Introduction - page.6 to 8
- Packaging has to a large extent helped shape the world in which we live.
- It enables us to pursue a lifestyle rich convenience and choice that allows us to enjoy.
- Relatively little cost, high-quality goods from across the world, safe in knowledge that they will be fresh, undamaged and uncontaminated.
- However, convenience comes at a price.
- Packaging has come to be seen as the epitome of wastefulness and excess.
- In reality it is the only visible remnant of a string of energy and resource hungry processes that contribute to creating the goods we buy.
- When consumers buy a product, they often do not think about: raw materials, irrigation, energy, fuel and pollution.
- Packaging is a concern to the environment.
- Recycling process encourages consumers to be unfair judgemental.
- Good packaging = recycling bin // Bad packaging = waste bin.
- Green is in one senses simply another word for sustainable, but the political area (and it is a political word) it extends to global environment protection, support for a low-carbon economy and social responsibility.
- Bioregionalism - promotes local trading and agriculture above sourcing goods from the other side of the world and is key area in green philosophy.
- Sustainability - in context of the environment, is the ability to replace the resources used in a product's manufacture, and so ultimately make a neutral or positive contribution to the environment. Creates additional energy material acquires during its production, harvesting, conversion and transportation, creating truly sustainable packaging (not a realistic goal).
- Environmentally friendly = 'less environment damaging'
Making Progress - page.10 to 11
- It's branding power is unquestionable, and it can also be functional, protective, informative, creative, even witty.
- People's concern is now keenly and rightly focused on protecting the environment, but in the past other issues, like food safety, contamination, security, even open-ability, have been routine public preoccupations that frequently made headlines in the national press.
- Designers do not hp out of their way to create waste, but they have to make realistic decisions about product protection, cost, transportation, cost, protection and merchandising, and often have to work within existing packaging systems.
- Many manufacturers approve with cutting back their packaging as possible, if it only reduce costs.
- For example - Easter egg packaging in the UK, have environmental pressures from government and public alike have in effect given them permission to suspend mutual competition in manufacturing over presented products, and return to saner levels of packaging and more realistic manufacturing costs.
Chapter 1 : Packaging and the Environment - page.12 to 18
- 'Packaging is a reflection of our consumer society and to a large extent it has helped shape the world we live in. It helps us transport vast quantities of goods from continent to continent and town to town. It preserves and protects our food from contamination. It allows us to inhabit the convenience culture, which or evades every aspect of modern life. It adds value and texture to the products we buy.'
- What is packaging and why do we need it? The positives of packaging: physical protection, tampering, prevent pilfering, extent shelf life, visual appeal, basic product information and handling.
- When convenience trumps necessity
- Each convenience innovation brings more packaging and sandwiches, because of their success, bring more than most. With worker's lunchtimes catered fro by retailers and takeaway outlets, the lunch box is now mainly relegated to school children.
Global warming - page. 20 to 27
- 'It is almost universally accepted that climate change is happening and that it is happening as a result of human activity. Most people are familiar with the potential effects of greenhouse gases, such as cardon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, which traps the sun's rays with the result has the earth gradually heats up.'
- 'Man as consumer and global warming'
- 'All the evidence points towards human activity as the primary cause of global warming, yet we continue to overproduce and waste our ever more precious global resources. We all consume vastly more than we did 20 years ago. As developing countries like China and India grow wealthier, more pressure is put on diminishing food and energy resources.'
- In the context of the debate about global warming, and the human contribution towards it, it has become a symbol of wastefulness. Not without good reason. Packaging involves the production, conversion, transportation and disposal of vast quantities of materials such as card and paper, plastic, glass, aluminium and steel. At each stage of their journey, from cradle to grave, greenhouse gases are created.
- 'We are at the start of adopting a globally sustainable approach to living. Much is still to be done, but atlas we recognise many of the issues. Advances may come with new technology, materials, greener retailing, developments in recycling, legislation or even consumer attitudes.'
- To a large extent, therefore, the ability to effect change will depend on the viewpoint of the three key players: the retailer and manufacturers, the consumers and the legislator.
- Broadening the sustainable approach
- Much more transit packaging is now reusable and corrugated-card outers are often replaced by multi trip plastic containers.
- Consumers - Consumers fall into two main categories: those who do not like packaging but will not let it change their buying habits, and those whose purchasing choices can be affected by product packaging. We will call them average consumer and environmentally active consumers.
- Environmentally active consumers
- They may use home-grown or seasonal produce rather than food that has travelled long distances, and perhaps favour local stores and markets.
- Seek out FairTrade goods.
- Will not support convenience products such as bottled water and disposable nappies.
- Concerned about the damage of packaging that affects the the environment.
Chapter 2 : The Search for Environmental solutions - page. 38 to 42
- 'There should not be a conflict between encouraging people to make choices that are more environmentally friendly and designing for the retail environment. The challenge is knowing how best to make use of the materials and understanding the impact their disposal can have on the environment.'
