From wood to the table – towards more responsible food packaging

Arla launched new wood-based packaging. With the renewal, Arla will produce a total of 40 million products each year that are better for the environment. Drum created a multi-channel communications system around the new packages that reached both consumers and the media.

Arla wants to offer more responsible choices for people’s everyday lives. That is why in February 2019 , the company renewed all of its milk, sour milk and cream cartons. The plastic coating inside the cartons was replaced with wood-based bioplastic. The Luonto+ series yoghurt pots and their lids were also changed to be entirely made of cardboard.

The partners of the renewal were UPM, Elopak and Artaplast. The goal was to present the better packaging to consumers and the media with concrete examples, strong messages and a surprising approach.

Together with Arla and its partners, Drum designed and implemented an entity that aimed to make more responsible food packaging a public topic of discussion. The communications focused on Finnish, wood-based and responsibly produced innovations and on the cooperation of many industrial operators. The name of the project became Puusta Pöytään (From wood to the table).

The reform was launched at Think Corner at an open discussion event with speakers including Hanna Koivula, University lecturer in packaging technology at the University of Helsinki, as well as representatives of Arla, UPM and Elopak.

The event was followed by a Twitter chat. The reform was also made visible through influencer cooperation and media communication.

More than 100 participants attended the Puusta pöytään event. The conversation reached about 150,000 people in the Twitter chat, while the hashtag #puustapöytään became the third most popular tag in Twitter during the chat. Several media also reported on the subject. Arla’s CEO and the guest speaker Hanna Koivula discussed the topic in MTV3’s Huomenta Suomi programme.