The switching of beverages from glass to plastic containers might not seem like a big deal to you. But that seemingly small change makes perfect sense to some.

“Everything’s been moving toward plastics,” said Diana Twede, an associate professor of packaging. “There has been a tremendous move from glass bottles to plastic bottles because they’re lighter in weight and they’re not dangerous and breakable.”

And Twede said this move just might prove valuable not only to her, but to the beer drinkers of MSU.

“We wish that all of the students in East Lansing would buy them so they wouldn’t pop my bicycle tires,” she said. “Every Monday morning there’s broken bottles all over the sidewalk and it drives me crazy.”

Welcome to the world of packaging.

Cardboard boxes or birthday presents may come to mind when you match an image to this word, and it all seems rather bland.

But MSU packaging majors are responsible for anything from housing mac ’n’ cheese noodles, to 40 oz. Bud Light bottles and boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

“You have to realize that every single thing in the world is packaged at some point in the supply chain,” Twede said. “The food products, pharmaceuticals and the normal consumer products that you think of of course are packaged, but so are things like building materials, carpeting, lighting, hardware and cement.”

MSU’s School of Packaging, the first school of its kind in the world, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

And to help commemorate the event, the MSU Museum is hosting “The Age of Packaging,” an exhibit showcasing the evolution of hundreds of different containers.

“We wanted to show the early forerunners of early-day packaging,” said museum curator of history Val Berryman, “going back to ancient and primitive containers, which include Egyptian clay containers from tombs, Roman glass perfume bottles from around 1 B.C. and then leather pouches, gourd containers, clay pots and things of that sort.

“We want to show how people stored personal effects, clothing and food and so forth long before commercial packaging.”

Berryman said modern packaging techniques also will be explored in the exhibit.

“In each case, we try to get an idea of what the current developments are in that area of packaging,” he said. “We might show how plastic bottles are beginning to replace glass bottles, and at the end we show modern packaging and a little history of the School of Packaging.”

The 1,000-plus items in the exhibit all were donated by private collectors and the packaging school or already were owned by the museum, Berryman said.

“Some of the pieces of Native American pottery are quite old and rare and probably some of the glass bottles are real collectors’ items,” he said. “So far we’ve been getting really good comments. Everybody can find something they remember.”

The exhibit opened Feb. 24 and will continue until Oct. 27.

Along with the move to plastic containers, a second packaging trend displayed at the exhibit proving valuable to consumers is the use of pouches for everything from juice and crackers to cat food.

“The stand-up pouches are definitely here to stay,” Twede said. “You can put just about anything in the pouch if you’ve got the right barrier properties built into it. And those new stand-up pouches offer the opportunity to show the billboard the same way as a cereal box would, but using a lot less material.”

Twede said the 6,000 graduates of the packaging school have been instrumental in helping develop new packaging strategies for their employees after graduating from MSU.

“Packaging is really kind of cosmic once you start looking at supply chains and all the places packaging shows up,” she said. “Everything comes in a package, so the job opportunities are pretty much limitless and what our alumni do is not try to think of more packages, but to try to think of ways to most economically and environmentally package the things that we do have.”

And though cereal boxes, Coke bottles and milk containers continue to change throughout the years, some things are too good to change.

Museum communications director Lora Helou said consumers continue to notice the never-changing logos of their favorite items.

“What I find really, really interesting is to take a look at something like this over time and still see that scripted ‘K’ in Kellogg’s, the Coca-Cola scripts or the block letters in Heinz,” she said. “The size of the bottle or the size of the package may have changed, but still that identity is really, really strong.”

And visitors at the exhibit agreed.

“You’re looking at stuff and you say, ‘I remember that, I remember that,’” said Daytona Beach, Fla., resident Elizabeth Collins. “It’s just really cool to see the progression of all the products.”