Only two days to go until the big unveil of the 2026 Sustainability Awards winners! We hear from EcoSource, a finalist in the Digital Transformation category about how their decision-support platform helps businesses make more sustainable choices.
You’re a finalist in the Sustainability Awards 2026. Congratulations! To start off, could you summarise your entry in less than 50 words?
EcoSource Packaging Intelligence is a decision-support platform helping businesses choose more appropriate packaging through evidence-led recommendations. It brings together packaging performance, carbon impact, regulatory exposure, disposal feasibility and cost considerations, helping procurement and sustainability teams understand the trade-offs behind packaging choices before committing to a solution.
Why do you think the judges were impressed with your entry? Tell us about what is innovative about your project and about its impact on packaging sustainability.
We believe the innovation lies in addressing a practical challenge facing the packaging industry: making informed decisions in a landscape where sustainability claims, material performance, recycling infrastructure and regulatory requirements can be difficult to navigate together.
EcoSource Packaging Intelligence brings these considerations into one decision-support platform. Rather than relying on a single sustainability claim or material label, users can evaluate packaging options against multiple factors, understand the reasoning behind recommendations and review the supporting evidence and potential trade-offs.
A key part of our approach is combining a structured, rules-based recommendation engine with an AI-assisted interface. The underlying rules determine the recommendations, while AI helps users communicate their requirements naturally and understand the results. This is designed to make packaging intelligence more accessible without allowing AI to independently override the recommendation logic.
We see the potential impact as helping businesses move beyond choosing packaging based on isolated claims and towards more considered, evidence-led decisions. Better-informed choices can support the selection of packaging that is appropriate for its application, local disposal infrastructure and relevant regulatory requirements.
Finally, can you tell us about the ongoing development of your project, e.g. how your innovation has been received by the industry, and what the next steps are in product development?
EcoSource Packaging Intelligence is now live, marking an important step in turning our vision into a practical tool for the packaging industry.
Our next phase is focused on developing the platform into a scalable commercial service, expanding its usefulness for procurement and sustainability teams and refining the user experience based on real-world use. This includes developing a subscription model that gives users an accessible introduction to the platform while supporting more extensive assessments and procurement-ready reporting through paid access.
We are also developing the wider intelligence capabilities of the platform, including EcoSource Intelligence Monitor which is being built as we speak, and is designed to help identify changes in regulations, technical evidence and packaging claims, flag data gaps and propose updates for human review automatically when regulations and rules change and are updated globally.
Our longer-term ambition is to help businesses make packaging decisions with greater clarity, transparency and confidence. Being shortlisted for the Sustainability Awards is an encouraging milestone as we continue developing and commercialising the platform. We see this as the beginning of a wider opportunity to bring more structured, evidence-led decision-making into packaging procurement.
The winners of this year’s Sustainability Awards are due to be announced on the 11th November at the Sustainable Packaging Summit, taking place from the 10th-12th November in Utrecht, Netherlands. The Summit mobilizes leaders of the FMCG value chain, policymakers, NGOs, recyclers and investors to collaborate, remove barriers and identify opportunities on the road to sustainable transformation.
