Do you think of yourself as a hero? If not, maybe it’s time to try.
Could we use the hero’s journey framework to retell the story of sustainable packaging? And could that story help our industry make sense of the challenges we’re facing, and find motivation for the road ahead? Olga Kachook, SPC Director at GreenBlue, takes a closer look.
The Hero’s Journey is a narrative framework identified by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It describes a common storytelling structure used in everything from Homer’s Odyssey to Harry Potter. The journey typically follows a hero as they leave their ordinary world, go on an adventure, face challenges, and return transformed.
But, the Hero’s Journey framework is useful for more than storytelling. Have you heard of “restorying” intervention? Psychologists have found that people who frame their own life as a hero’s journey cope better with challenges and find more significance in their lives. A “restorying” intervention enriches individuals’ sense of meaning and well-being, helping people to see their own lives as heroic quests.
Using Christopher Vogler’s Hero’s Journey framework, let’s see how we can apply the hero’s 12 steps in sustainable packaging.
1. Ordinary World
We start with a hero in need of a change. The hero is usually living in an ordinary world, but is not happy with their current situation, and looking for a change.
Think: Harry living in a cupboard under the stairs with the Dursleys.
Meanwhile: Packaging is helping to deliver goods and protect products, but it’s usually not recycled and often heads to the landfill or worse, ends up as litter and open trash around the world. The packaging professional starts to wonder if they’re part of the problem, and to consider if the materials they work with need to change.
2. The Call to Adventure
The hero has a unique chance to leave their ordinary world and embark on a journey into unknown territory.
Think: Harry is visited by Hagrid, who tells him he is a wizard and can attend Hogwarts.
Meanwhile: Packaging is given an opportunity to shed its problematic impacts through sustainability goals and commitments like the Global Plastics Commitment. Packaging professionals are called to step into sustainability roles and functions, and to adopt new ways of working, like complying with the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation.
3. Refusal of the Call to Adventure
The hero may not always be eager to embark on their journey, especially when the hero is scared or uncertain about what lies ahead.
Think: Harry was a fairly eager hero, but even he experienced disbelief and hesitation about his identity as a wizard.
Meanwhile: Packaging’s positive attributes, like protecting against food waste, can be used to justify the unsustainable status quo. Packaging professionals push back against setting goals and commitments that feel impossible to achieve.
4. Meeting the Mentor
A protective figure, either a person or an object, provides the hero with the tools she needs for her journey.
Think: For Harry, Hagrid, Dumbledore and other teachers all serve as mentors.
Meanwhile: Who are the packaging industry’s sustainability mentors? Notable figures include Ellen MacArthur, William McDonough, and Michael Braungart, as well as early corporate leaders such as Paul Polman.
5. Crossing the Threshold
The hero leaves the comforts of their familiar world and enters into a world unknown. The journey begins. In many stories, this involves leaving the ordinary world to the “special world.”
Think: Harry boarding the Hogwarts Express and leaving behind the Muggle world.
Meanwhile: Packaging professionals step into the largely unfamiliar world of reduction targets, compostability, reusability, and problematic material lists. Packaging professionals enter a land of public goals, packaging sustainability conferences, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), and reporting.
6. Road of Trials: Tests, Allies, and Enemies
The hero must fight back through a gauntlet of ever-greater challenges, facing tests, allies, and enemies. All of this is part of the hero’s growth process.
Think: Harry makes friends (Ron and Hermione) and enemies (Draco Malfoy, Snape) and starts the long process of learning magic.
Meanwhile: Packaging’s efforts to become more sustainable collide with early challenges like China’s National Sword policy, changing the dynamics of global recycling markets. Packaging professionals quickly learn that the threats of greenwashing, false claims, and lawsuits are lurking in the shadows.
7. The Approach
The hero and her companions get ready for the ultimate conflict in the special world. Here, there’s often a transformation in the hero that will help them achieve their ultimate goal.
Think: Harry faces innumerable obstacles in the seven books, such as dementors and the Forbidden Forest.
Meanwhile: This is where we are today. Packaging can’t find sufficient recycled content, and renewable materials cost more or don’t have the necessary barrier properties. Packaging professionals are faced with the realities of limited recycling programs and the daunting task of redesigning for reuse.
8. The Ordeal
This is usually the point in the journey when the hero faces a key challenge. They encounter a close call with death but ultimately overcome it and are changed as a result.
Think: Harry confronting Professor Quirrell and Voldemort in the first book.
Meanwhile: Packaging finally faces its identity crisis — can certain materials truly be sustainable? Will they ever be recycled, or is it a pipe dream? Are the commonly-used chemicals really safe?
9. The Reward
After the ordeal, the hero usually receives some kind of reward for all their hard work. Although there may be celebration, there is also a danger of losing the treasure again.
Think: Harry retrieves the Sorcerer’s Stone, but Voldemort and his followers are still at large.
Meanwhile: One packaging material may find favor and be celebrated as a true solution, yet its trade-offs and unintended consequences are soon called into question. Some companies will meet their early sustainable packaging goals, but sustainability by definition will always be a moving target.
10. The Road Back
The hero starts his journey back to the ordinary world but is changed by their journey.
Think: Every summer, Harry prepares to return to the Muggle world, but he is never the same.
Meanwhile: Packaging professionals return from conferences, recycling facility tours, and visits to impacted communities, knowing more about the challenges and unable to “unsee” the issues.
11. The Resurrection
At the end, the hero is put to the ultimate test, this one on a higher and more comprehensive level.
Think: For Harry, his final test requires understanding that love and sacrifice are powerful magic.
Meanwhile: Packaging professionals confront the truth — that making significant progress on goals will require a massive redesign of the product-package system, not minor tweaks or material changes. (Spoiler alert: We’re not there yet, but between the demands of EPR and the climate and pollution crises, we may be getting close.)
12. Return with the Elixir
The hero returns to bestow the boon onto those he cares about and make their world a better place.
Think: In the final book, Harry rids the world of Voldemort and restores peace to both the wizarding and Muggle worlds.
Meanwhile: What might the ultimate transformation for packaging look like? Here’s one idea - packaging delivers goods and services to people around the world without contributing to waste, resource depletion, or fossil fuel extraction. Packaging professionals give companies a model for selling products without causing environmental damage or contributing to the microplastics problem.
Is this just a story? For now, yes. But by framing our work as a hero’s journey, packaging professionals can have a better sense of where we are today, where we need to go, and what true transformation can look like. You too can be like Harry Potter, bringing a new future to the world.
If you liked this story, you might also enjoy:
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