Toward a Packaging-Free Society: A Historical Journey of Institutionalization and the Way Forward

In today’s society, consumers expect products to be provided in packages. Nevertheless, this never used to be the case, and it is being argued that packageless alternatives will be developed more and more in the future. Utilizing the neo-institutionalist perspective, it is claimed that the package has been institutionalized in the extreme, thus making any thoughts of other alternatives almost impossible. However, it is asserted that packaging, as an institution, has started to be deinstitutionalized by sustainability-driven packaging-free consumption trends. This chapter reviews the essential functions and the history of packaging, the transformation of retailers due to the sustainability imperative, the zero-waste movement, and packaging-free retailing. It is then finalized with discussions on how packaging-free retailing was reborn, its obstacles, and suggestions for its future diffusion. It is concluded that an entirely packageless society would seem to be a utopia, while business-as-usual in packaging would be a bitter dystopia.