Redesign for Eco Effectiveness
November 2008 I made a presentation in Helsingborg Sweden titled "Packaging Muscle" and in that presentation I touched on Greenwashing.
Greenwash as we know is an expression used to describe the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.
I then stretched the definition of Greenwashing to include not going the distance when addressing green solutions. Here’s an example of what I mean. Brand owners that manufacture a product constructed from recycled or natural materials feel that is where their obligations to the environmental issue end. Maintaining status quo is not an option, what about taking the load off packaging?
For example, rolls of toilet paper. Every house hold, office, municipal building and University are consuming rolls of toilet paper on a daily basis. Now consider the number of roll cores that today end up as post consumer waste.
The challenge would be to make these roll cores redundant. Think about having the dispensing arm function as the existing roll core, or insert a plastic roll core at time of use, many options to consider here. Even better why not slightly stiffen the first few squares of tissue?
Strategically selecting commodity products to “green” will significantly contribute to source reduction. How many examples are there like this? You tell me, post your list as a comment and let’s see if the brand owners pick up on this. Toothpaste boxes and milk cartons/jugs jump to the top of my list.
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Coreless toiletpaper rolls as a 'green' solution
Jeff Salisbury...Excellent post and comments. We've been using coreless toilet paper in our plant for years. It simply requires the installation of a dispenser setup to handle this type of roll. In addition to saving tons of paper cores the rolls are wound more tightly and much smaller (since the elimination of a 2" core). This creates a much smaller shipping footprint as well!
Agree.....and disagree
Adam Pawlick
Dean -
Good post and great thoughts. I agree with you completely that companies always have to be looking for the next solution. There is no perfect package when it comes to environmental concerns. Sometimes these changes will be step changes (the move from virgin to recycled content, light weighting), sometimes they will be evolutionary changes (petroleum based polymers to renewable based polymers...where appropriate, complete redesign to meet current functionality), and sometimes they will be revolutionary changes (redesigning to meet new functionalities, new materials development, redefining the required function - coreless toilet paper example fits here). So yes, I agree that all companies need to be looking for solutions that are better than they are now, regardless of where they are.
Where I disagree is that not looking for those is Green Washing. Green Washing, to me, is a communication of a benefit to the consumer, when that benefit is either not there, not true, or found by "fuzzy math." An example of this would be a brand owner putting the words "Environmentlly Friendly Bottle" on a bottle that they convert from a 100 gram PET bottle to a 99 gram PVC bottle. The weight change is minimal (but could be used to claim a benefit) and by far and away out done by the move from PET (a recyclable material) to PVC (not commonly recycled, typically considered a chemical bad actor). Greenwashing isn't what a company intends to do, or whether or not they look beyond where they are, it is an incorrect, misleading, or marginal claim to consumer about a benefit that may or may not exist.
It is irresponsible for companies not to constantly look at what's next (both environmentally as well as economically), but its not Greenwashing, in my opinion.
Definitions
Dean Bellefleur
Thanks Jeff & Adam for your supporting comments.
The term Greenwashing was coined by New York environmentalist Jay Westerveld back in 1986 with regards to Hotels placing placards in each room, promoting reuse of guest-towels, ostensibly to "save the environment" when in fact it was a cost cutting tactic. Today Greenwashing is a metaphor of epic proportions.
The definition that I like defines greenwashing "when a company or organization spends more time and money claiming to be “green” through advertising and marketing than actually implementing business practices that minimize environmental impact. " The door is open in this definition to capture products where incremental or radical improvements are possible but not implemented. Why hold back an improvement that can significantly impact the environment in a positive manner?
My intention here is to motivate and inspire every end-user & manufacturer to access a product with respect to it's impact on the environment. Lets face it, consideration to environmental impact in product design has until recently, been a low priority if ever a priority.
designing packaging
Norm Kates...Today packaging must not only be used to save the contents inside, but must be recyclable, in the initial stages of planning the product
Protect what is required
Dean Bellefleur
Hej Norm,
Let’s build on your statement and include “protects what is required”. How many times have you seen items packaged that should never have seen the light of day in the first place? I recall the fast food chain that packaged plastic toys in all their child meals or all those giveaways from trade shows. The life cycle on those items can be measured in hours and where do they end up, you got it landfill sites. Then there is the German chocolate egg with the miniature toy inside, what’s the limit?
At this moment in time I would equate packaging to an elastic band that reached its stretch limit some minutes ago and is accelerating in the opposite direction and we know how that hurts if you don’t let go in time. So yes I agree the more upfront engineering /design the better the end result.
let's the designers involve in
Anonymous...I think recycling is the work of all people in the secity.especially the designers and the brand owners who made them .before they design the products they should think out how to recycle them.Or they redesign the used up products to other use,such as rendesign glass container to wineglass.We have mollions of such resource,so I think the designers can do this better.
BINGO
Dean Bellefleur
Let’s run with the comments from our Anonymous contributor; design for recyclability and source from scrap yards.
If you haven’t already seen the documentary “waste = food” based on the cradle to cradle design concept don’t miss it. It’s absolutely inspiring. The John Hoke ,VP Global Foot Wear Design at NIKE, interview hones in on manufacturing products designed for recyclability. Shoes for example that can be disassembled much like working with Lego building blocks that snap & pop apart. There are other companies that have grasped the significance of including recycling in their product design phase as well; furniture & cloth die for instance.
The beauty of designing for recyclability is that production becomes a closed loop process until such time that the material is totally exhausted and then if can be downgraded for another use. The need to source virgin material is significantly reduced.
This of course leads me to sight our most abundant source for recyclates, scrap yards. Incomprehensible as it seems the North American landscape is littered with scrap yards, be it fields of tires or heaps of scrap metal. Yet as difficult as it is for some to discard an article it’s evident that dealing with the accumulation is more difficult. That is until now. Rather than looking for a secondary use for an article, I propose that we disassemble the articles in order to reintroduce these materials into production processes. The sooner we can manage the waste the faster nature’s wilderness will be returned to us.
Kimberly-Clark Rolls Out Tube-Free Toilet Paper
Dean Bellefleur
"Redesign for Eco Effectiveness" concludes with the launch by Kimberly-Clark of tube-free toilet paper October 2010. Now that validates a great idea.
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