Sustainability has changed the way e-commerce packaging is designed.

Converters are being asked to reduce material.

Use more recycled fiber.

Eliminate unnecessary void fill.

Improve recyclability.

Optimize box dimensions.

And prepare for Europe’s increasingly strict rules on excessive packaging.

But a nomination in Sweden is drawing attention to another design criterion that receives much less discussion:

Can the person receiving the parcel actually open it without struggling?

The Swedish Rheumatism Association has nominated Adlibris Package A4, an e-commerce corrugated package developed by Swedish packaging company Nöjd, for the 2026 PackNorth Award.

The association highlighted two apparently simple design details: an integrated tear-strip perforation and a larger opening tab intended to provide better grip and leverage for people with reduced hand strength.

Those features do not sound as technically complex as a new barrier coating, lightweight linerboard or automated right-sizing system.

That may be exactly why the story matters.

Packaging engineers have spent years optimizing what happens to a package before delivery. Accessibility asks them to pay more attention to what happens during the final five seconds of the package’s life as a package.

And for e-commerce, those five seconds are part of the product experience.

This Is a Nomination, Not Yet an Award

There is an important factual distinction to make first.

Nöjd has not yet won the PackNorth Award.

The Swedish Rheumatism Association nominated the package in the competition’s new User-Friendly Packaging category. The final PackNorth winners are scheduled to be announced at Empack in Stockholm on September 30, 2026.

The category itself is new for 2026 and was introduced in collaboration with the Swedish Rheumatism Association.

Earlier this year, the association explained that it would identify packaging solutions it considered particularly strong in opening and handling and nominate them for further assessment by the PackNorth jury.

That makes the nomination more interesting than an ordinary packaging-company award submission.

It brings a consumer-accessibility organization directly into the packaging evaluation process.

The association has already nominated other solutions this year, including Sonoco’s Orbit lid and Tetra Pak’s Lightwing 30 closure.

The message is becoming clear:

ease of opening is being treated as a packaging-performance issue rather than merely a consumer convenience.

Why a Bigger Tab Can Matter More Than It Looks

Nöjd’s design uses a perforated tear strip together with what the Swedish Rheumatism Association describes as a generously sized opening tab.

That larger tab is intended to give users more surface area for gripping and applying force.

This is basic mechanical design, but it addresses a real packaging problem.

Opening a package can require several physical actions at once:

finding the opening point,

pinching a small feature,

holding the package steady,

pulling,

tearing,

and maintaining enough force until the seal or board structure releases.

For someone with good grip and finger strength, those actions may be almost invisible.

For someone with reduced hand function, the same sequence can determine whether the package can be opened independently.

International packaging standards already recognize this issue.

ISO 17480:2015, Packaging — Accessible design — Ease of opening, covers opening locations, opening methods and both instrumented and user-based approaches to evaluating openability.

ISO 22015:2019 goes wider, covering physical actions including grasping, pulling, tearing, twisting, carrying and other package-handling movements, with explicit consideration for older people and people with disabilities.

So accessibility is not a new packaging-engineering concept.

What is changing is its visibility.

But I Would Not Call This Package “Accessibility Certified”

That distinction is important.

The Swedish Rheumatism Association operates an Easy to Use programme in which products can be tested with people who have reduced hand function and certified accordingly. Its public material explicitly says certified products have undergone such testing.

The information released about Adlibris Package A4 says it has been nominated for the PackNorth Award because of its user-friendly design.

It does not publish:

an opening-force value,

a required pulling force,

a user-test sample size,

success or failure rates,

or confirmation that this specific package has received the association’s separate Easy to Use certification.

Those are different things.

Therefore, I would report that the package has been recognized and nominated for accessibility-related design, not that its accessibility has been independently certified to ISO 17480 or another technical standard.

That may sound like a small editorial difference.

For professional packaging readers, it is important.

If accessible design is going to become a serious specification, eventually the industry will need more than phrases such as “easy open.”

It will need measurable evidence.

This Could Be the Next Packaging KPI

Packaging sustainability has become increasingly quantifiable.

Companies measure:

recycled content,

basis weight,

material reduction,

carbon emissions,

pack-to-product ratios,

recycling compatibility,

and transport efficiency.

Accessibility is often handled more subjectively.

That may need to change.

Imagine two e-commerce mailers with identical board weight and similar transport performance.

One requires a user to locate a small tab, pinch it precisely and generate relatively high force.

The other provides a clearly identifiable, larger gripping area and a controlled tear path.

