“Wood packaging is not outworn: the second life of fish crates (that speak)” is the title of an article recently published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The article addresses the project of transforming wood packaging into wood packaging 4.0 carried out by Rilegno, Italy’s national consortium for the collection, recovery, and recycling of wood packaging.
Rilegno is researching a solution that can guarantee traceability and sustainability of the wood packaging containing and transporting fish, fruit and vegetables. Together with RFID Lab, the consortium is studying the possibility of applying an RFID tag to each packaging, thus making it uniquely identifiable and trackable.
Thanks to the RFID tag, it will in fact be possible to real-time track each wood packaging, reducing its waste and also preventing the crates from being stolen: in short, even if a wooden crate is out of the circuit, through an identification it will be possible to trace back to when that specific crate was put on the market.
Tagging every packaging with RFID is furthermore an excellent guarantee for the consumer. The tag on a box, containing fish for instance, can at any time inform the consumer about the date and origin of the catch among other relevant information.
So far, a pilot has been carried out on wood pallets, the data is promising, and the solution engineered can potentially be applied to all wood packaging, including crates.