According to Scott Ewen from Emigre, designers
make the world’s most beautiful trash.
Perhaps nowhere is this statement truer than
when it comes to packaging. Fortunately, everyone
from the retail behemoth Wal-Mart to start-up
companies and boutique design shops are beginning
to look for ways to reduce the volume of
stuff we throw away. However, even the most green-sympathetic
designer will quickly find there are no
easy answers or quick fixes when it comes to sustainable
packaging. Even defining the term poses
difficulties. “What’s a sustainable package?” asks
Wendy Jedlicka, a teacher, graphic designer and certifi
ed packaging professional in Minneapolis. “That’s easy—it’s no package at all. Once you embrace that
reality and use it as your goal, you then begin to add
on function as needed.” As Jane Bickerstaffe of the
Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment
in the U.K. notes, “If we all kept a cow and grew
vegetables in our backyards, we wouldn’t need any
packaging at all. The problem that’s been raised in
the public mind is they think packaging is something
we don’t want. But we have to think through what
packaging really does for us.” That includes protecting
products in shipping, offering consumers information,
providing a branding billboard and giving us
a way to carry things home. So the question becomes
not how to do away with packaging, but how to use
less of the less-harmful stuff.
THE 5 Rs
A designer can start by enlarging his concept of
his role in the continuum of packaging decisions.
“Designers have to realize that everything you create
has a past, present and future,” points out Dion
Zuess of ecoLingo, a green design studio in Phoenix,
Ariz. To become more sustainable, designers must
consider and improve each step along the entire
product journey. John Moes, creative director at
John Moes Design and member of The Mighty
ODO—a loose collective of designers, writers, artists
and others using all means creative to reconnect
people with nature—says: “Packaging, like any
other design problem, will need to be rethought
with a sustainable systems approach.” Moes asks
designers to “expand and evolve creative processes
to include strategies like optimizing material and
energy resources; sourcing materials that are produced
responsibly with environmental best practices,
fair labor and trade; choosing materials that
are nontoxic, bio-based and made from renewable
resources; and designing for resources recovery or
reintegration back into nature after end use.”
These goals may seem lofty, but they’re so important
that plenty of designers are working towards
them. o2—a group of designers and others dedicated
to fostering environmental sustainability—offers some
practical advice: Restore by using materials and supporting
firms that reduce or improve our natural capital;
Respect what we have by examining all the impacts
that packaging may have; Reduce the amount of
materials, layers of packaging, weight of package, fuel
used in transport, etc.; Reuse something that’s already
been made, and make your package easy and desirable
to reuse; and Recover the materials used through
recycling, composting or reusing. While some of these
steps are beyond a graphic designer’s control, doing
something, anything, is important. “Designers can
ask basic questions,” says Bickerstaffe, “such as: ‘Do
you know where your paper is sourced? Can I make
it lightweight? How can I make it fit more efficiently
on a [truck]? Can we do this without a metal cap on
the glass bottle because it makes it harder to recycle?’”
After all, improving a small thing, many times, adds
up to big effects.
SUSTAINABLE SUBSTITUTES
One of the most important and simple ways a
designer can move beyond conventional packaging
solutions is to consider alternative materials. PLA
(polyactic acid) is fast becoming the favored alternative
to plastic. Clear so consumers can see the product
and stiff enough to stand up to processing equipment,
PLA is made from renewable resources such as
corn, and uses fewer fossil fuels and generates fewer
greenhouse gases in its production than traditional
plastics and some other polymers. PLA can be composted.
However, even this product has its detractors,
who point out that huge amounts of petroleum-based
fertilizers and gas-guzzling equipment are used in the
production of those “natural” resources.
Fortunately, other materials are coming to
commercial viability. Shannon Boase, president of
Earthcycle Packaging in Vancouver, notes that “plastic
has been around for 60 years, and it takes a long time
to unseat the convenience and dependency that we’ve
developed. Our idea of what packaging is and should
do needs to change.” Her company is providing one
such alternative. She discovered that palm-oil manufacturers
were creating an enormous amount of waste
as they harvested fruit. Surrounding the palm fruit is
a “giant husk that looks like a hedgehog.” This husk is
made of long-stranded virgin fibers that have the same
tensile strength as titanium alloy. They can be steam
cleaned, chopped, pulped and turned into slurry that
can be molded or sheeted into effective packaging.
Not only is this packaging making use of a waste
product that would otherwise be burned, but it can
be home composted. This is an essential difference—because PLA only breaks down with sustained moisture
and high heat, it must be industrial composted;
Earthcycle Packaging breaks down in the more variable
conditions of the backyard pile.
One company that’s using the benefits of
both PLA and other materials is Cargo Cosmetics.
According to Hana Zalzal, president and founder,
“We examined the standard lipstick case and asked
ourselves, ‘How can this be better?’” Research led to
a two-package, three-tiered solution. Their PlantLove
line of lipsticks comes in a tube made of PLA and an
outer carton made of biodegradable paper embedded
with real flower seeds. Simply moisten the box, plant
in the garden and watch your wildflowers sprout.