Both may contain the same amount of recycled fiber.

Both may be recyclable.

But they do not provide the same functional performance to the person receiving them.

That suggests a broader definition of packaging optimization:

the best package is not simply the one using the least material. It is the one that performs its required functions with the least unnecessary burden on materials, logistics and the user.

Sustainability and Accessibility Can Conflict—But They Do Not Have To

This is where Nöjd’s design becomes particularly relevant to paper and corrugated converters.

The company says Adlibris Package A4 uses corrugated material manufactured from 100% recycled fiber.

It also says the box height can be adjusted to the product, reducing the need for unnecessary void-filling material.

Those are company-reported attributes. The nomination announcement does not provide an LCA or enough data to calculate material or carbon savings.

So I would not attach a specific environmental benefit to them.

But the construction raises an interesting design point.

Improving accessibility does not necessarily require adding large amounts of material or introducing a completely new packaging component.

In this case, the accessibility features are built largely into the corrugated structure itself through the tear geometry and opening-tab design.

That is attractive from a packaging-development perspective.

Instead of solving one problem by creating another material layer, the converter is attempting to extract more functionality from the board architecture.

Adjustable Height May Become More Important for Another Reason

Nöjd’s statement that the package height can be adjusted to reduce void fill also connects with a much larger change coming to European e-commerce packaging.

Under the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, operators filling grouped, transport and e-commerce packaging will eventually have to ensure a maximum empty-space ratio of 50%, with the obligation applying by January 1, 2030 or three years after the relevant implementing acts enter into force, whichever is later.

The Commission is required to establish the calculation methodology by February 12, 2028.

Importantly, filling materials including paper cuttings, air cushions, bubble wrap and similar materials are counted as empty space for the purpose of the calculation.

That means simply filling an oversized e-commerce box with paper does not solve the regulatory problem.

The package itself increasingly needs to fit the shipment.

This gives height-adjustable corrugated packaging a second function.

It can potentially address both:

material and volume efficiency before delivery

and

user accessibility after delivery.

I would not state that Adlibris Package A4 is PPWR-compliant because the final calculation methodology is still to come and no package-specific compliance assessment was provided.

But its design direction is clearly relevant to where European regulation is heading.

E-Commerce Packaging Has Been Designed Around the Journey

Most e-commerce packaging engineering starts with logistics.

Can the box survive distribution?

Can it stack?

Will automated handling damage it?

Can the product move inside?

Does the package use too much material?

Can the shipping label be applied correctly?

Can it be erected and closed automatically?

Those are necessary questions.

Stina Nordström, Secretary General of the Swedish Rheumatism Association, makes a useful point in the nomination announcement: protecting the contents understandably receives primary attention, but usability should also form part of package functionality.

That is particularly relevant for e-commerce.

In a retail store, the primary package may have been designed specifically for consumer interaction.

With e-commerce, the consumer first encounters an additional logistics package.

That corrugated shipper or mailer therefore becomes part of the brand experience whether the packaging supplier intended it to or not.

A package that requires scissors or a knife may still protect the contents perfectly.

From a logistics perspective, it worked.

From the user’s perspective, the design may have failed.

A Knife in the Unboxing Process Is a Design Signal

Anyone who follows e-commerce packaging has probably seen the familiar unboxing sequence:

parcel arrives,

consumer searches for the tape seam,

finds scissors or a knife,

cuts through the closure,

then removes paper or plastic void fill.

Packaging engineers should probably ask whether every one of those actions is necessary.

A cutting tool introduces inconvenience and can also create a risk of damaging the product inside.

A well-designed tear system can potentially remove that step.

But here again, the detail matters.

A tear strip that technically exists is not necessarily an accessible tear strip.

If the starting tab is too small, difficult to see or hard to lift, the consumer still faces a problem.

If the perforation requires excessive force, the consumer may still reach for a knife.

If the tear path breaks midway, the feature has failed.

That is why Nöjd’s larger opening tab may ultimately matter more than the fact that it has a perforation.

Good accessible design often depends on apparently minor geometry.

The Industry Needs to Start Measuring Opening Performance

This is where I think the story should move beyond the award.

If accessibility becomes an increasingly important packaging criterion, converters will need better ways to communicate performance.

“Easy open” is currently used very loosely.

Two packages carrying that description may behave very differently.

ISO 17480 already provides a framework that includes instrumented and user-based evaluation.

