The Marc Rosen Education Fund at Pratt Institute sponsored its sixth annual symposium on November 30 at the Asia Society Museum on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
 
Cross-industry symposium speakers were Al lannuzzi, Vice President, Sustainability, Estée Lauder Companies; Ron Gonen, CEO, Closed Loop Partners; Caroline Brown, Managing Director. Closed Loop Partners; and Mitchell Gold, CEO of MGBW Home.
 
The lively panel was moderated by Marc Rosen, Cosmetics Packaging Designer and Pratt Institute Trustee Emeritus. Rosen, an internationally acclaimed designer and seven-time FiFi award winner, also teaches a course in package design at Pratt Institute Graduate School.

How to Adapt and Prioritize Sustainability

The distinguished panel discussed how designers must adapt and prioritize sustainability in the world of fashion, furnishings, cosmetics and big business. Designers today must adapt their creations to a world that has become more environmentally volatile and geopolitically complex. Businesses are recognizing that they must innovate in ways that prioritize sustainability to respond to consumers who now want to engage with companies that share similar values to their own.
 
Panelists discussed how they have leveraged the circular economy and other emerging trends to reimagine a more sustainable and ethical design practice—while still retaining impeccable and luxurious style in their products and services.

A Full-Tuition Scholarship in Sustainable Packaging Design

The event also celebrated the third Marc Rosen Excellence in Packaging Scholarship, a first-time full-tuition scholarship in sustainable packaging design. The recipient was Erik Paez Menzel from Monterrey, Mexico. The scholarship is supported by the Marc Rosen Education Fund, with additional funding by Juliana Terian, Trustee Emeritus, Pratt Institute.
 
Rosen commented, “When we were able to offer a third full tuition scholarship in Pratt’s Graduate Packaging program where my ‘Package Design Workshop’ course resides, I wanted it to be specific to designing for sustainability. I am pleased to note that it is the world’s only scholarship dedicated to this. There is much talk about creating sustainable packaging. With fragrance and beauty packaging, glass and metal are recyclable but many of the materials that were in our tool belt are no longer sustainable—making the designers' challenge much more difficult. I felt that dedicating our third Marc Rosen scholarship to learning not only to cope but to excel in designing beautiful, luxury packaging that is also sustainable was essential for the designers we educate.”
 
Scholarship recipient Erik Paez Menzel said: “We interact with different types of packaging every single day. It is heavily embedded in our way of life and I could even say our very own culture; it is a byproduct of many priorities we have for a product to be effective, efficient, safe and cyclic. We designers seek to reinvent our perception of packaging, from the concept to the role it will have in its next life, because a sustainable future discards the idea that things are designed to end up in a landfill. Packaging is in the frontlines of how our very lifestyles will change in the future, and I seek to be part of that.”