The social sustainability management within packaging sector: a state of art.

Sustainability in the packaging sector is crucial due to growing environmental concerns and global attention to responsible business practices. Key points include reducing environmental impact through renewable, recyclable, or biodegradable materials, conserving resources, minimizing waste, consumer preference for sustainable products, regulatory compliance, long-term cost savings, corporate social responsibility, and technological innovation. Sustainability in packaging not only addresses environmental concerns but also enhances corporate image, regulatory compliance, and supply chain resilience. In this context, it is relevant to understand whether and how the social issues are addressed in this sector also taking into consideration the Environmental Social and Governance features. Therefore, the aim of this study is to understand how social sustainability aspects are currently approached considering that international frameworks have not yet defined a common standard. In particular, it was conducted a literature review to answer these research questions: how is product sustainability considered in packaging sector studies in the last 15 years?; how is social product sustainability assessed in packaging sector case studies?; what are the most used social sustainability indicators in packaging sector case studies?; what are the social hotspots addressed in packaging sector case studies?. Of the 49 articles identified, only 13 covered both social and environmental aspects related to sustainability. The initial findings highlight that most of the literature focuses the assessment of sustainability mainly on the environmental dimension, whilst the most common product life cycle stages are the packaging waste collection system and the raw material used. Relating to social sustainability side, it emerges that in the packaging sector, there are two different viewpoints of the social aspects concerning sustainability. One is related to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues throughout production, supply chain and distribution, whilst the other is related to consumer-oriented focusing on consumer interests and perceptions. In particular, the articles that consider the social aspects from a consumer perspective, explore more the design phase (clearly related to waste management). Otherwise, the social hotspots are not analyzed and researched in the emerging literature, even though the Social Life Cycle Assessment applications in the packaging sector were found in a few studies. Indeed, they are focused on a waste management system, otherwise, they describe the theoretical framework and the impact assessment implemented. This study leads to the need to deeply investigate and apply the S-LCA within the packaging sector in order to understand the main limitations and implications. Future developments would like to investigate how sustainability was managed in the packaging sector and which contributions could be reached by implementing the S-LCA framework in this sector.