- 'Reduce, reuse, recycle succinctly encapsulates the best way to both design for the environment and care for it as a consumer. It is an abbreviated version of the waste hierarchy, which is widely acknowledged to describe the full range of options for waste: reduce, reuse, recycle, recover energy, landfill.
- Reduce - 'Easily the best design approach is to use materials wisely and frugally, to avoid having to expend energy and resources on unnecessary packaging. Even recycled uses energy and releases carbon dioxide, and reliance on landfill is not only workable in the long term but also creates its own environmental issues through leakage and methane emissions.
- The most effective way of reducing packaging are:
- Reducing thickness of materials - lightweight
- Considering products should be packed differently
- Reducing overall size
- avoiding unnecessary parts and materials.
- Is it really necessary to shrink-wrap a cucumber?
- One of the commonest examples of perceived over packaging, which crops up time and again, is the humble cucumber.
- In the UK, the Daily Mail pursued a high -profile campaign to cajole supermarkets to remove shrink-wrapping from cucumbers, striking a blow for common sense and people power.
- Necessary - wrapped cucumber lasts more than three times as long as an unwrapped one: harvested, washed, transported and delivered it will stay fresh until the plastic is cut, and loses 1.5 percent of its weight through evaporation after 14 days, whereas an exposed cucumber loses 3.5 percent of its weight after only three days.
- Shrink-wrapping means the energy-consuming process from harvesting to delivery does not have to be repeated so often, and less product ends up in landfill where it will emit damaging methane.
- The Daily Mail's nationwide campaign ultimately persuaded a major supermarket chai, the Co-op, to comply by designing transit packaging for cucumbers that does the same job as the shrink-wrap. The solution is a large, plastic, breathable liner in cardboard box, which is claimed to keep cucumbers fresh for up to 40 days. In practice, these cucumbers do not last long as shrink-wrapped ones, because as soon as they are put on-shelf their rate of deterioration accelerates and they continue to deterioration in the purchaser's fridge.
- Can designer's learn anything from this?
- The cucumber and food waste controversy has sparked discussion about the ways to store cucumbers and food in general, which can provide clues for designers
- One solution stands out as being particularly interesting. This is to keep the cucumbers upright up right in the refrigerator door with the stalk and immersed in water.
- Compared to other fruits, a cucumber draws water through its stem to replace the water it rapidly loses through its skin, so the solution to the perceived over packaging of cucumbers may be as simple as selling them like flowers, from a bucket, instead of sleeving them.
- The cucumber example is significant because it demonstrated that how consumers perceive materials is important in environmental retailing. Some materials, such as glass, hardly seem to register on their environmental radar, while others, particularly plastics, are never off it.
- Reuse - is often promoted as an important way for consumers to cut down on unnecessary waste. Certainly, it is convenient to buy a fruit drink and discard or recycle the pet bottle when it is empty, but if the bottle is kept and refilled from concentrate until it is worn out.
- Recycle - the benefits of recycling - reducing energy use and carbon output, and freeing-up space in increasingly pressurised landfill - are easily understood and most people are happy to contribute, even if only because household waste is increasingly measured. It is not unusual for the amount that is discarded to be limited by the number of rubbish bags allowed per household, or by weight limits or by controls on different categories of waste.
Chapter 3 : Designing creative environmentally friendly packaging - page.74 to 77
- 'There is increasing pressure from client to produce environmentally friendly packaging solutions. So much so that it is rare for packaging designers to receive a project that does not include 'environmentally friendly' as one its main criteria. Clients feel the pressure from both government and public opinion, but they are also concerned to do the right thing. Of course, there are those who see greening-up as a marketing opportunity, and this is acceptable provided it does not lead to disingenuous solutions that mislead the public. A packaging designer should focus on creative solutions that are profitable for the client, but at the same time take care to pursue the greenest solutions possible.
- Brand Recognition and ownership - first and foremost, packaging must be fit for purpose. It has to protect and preserve the product it contains through all stages of transportation, in the retail environment and right through to the time the consumer opens it. Hopefully, a pack will do much more than this by adding value to the brand with engaging graphics, a dramatic pack structure or improved functionality.
- Ownership comes through creating distinctive design elements in packaging, but from a manufacturing and marketing perspective there are persuasive arguments for uniformity, and the structural design of packaging has always been subject to restrictions. Most packs involves some sort of factory process to lesser or greater degree, and the most efficient ones for packaging, shipping and retailing are based on a uniformly inflexible pack structure.
page. 78
- The design process - designers (and specifiers) may have different approaches to a project, but both want to produce work they can be proud of while keeping their client happy. They are used to working to detailed briefs, finding sophisticated ways to interpret the client's requirements and, if necessary, are prepared to argue for solutions that push the brief in unexpected direction.
- Less is more - less is more is easily the most important rule for designing environmentally friendly packaging, but one that is all too easily forgotten. People tend to focus on recycling as an environmental strategy, but it is far better to use less material in the first place. page. 104.
- Use recyclable materials - recycling is clearly an extremely important way of reducing our carbon footprint, but local closed-loop recycling is much better than what is often called downcycling - sending materials long distances to be reprocessed into low-grade products and materials. page. 114
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