Managment Evaluation of Sustainable Traditions of Date Packaging Farnaz Masoumzadeh Jouzdani

Date Palm (Phoenix Dactylifera), is one of the first trees domesticated by humans, It plays an important role in the life of local people in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran since it produces nutritious fruits, as well as influences on their environmental and aesthetic aspects. These double advantages are particular to those crafts used for packaging date fruit thanks to putting them on the way to sustainable development. In order to revive the Persian traditional packaging of date fruit, this paper describes that how palm leaves have been used for date packaging in its traditional process of production and distribution. It, thus, focuses on the opportunities and challenges of the revival of date packaging traditions based on the six indicators of sustainable packaging management. The result shows that, just two out of these six indicators, can only be evaluated in date packaging traditions, while the others should be redesigned for traditional date packaging to adapt to sustainable development goals.It can be concluded that more than half of date palm crafts for packaging must be revised and renewed; however, there are remarkable opportunities in improvement and optimization of these crafts based on sustainable development goals. As a whole, these opportunities and challenges are presented in a table.