The Italian National Packaging Consortium (CONAI) manages the collection, recycling and recovery of packaging issued for consumption nationwide, and pursues the recycling and recovery objectives set by European legislation. With more than with more than 1,200,000 member companies, it is one of the largest systems in Europe.

CONAI is committed to sustainability and strongly believes in packaging eco-design, for this reason it endlessly encourage its consortiates to adopt environment-friendly packaging and prevention measures, to improve the environmental profile of their products. In 2010, the Consortium was looking for a quantitative, scientific-based solution for rapidly assessing the packaging sustainability, mainly to support member companies during the design process of innovative solutions.

The development of a web tool for assessing the environmental profile of packaging solutions laid the foundations for a successful, long-term collaboration between CONAI and LCE, which is still ongoing.

The “CONAI Eco Tool” allows to rapidly asses, through a simplified Life Cycle Assessment approach, the packaging eco-efficiency by means of a suitable set of environmental indicators (such as greenhouse gasses emissions, water consumption, and energy consumption). The tool quantifies the effectiveness of the Consortiates’ efforts to reduce the environmental impacts of their products, by comparing the environmental performance of the product before and after the eco-design intervention. The tool is continuously updated in order to guarantee an accurate evaluation year after year.

Nowadays, a large number of CONAI consortium members usually accesses the “CONAI Eco Tool” to evaluate the eco-efficiency of their packaging, looking for innovative solutions to improve their performances. The tool is also employed for other CONAI’s initiatives, including the annual award dedicated to the most innovative and virtuous eco-packaging solutions developed by the consortiates, as well as the “Prevention Dossier” where, every three years, the best case studies are hosted and disseminated.

At present, the CONAI tool is used at national level and is available in the Italian language only.