The future isn’t a wonder material. It’s a better system

Starting with substance

Crucially, Dent believes material thinking must happen early. “As early as possible. The earlier the better,” he says. Too often, packaging design begins with form rather than function. “There’s this knee-jerk reaction to say, OK, we need to design this box. Well, maybe it doesn’t need to be a box. Maybe it can be something else entirely.” Instead, Dent urges designers to interrogate intent.

“What is the packaging trying to do?” Once form is fixed, options narrow. “Once you get to ‘we’ve already designed the box or the container’, it becomes harder, and your range of options diminishes,” he explains. At that point, innovation becomes incremental rather than transformative. “Then it becomes which paper do you use, and the sorts of formats and materials limit you to those papers that are typically made out of.” Early involvement allows a broader reframing. “Rather than looking through ten different papers, maybe we can find an entirely different manufacturing process or an entirely different material type that can still do the same thing but change the look and feel of the experience.”

Regulation complicates this landscape further. Extended Producer Responsibility and other frameworks inevitably narrow material choices. “As more of these regulations come in and they’re enforced, the types of materials that you can or should use necessarily reduce,” Dent says. But he is quick to challenge defeatism. “Constraint breeds creativity,” he notes, adding that regulation often separates surface-level design from real innovation. “The less qualified designers will throw their hands up and say we can’t do anything new. A real creative will then find some way to use those constraints to their benefit.”

Dent is particularly sceptical of the industry’s obsession with entirely new materials. “When did you last see an absolutely new material?” he asks. “They are very rare.” What changes more frequently is how existing materials are processed, manipulated, and applied. “We’re certainly seeing new plastics and new applications for those plastics, whether they are bio-based, biodegradable, or traditional recyclable ones. But what changes more is less the material itself and more the manufacturing processes.” Polypropylene is a case in point. “It’s still the same chemistry, still polypropylene,” Dent explains. “But we’ve seen that material evolve from being a very low-cost commodity to something that can handle high-quality, high-performance design furniture, high transparency, high heat resistance.”

The same pattern applies to pulped paper. “Think about how pulped paper has evolved from egg cartons through to liquor bottles and cosmetic cases. It’s still cellulose-based fibre, but the way we can manipulate it and what we can add to it has evolved significantly.” This continuity is not a limitation – it is an advantage. “If I still maintain my pulped paper, I can still put it in the same recycling location,” Dent says. “It still has the same sustainability profile as long as I’m not coating it too thick with plastic.” By innovating around a familiar base material, brands can maintain recyclability while unlocking new applications. Dent’s views on bioplastics are equally pragmatic. “I would love bioplastic to take over the entire commodity plastic world, but it’s not going to happen,” he says plainly. The issue is not intent, but maturity. “Many of them have not had the development time.”

Packaging, he notes, is unforgiving. “Not only do you have to look good and perform well, but you have to be incredibly inexpensive.” Rather than chasing new chemistries, Dent advocates optimisation. “Let’s find an optimised chemistry, such as PET or PP, and then find a bio-based solution from that,” he explains. “In my ideal world, you’d have a bio-based commodity plastic, PET, PP, PE, whatever it is, and then an effective and efficient recycling system.” He is cautious about materials like PLA and PHA. “They still have significant drawbacks. We know how to optimise commodity plastics, make them bio-based, add biodegradable additives, and put them through recycling streams. That, I think, is the solution.”

Outside plastics, his thinking remains consistent. “We have industrialised paper from trees. Let’s keep using that,” he says. Advances such as nanocellulose and dry pulp processing offer promise, particularly in reducing water use and enabling new forms. “Stick with what we know, optimise it, make sure it fits through a recycling system, and design based upon that.”

For all his technical expertise, Dent’s greatest enthusiasm is reserved for people. “Materials are inanimate,” he says. “They can be beautiful or ugly, but it’s watching the creative experience, the design experience, the engineering experience that excites me.” He describes himself not as a maker, but as a connector. “I don’t make anything. All I do is connect. But it’s good to live vicariously through those who do make things.”

That human exchange – the moment when an idea becomes viable – is what keeps the work fresh. “Because I work in so many different industries, it’s continually new projects all the time. That’s what keeps it exciting.” His message is clear. A single breakthrough material will not define the future of packaging. It will be shaped by better systems, earlier decisions, and a deeper understanding of how creativity, science, and sustainability intersect. Or, as Dent’s work quietly demonstrates, innovation is not about reinventing everything – it’s about knowing what to change, what to keep, and how to connect it all.

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