After a four-year hiatus due to COVID-19, the Pack Expo Intl. tradeshow held this week October 23-26 staged a dramatic comeback with more than 44,000 attendees, surpassing the high of the pre-pandemic 2018 event.

This new edition of the biennial Chicago location boasted 2,200 exhibitors showcasing groundbreaking packaging innovations found across more than 1.2 million net square feet at McCormick Place.

In walking dozens of packed aisles and seeing dozens of new products, PlasticsToday narrows that down to the three featured in this slideshow gallery of clever plastic packaging. These include a truly unique plastic-reducing child-resistant closure, a bucket-busting hybrid corrugated/plastic replacement for 5-gallon plastic pails that uses 88% less plastic, and a shelf-life extending, food-waste-reducing technology for flexible packaging.

We start with a new design for a child-resistant, snap-on cap that is as unusual as any you’ve seen.