That’s a Wrap: The Best and Worst Packaging of 2024
2024 marked our most successful year for nominations and votes in our annual ‘That’s a Wrap’ campaign. We’re excited to reveal the results that reflect our community’s experiences with packaging accessibility.
Top 5 Worst Offenders of 2024:
5: Jars – Consumers still face challenges with both plastic and glass jars, causing discomfort in their hands.
4: Cleaning Product Packaging – From spray bottles to toilet cleaner squeeze-and-turn caps, our community struggles to keep their homes clean due to the added challenges associated with their cleaning products.
3: Ring Pull Cans – Lifting the ring pull and peeling the lid open proves both painful and difficult, with the added fear from past injuries caused by the sharp edges adding to their negative experiences.
2: Child-Resistant Medication Containers – Our community finds it ironic and infuriating that they can’t access their arthritis medication. Some report pharmacists are struggling to open the packaging on their behalf, while others resort to unsafe opening methods like using knives.
1: The WINNER – Meat Packaging. Vacuum-sealed packets and meat trays with minimal to no pull tabs are making dinner time a battlefield. Many resort to using knives, which increases the risk of injuries like deep cuts.
Best Packaging of 2024:
The humble egg carton takes the crown for best packaging. Other noteworthy mentions include screw-top wine bottles, easy-to-tear wrappers, and wide flip-top toothpaste lids.
What’s next:
This campaign continues to highlight the importance of accessible packaging design for the 7 million Australians living with arthritis and musculoskeletal conditions. We will be reaching out to all the companies that had products nominated in the campaign to share your experiences and advocate for change.
What does the ‘worst packaging’ mean?
Packaging that counts as the worst:
- you couldn’t open it at all
- you opened it after a struggle
- caused you pain
- hurt your self-opening it
- had to use a tool, like a knife or scissors, to open it
- had to ask someone else to open it for you
- caused you to damage or spill the contents
- caused a brief moment of hesitation, anxiety or fear about opening it due to previous negative experiences.
What does the ‘best packaging’ mean?
We are looking for packaging that is genuinely easy-to-open, not just slightly better then a really bad alternative.
You shouldn’t have to struggle with any packaging, but until that happens we want to know what packaging consistently makes your life easier. We may also buy samples of nominations to confirm that they are in fact reasonably accessible.
About That’s a Wrap 2024
The annual social media campaign aims to showcase the types of packaging that consumers have either struggled with or found easy to open over the past year. Your feedback will help our Accessible Design Division determine whether certain packaging is becoming more user-friendly or increasingly difficult over time. Your responses will also be used to educate the packaging industry about your experiences with packaging and hopefully reduce incidences of wrap-rage in the future.