Thinking outside the box – Eco packaging

We attended a series of workshops recently focusing on reducing business costs. One of the additional benefits however is the impact we can all have on the environment. For example, did you know that by reducing your heating by 1 hour per day will reduce your bill by 10% and reduce carbon emissions? Or that 40% of the costs of a company's electricity bill is for lighting alone? Makes you realise how wasteful we all really are.

Another 'wasteful' subject was packaging. Did you know that 80% of packaging is used once and then discarded? Supermarkets have already been in the news recently for not doing enough to reduce packaging (see earlier post on this blog). We can actually make a huge difference not only to the effect on the environment but on costs too. It is possible to use creative, smart design to reduce the effects of global warming. Duracel recently changed their packaging to be all card instead of card and plastic. Disposable cameras are actually re-used, they're given a new card sleeve and new film. Many brands are switching over to pouches instead of jars, shrink wrapping instead of cartons and making smaller packaged 'concentrated' products.

The Persil 'Small and Mighty' concentrate actually allows more products to be shipped in one lorry, therefore reducing the number of lorries needed by 25%. Belkin reduced the size of the box for their router. This allowed them to get more products on the shelf and actually increased sales. Less packaging, less transport, less CO2, and more products per shelf. It's a win-win situation.