1- In a few words, can you tell us about your function and your activities?
It’s been a little bit more than 10 years since I gave up my design agency P’Référence so I could only focus on consulting, writing and artistic creation. It was like a career change, and it went flawlessly. Fabrice Peltier Création (FPC) is the name of the legal company through which I operate.
In the past ten years, I have not wasted my time:
I have developed my Genepack eco-design methodology, and now I use it with many companies in collaboration with the Citeo teams. I have finalised my eco-inking method and published several guides, including the one with Citeo. Now, when companies ask, I coach their employees in these methodologies, and I support them in the definition and realisation of their projects.
I have written 5 books, “Le design pour les Nuls” (Design for Dummies), “Quasar Khanh – Designer visionnaire” (Quasar Khanh – Visionary Designer), “L’emballage à l’aube de sa Révolution” (Packaging at the dawn of its Revolution), “La Révolution de l’emballage – Première période – L’émergence de nouvelles solutions” (The Packaging Revolution – First period – The emergence of new solutions), and the last one, to be released at the beginning of November “Pourquoi et comment entrer dans la Révolution – L’emballage ça ne sert à rien ! Sauf… …S’il s’agit d’un juste emballage” (Why and how to enter the Revolution – Packaging is useless! Unless… …it’s the right packaging).
I should say, my artistic and creative activity is always about packaging and recycling as you can see at my exhibitions or on my website: https://www.fabrice-peltier.fr
With all this, as I was a bit bored, I found a way to be elected to the Combloux town council, to oversee waste and become a member of the Sitom des Vallées du Mont-Blanc board. Everything is wrapped up. I really do oversee packaging from “cradle to grave” and I’m not bored anymore!
About the INDP, the association that I founded and that I have presided over since its beginnings, I have decided that at the next General Assembly, I will pass the torch to a talented young man, a student of mine when he was younger. I won’t tell you more, first he must be elected, and I leave it to him to present himself to the CNE members with his road map…
2- Recently, you wrote “La Révolution de l’emballage” (The packaging Revolution). What can we expect in the next years to define the Right Packaging?
This is the subject of my new book: “Pourquoi et comment entrer dans la Révolution – L’emballage ça ne sert à rien ! Sauf… …S’il s’agit d’un juste emballage”. (Why and how to enter the Revolution – Packaging is useless! Unless… …it’s the right packaging).
The tone is set in the preface that Mr. Edouard Philippe (to this date, the former french Prime Minister) did me the honour of writing. I quote: “Our customs and regulations have begun to evolve. It was about time. As the Prime Minister, I wanted France to adopt an effective and reasonable legislative arsenal so that we could collectively move away from destructive practices. The Anti-Waste and Circular Economy Act (AGEC), adopted on the 10th of February 2020, includes a lot of measures on packaging. The aim was clear: to put an end to over-packing and single-use plastic packaging. The implementing decree, or “3R”, to “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”, published on the 30th of April 2021, is in the same spirit.
This structural transformation of our production and consumption system is no longer negotiable. The preservation of our natural resources, biodiversity and climate depends on it. The whole chain must feel responsible, from economic players and industrial technical centres to consumers, and of course local communities. Packaging represents France’s 6th industry, that is occupations, savoir-faire and technologies that have begun to evolve as to ensure that 21st century packaging is rare, sober and safe.
Practices cannot turn out to be right in one day. But the “revolution” has begun. And I am convinced that we are going to win. Because there is no turning back.”
In this second book about the Packaging Revolution, I establish the principles of the thinking that should lead to the creation of the “right packaging”. Between “too much” and “not enough”, the “middle way” is about understanding the constraints of industrialists, the different modes of trade and the expectations of consumers. Not so simple in a regulatory context that is very complicated, and with unprecedented change in customs. As examples we can see the explosion of online trade, the desire for loose goods and reuse. In “Why and how to enter the Revolution”, I explain clearly, with diagrams, how packaging could reconcile the opposites. Starting a evolution is nice, but it is necessary to give solutions, and I think I can make an input to it. “You can see that for yourself by reading the book…
3- Designers are also involved in the CNE GTs (working groups). What feedback do you have on the documents produced there?
I have excellent feedbacks from the designers in our GTs (working groups) and I think that the next president of the INDP is going to work to have them even more present. This will be one of the few pieces of advice I will give to my young successor when I leave. Design is an intellectual association between an industrialist with an overdeveloped left brain and a creative with a teeming right brain. Together, they draw the middle path: what we need to develop the “Right Packaging”.
4- The CNE is in tune with its adherent, how can we do more and better for more legitimacy/visibility of the CNE?
Precisely, be accessible to young people and to people who do not think like most of us… In this evolving world, the CNE can no longer just be reactive. It must be creative and collaborate with those who are building the world of tomorrow with their ardour and dreams! Anyway, I can guarantee that I will do my best to ensure that the 9th college is overflowing and “a troublemaker”.
