Getting an Eco-friendly Package Deal
02/08/2010

If I went on a bit in my last blog about advertising people being the white knights of the media, it was only to counterbalance the fact that we’re often held up as scapegoats for the worst excesses of the consumer age.

The word on everyone’s lips at the moment – including the government’s – is wasteful, unsustainable packaging, for which we as packaging designers (amongst our other sins) will no doubt be given the usual public pillorying. However, let me get in first with a bit of special pleading, and point out that there is a difference between packaging and branding.

First let me take you back to the supposed Golden Age of the general store, when goods were sold loose from hessian sacks and barrels, or you brought along your own jug or bottle for refill. It’s the dream of the environment zealot, but imagine such a set up in your local Tesco or Sainsbury’s.

It’s bad enough with rampant kids ‘grazing’ on packaging goods. Just think of the fun they would have with grain scoops and barrel taps! My wife recently reprimanded a child in our local supermarket for chewing and replacing a carrot in the vegetable rack, only to get an earthy earful from its minder, who obviously wasn’t too particular herself.
My point is that in our day and age, packaging isn’t an option, it’s a necessity. It contains, identifies, preserves and protects (hands up anyone who wants to abandon the tin can or the vacuum sealed jar), and lastly, of course, it promotes. But sustainable packaging and branding don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Take the ‘bag for life’ for instance. All the supermarkets issue them (and give you bonus points for reusing them). And if you want green with a designer label, snap up a ‘Mors-bag’, a carrier bag made by Prince Charles from old curtains at Clarence House, or recycle a Harrods or Galeries Lafayette bag.

As for packaged goods, you have to overprint or label them, if only for identification purposes, so why not add a bit of colour whilst you’re about it?

Admittedly, there are packaging abuses – vacuum sealing fresh fruit or the dispensing of pharmacy goods (a bottle with a label within a printed box within a bag with another label) are a couple of examples that come to mind.
But perhaps the worst offender is the perfumery industry, which is 99% packaging and 1% content at absolutely outrageous prices. (I was reading at www.worldwatch.org that the money we spend on cosmetics and pet food in one year could be used to wipe out world poverty – instantly. Now there are your real culprits!).

When the government finally get around to banging manufacturers heads together, perhaps it can get them to produce standard issue jam jars, beer, wine and sauce bottles, and offer money back on their return like they used to, rather than crushing them down and remaking them from scratch. When you think of the success of bottle banks (which we use without being paid to), why shouldn’t a collection scheme work just as well?

Of course, those bottles and jars will still need labels, and if you’re looking for eco-friendly designers, I hear Royston Simpson Creative are very good.