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This detailed article from The Guardian describes a research study conducted on household waste - mostly unnecessary packaging materials that still consume oil - in the form of fuel, energy and plastics - in their manufacturing process. Some excellent examples of redesigning bottles and packaging to serve recycling needs, be more eco friendly and ultimately sustainable, moving away from the overkill of plastic. After the gap is the example of the redesigned Evian water bottle.
Although many people feel strongly about packaging from an environmental point of view, few can tell you about their favourite examples full of sustainable promise. Holdway has two. One is the classic WOBO Heineken bottle, designed so that once finished it can be used as a brick - a classic example of upcycling. His second is the current Evian bottle: 'When you dispose of your ketchup bottle, you can't reduce the volume, so at some stage the lorry comes to pick this up and ends up transporting air. At Evian the way they've structured the flutes and the way they've webbed the outside of the bottle means the consumer can easily compress it. It's good branding, too,' he says. 'They've reduced the materials by redesigning the flute, but managed to give it an iceberg shape which conveys the meaning. Every aspect performs a function, giving strength and rigidity to the bottle, and you can crush it at the end of its life. I'd class that as brilliant eco design.'
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Comments
Before becoming an independent consultant, I orchestrated the pack design process for 15 years. Packaging is not always the problem people sometimes think it is. Much product i now has preservation additions taken out, so packaging has to enable the "stuff" inside to remain viable for the required length of time.... so the story is not as straightforward as we might think. Changing our shopping habits, etc probably might impact thing more than the efforts of packaging designers, who have to reconcile design 4 consumer/channel, technology/supply chain, brand/competition,
environment & legislation/ business drivers. A challenging task!
I noticed in India (where we of course were drinking a lot of bottled water) that the bottles are carry an icon/text encouragement to crush before disposing, as in accordionize it. Funny, we never once did that, desite having noticed the instructions. I guess I'm used to not doing it (having read that crushing recyclables makes it harder to extract the material though that's obvious spurious since how do they recycle 'em except to crush 'em?)
Although, I see the relevance to the way the Evian bottle has been developed, I see few if any admirably "sustainable" characteristics, aside from the whole, "redesign of the flute." Where's the bioplastic usage? Or the approach that BIOTA (Blame It On The Altitude) took with the actual material being used (corn-oil based plastic)? The fact of the matter is that we continue to hold these so-called sustainable designs up on some pedestal as if they are the highest conceived concepts of sustainable design we "designers" can come up with. I commend the courageous multifunctionalism of the Evian bottles' design, I'm sure it blazed paths for designs to come, but let's REALLY get together and create as nature does (wasting nothing and creating only what is needed) and actually create something "sustainable" in all avenues of sustainability (Economic, Environmental, and last and most important, Social)...otherwise known as the Tripple Bottom Line. Admittedely, American design has, unlike European design, been based on generating unjustifiable revenues for their stockholders and their owners, which is apparentely not the sustainable way when speaking in terms of The Triple Bottom Line. To truly create a "sustainable" product we must first revise the way we view and do business. Only then will we ever have a chance to actually manifest our visions of sustainability.
Thanks
Rob Irwin
Industrial Design BA