging as an environmental issue worldwide. Packaging has been with mankind already since ancient times, however the 20^th century has brought a dramatic acceleration. The world now packs at least 320,000 products each second, resulting in as many emptied packs later in time and at a different location. This has caused substantial environmental concerns. As packaging business community we will only keep our societal licence to operate if these concerns are properly addressed.

PUMA Plenary Meeting
PUMA participants meet once a year in the Plenary Meeting. Based on the PUMA Manifesto the global developments in packaging and environment over the past year are presented, shared and commented upon. The next plenary project meeting will take place on 20 March 2025. The meeting is exclusively accessible for NVC members or after consultation.

The PUMA Manifesto
The first edition of the PUMA MANIFESTO was published on 6 May 2020 (in English) and outlines the way forward to end packaging as an environmental issue worldwide. It includes the PUMA Model that describes the essentials of the packaging activity and the resources involved. A conceptual roadmap is presented to be applied by every individual actor and the world packaging community as a whole in a self-organising manner.
The PUMA MANIFESTO is now available in ten languages, free for you to download and share.
- English edition (1.50 MB)
- Chinese edition (7.9 MB)
- Dutch edition (1.54 MB)
- French edition (2.01 MB)
- Italian edition (1.57 MB)
- Japanese edition (13.68 MB)
- Korean edition (7.13 MB)
- Portuguese edition (1.62 MB)
- Spanish edition (1.64 MB)
- German edition (838 kB)

NVC reports
2024: The Production, Carbon Footprint, and Critical Scale-up Factors of Biobased Polymers for Packaging Applications
2024: The Future of Packaging Recycling in the Netherlands
NVC members can request the reports by email. There are no costs involved.

References and background information
Below a concise overview is provided of key references and background information related to the PUMA Manifesto and the PUMA Project.
* The results of the PUMA project meetings that you can request by e-mail
* The EU Legislation on Packaging and Packaging Waste
* The EU Single-Use Plastics (SUP) Directive
* The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (proposal d.d. 30 November 2022)
* The Members-only Environmental Regulations Guide (MERGE)
* The LinkedIn Group Packaging and the Environment
* The ISO standards on packaging and the environment
* The World Packaging Standardisation Newsletter (WPSN)
* The LinkedIn Group Packaging Standardisation
* The Workshop Sustainable Innovation in Packaging (Live Online)
* The principles of self-organisation
* Entropy in relation to chemistry, thermodynamics and information theory
* The interaction between mankind and Planet in the Anthropocene
* The real-time measurements on atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
* The acronym PUMA stands for Packaging Upcyclability Materials Accelerator

For more information, please contact Helen Crowe, +31-(0)182-512411.