The packaging industry could eventually become more accustomed to specifying variables such as opening force, grip area, tear consistency and successful opening rates across different user groups.

That would make accessibility easier to incorporate into:

customer specifications,

quality testing,

packaging development,

supplier comparisons,

and design validation.

It would also make claims more credible.

For now, we do not have those figures for Adlibris Package A4.

That is precisely the next information I would like to see.

Corrugated Converters Should Pay Attention

For corrugated producers, accessibility could become another field in which structural design differentiates one box from another.

The material itself is mature.

The competitive value increasingly comes from what can be engineered into it:

automatic bottoms,

variable height,

integrated return functions,

tear strips,

locking systems,

right-sizing,

print,

tamper evidence,

and now more deliberate accessibility.

Some of those functions can potentially be created through cutting, creasing and perforation rather than additional plastic components.

That fits well with the direction of fiber-based e-commerce packaging.

But there is a manufacturing challenge.

Adding a clever perforation in CAD is easy.

Producing it reliably at industrial speed, across board variations and after transportation stresses, is another matter.

The opening mechanism has to survive distribution without opening accidentally, yet release predictably when the consumer pulls it.

That balance between distribution strength and consumer opening force is where accessible e-commerce packaging becomes a genuine engineering problem rather than a design slogan.

Sustainability Has Traditionally Stopped at Disposal

The packaging sustainability conversation usually follows a familiar life cycle:

Where did the fiber come from?

How much recycled material was used?

How much packaging was eliminated?

How efficiently was it transported?

Can it be recycled?

What happens after disposal?

Accessibility inserts another stage between distribution and recycling:

use.

That may sound obvious, but it changes the design brief.

A package can perform well environmentally on paper and still create a poor real-world experience if a significant group of consumers cannot operate it easily.

The industry’s sustainability discussion increasingly uses the term “design for recycling.”

Perhaps e-commerce also needs a stronger concept of:

design for opening.

Those objectives should not compete.

The best packaging development would satisfy both.

The Award Category Itself May Be More Important Than the Winner

PackNorth’s decision to add User-Friendly Packaging as a new category in 2026 is therefore worth watching.

The competition says its general judging already considers functionality, material choice, recyclability, packaging complexity, weight and volume efficiency, recycled content and PPWR-related requirements.

Adding a dedicated accessibility category means another dimension is now being put beside those established sustainability and performance measures.

That has potential value beyond awards.

Industry competitions help signal what designers, brand owners and converters should consider worth optimizing.

Ten years ago, recyclability might have been a specialist judging criterion.

Today, it is routinely included in packaging briefs.

It is possible that accessibility will follow a similar path.

I would not claim that this nomination proves that shift has already happened.

It does show that part of the Nordic packaging industry is deliberately trying to accelerate it.

Nöjd Has Not Proven Everything—and It Does Not Need To

Adlibris Package A4 should not be turned into a perfect-packaging story.

The available information does not tell us:

how much opening force is required;

how many consumers with reduced hand strength have tested this exact design;

whether it carries a separate accessibility certification;

how much corrugated material was saved through the adjustable-height design;

how much void fill was eliminated in actual Adlibris shipments;

or whether the total package has a lower environmental footprint than the previous alternative.

Those would all be valuable data.

Without them, we should not invent conclusions.

What the nomination does demonstrate is much narrower—and still worthwhile.

A corrugated e-commerce box can be deliberately engineered around the physical ability of the person who has to open it, while material efficiency and recycled fiber remain part of the same design brief.

That is enough to make it an industry story.

The Next E-Commerce Packaging Question Is Human

PPWR is pushing Europe toward less empty space.

Retailers are pushing toward lower fulfillment costs.

Converters are pushing toward more automated packing.

Paper producers want fiber-based packaging to capture more e-commerce demand.

Consumers want parcels that arrive undamaged.

All of those priorities matter.

But the Swedish Rheumatism Association’s nomination adds one question that can easily disappear among the engineering KPIs:

Can everyone use the package?

For Nöjd, the answer is being pursued through something as simple as a perforation and a larger tab.

For the broader packaging industry, the lesson is bigger.

The last stage of package performance is not the courier placing the box at the door.

It is the consumer opening it.

If that interaction fails, a recyclable, lightweight, optimized package is still not fully optimized.

For e-commerce converters and brand owners, should opening force and grip accessibility become standard packaging specifications alongside compression strength, material weight and recyclability?

That may be the more important question raised by this PackNorth nomination.

Last Updated on 09/09/2026 by Jota Machinery