In addition, a portion of the sale of each lipstick is
donated to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
“This lipstick case is, for us, a way of protesting
against global warming and environmental issues,”
notes Zalzal. Groovy graphics were an important part
of delivering their message. “We were reminded of
how, in the ’60s, people would take the time to protest.
So we wanted the graphics to have that ’60s feel.
Plus, a love-in kind of graphic seemed appropriate.”
MARKETPLACE FOR SUSTAINABLE
PRODUCTS
Another company that’s taking a holistic approach
to sustainability is Distant Village Packaging in
Chicago. When president Rich Cohen took a year
off to travel the world, he discovered many skilled
artisans along the way. When he returned to the
States, he started a business selling handcrafted
gifts. “My original goal was to preserve handmade
crafts,” he says, “but then I decided this was not
the best way to support the artisans. Even though
we had great success, we were selling a dozen items
at a time. Then we discovered the opportunity for
using the same materials to make custom packaging.”
His company now sells a variety of tree-free,
handmade boxes, which are sustainable not just
in materials, but also because “they’re so damn
gorgeous, they won’t get thrown away. If you
make something beautiful, it will get reused.” For
Cohen, material choices are just the beginning.
“We do our best to use environmentally conscious
materials,” he says, “but that’s only part of our
goal.” He’s preserving indigenous craft traditions
by creating a marketplace for them. As these artisans
make more money, they spend it in their own
communities, which creates more economic growth
in remote places. And as more parents are able to
send their children to school, the cycle of opportunity
and growth is furthered. However, he doesn’t
wear much of this do-gooding on his sleeve.
“Externally, you don’t feel any of that in our presentation
and marketing,” he says. “All you see is a
slick packaging design company that just happens
to connect the richest classes with the neediest
classes. It is ironic that we have vendors who don’t
have shoes, and yet their artisan packaging is being
bought at exclusive department stores by women
wearing $2000 shoes.”
GOOD FOR ITS OWN SAKE
Because eco-design is good design, there is no need
to overdo sustainable messages or overuse the tropes
of green design. When Laurie Varga of Anatomy
Communications in Toronto set out to create a
marketing campaign for wine in a plastic, recyclable
bottle, she intentionally did not mention the
eco-benefits. “The packaging is lightweight, which
reduces shipping space and weight,” she notes.
“The bottle is shatterproof, and PET (polyethylene
terephthalate) can be recycled into polar fleece,
which makes it a true recycled product instead of a
downcyclable product that loses quality each time it’s
processed.” However, even with all these benefits,
the marketing for the wine focused on convenience.
“We had to keep the look and feel of this program
sophisticated to reflect the quality of the product and reputation of the brand,” she says. “It was not
targeted to tree huggers like myself.” And in spite of
some long-held misconceptions, reducing packaging
and making environmentally conscious choices need
not be more expensive. Wal-Mart, for instance, is
embarking on an ambitious plan to reduce packaging
five percent by 2013 in expectation of saving
billions of dollars.
To make the most of sustainable packaging
opportunities, designers need to do what they do
best: Get creative. “People get stuck with ink,” notes
Cohen. “There’s so many more ways to communicate
through a package with shape, design, materials.
When you see packaging from reclaimed banana fiber,
that’s communicating something important about
what’s inside the box.” Zuess says that if you forgo
adhesives that may contain harmful, volatile organic
compounds and can gum up recycling processes, you
have the chance to utilize “… design elements that
have some hand work, like grommets or swing tags.”
She also suggests sourcing packages that will be kept
and reused after their original contents are consumed,
such as tin containers or collectible, recyclable glass
jars. There are plenty of fun ideas to be found on
Treehugger.com, which runs a regular best and worst of packaging contest that solicits ideas from readers.
Lush, a natural soaps and lotions manufacturer, makes
news and extols the virtues of no packaging by having
their retail staff work in the buff, covered by nothing
more than an apron. Designer Olivia Cheung makes
intricately cut light bulb packaging that doubles as a
lantern. Finalist Tiffany Threadgould creates earrings
from fruit Cheerios and packages them in repurposed
cereal boxes. Yeo Valley Organic yogurt uses recycled
cardboard to reinforce cups made from the thinnest
possible polypropylene. Netflix saves money and
resources while increasing convenience with their
self-mailing, self-return-mailing, no-plastic-required
CD packaging.
Designers must increasingly recognize that
doing good for the planet is doing good for themselves.
As Eric Benson, an educator at the University
of Illinois and the keeper of the Re-nourish.com
website, points out, “The long and short of it is that
if designers don’t act more sustainably, they’ll destroy
their professions. As designers, we help create everything.
There’s nothing you can point to that isn’t
designed or made, and if we go along the same path
of designed obsolescence, we’ll just delete ourselves.
The planet will not go away, but we will.”
