ASTM International (ASTM), originally known as the American Society for Testing and Materials, is an international standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services.
ASTM has a dominant role among standards developers in the USA, and is considered to be the world's largest developer of standards. Using a consensus process, ASTM supports thousands of volunteer technical committees, which draw their members from around the world and collectively develop and maintain more than 12,000 standards.
The ASTM D-10 standards Committee is responsible for the promotion of knowledge in, and the development of standards for packaging. Standards shall include terminology, practices, test methods, specifications, guides, and classifications (including dimensions). This work specifically includes: 1) defining materials and processes that consider both item and consumer impact; the result being a package and packaged product that are acceptable for delivery, 2) generating closely related shipping systems design criteria, 3) developing materials handling standards related to distribution, including measurement of the packaging environment, 4) assessing the suitability of packaging related standards through round-robin laboratory evaluations, quantitative testing and instrumentation applications, and, 5) establishing standards on reuse, recycling and disposal of materials related to packaging.