By Colin Dunn ”Jupiter Consumer Goods is a culture-jamming brand designed to subvert and critique mainstream consumer habits. The brand is inspired by Jupiter, the deity of ancient Roman mythology. In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Jupiter saves the earth from destruction by killing Phaëton, the reckless son of the sun god.”
All posts in Sustainability Information
The opposite of Greenwashing
On 21 februari, 2011
In biodegradable, Secondary Package, Sustainability Information
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What is this? Looks like styrofoam, right? But it is 100% biodegradable cornstarch chips. Water soluble, compostable, yet with same properties as traditional packaging chips. It’s great to replace styrofoam with biodegradable material. But here comes the problem; the perception! Normal people will never notice the difference. When developing environmentally friendly packaging there are two parallel missions; to look sustainable, and to actually be sustainable. If missing one of these factors, you downgrade the product. And you mislead the consumer. It’s a little bit like making veggie sausages!
Green Fatigue
Tired and confused of all green choices you should make? Organic, bio, eco, environment friendly products everywhere? Who can you trust? Green choices not convenient, too bad quality and too expensive? Too much work? Consumer Reports writes about green fatigue: ”You know you suffer from green fatigue when you hide the empty jelly jar in the trash, rather than rinse and recycle. Consumers now push back, and they are right to question whether green products are better for the environment. Many green products found on store shelves are guilty of green washing, according to TerraChoice, an environmental marketing agency. Moreover a recent report from GFK found that more and more people think green products are too expensive and they don’t work as well as conventional products.”
EU Organic Products Logo
Here is the winner of the EU organic logo competition. The winning design is by Dusan Milenkovic, a student from Germany, who gained 63% of the overall vote for his ”Euro-leaf” logo. From 1st July 2010, the organic logo of the EU will be obligatory on all pre-packaged organic products that have been produced in any of the EU Member States and meet the necessary standards. See website
www.trendwatching.com
Good read about tendencies in the society. Trendwatching’s interpretation what’s going to happen during 2010. Trend number 6 is called ”Eco-Easy” and means that if the world should manage to reach some meaningful sustainability goals this year, corporations and governments will have to forcefully make it ‘easy’ for consumers to be more green, by restricting the alternatives. I recommend to read through the article, some good insights there.
Newsweek’s Top 500 Sustainable Companies
Newsweek released its 2009 Green Rankings this week, rating the 500 largest U.S. companies on the sustainability of their practices. 4 of the top 5 slots were given to technology companies. 1. Hewlett-Packard, 2. Dell, 3. Johnson & Johnson, 4. Intel, 5. IBM. View the entire list here
What is Greenwashing?
It is used to describe the actions of a company which advertises positive environmental practices while acting in the opposite way. The term is generally used when significantly more money or time has been spent advertising being green, rather than spending resources on environmentally sound practices. Greenwashing was coined by NY environmentalist Jay Westerveldin an essay regarding the hotel industry’s practice of placing green placards in each room, promoting reuse of guest-towels, ostensibly to ”save the environment”. Westerveld noted that, in most cases, little or no effort toward waste recycling was being implemented by these institutions.
Greenbox
Ecolect is a great site for green materials. They have initiated a service called Greenbox, which is great too! You sign up (pay $849.95) and every 3 months, you get a collection of 8-12 cutting-edge materials, shipped direct to you. Innovative and environmentally friendly material – ideal for design, engineering, and marketing teams. The samples will highlight trends that other material producers are setting, and serve as inspirational and informational reference for people working with product development.
What is Sustainable Packaging?
I repeat this post from January 2009. It is a good list to keep in mind. What Sustainable Packaging Design is according to SPC – Concluded in 8 points;
- Is beneficial, safe & healthy for individuals and communities throughout its life cycle
- Meets market criteria for performance and cost
- Is sourced, manufactured, transported, and recycled using renewable energy
- Maximizes the use of renewable or recycled source materials
- Is manufactured using clean production technologies and best practices
- Is made from materials healthy in all probable end-of-life scenarios
- Is physically designed to optimize materials & energy
- Is effectively recovered and utilized in biological and/or industrial cradle to cradle cycles.
more detailed info on their web site
Definition Sustainable Packaging Design
What Sustainable Packaging Design is according to SPC – Concluded in 8 points;
- Is beneficial, safe & healthy for individuals and communities throughout its life cycle
- Meets market criteria for performance and cost
- Is sourced, manufactured, transported, and recycled using renewable energy
- Maximizes the use of renewable or recycled source materials
- Is manufactured using clean production technologies and best practices
- Is made from materials healthy in all probable end-of-life scenarios
- Is physically designed to optimize materials & energy
- Is effectively recovered and utilized in biological and/or industrial cradle to cradle cycles.
more detailed info on their web site
Ethical Packaging
Found this diagram. Research and Markets is presenting a very interesting read regarding trends in ethical and sustainable packaging. Sustainable and ethical packaging is being driven by consumer environmental concern, retailer pressure and the development and promotion of manufacturer. It’s a good push, yet very confusing, because it’s so many different initiatives. There is a high need of innovation in advanced technology and by that be able to reduce the amount of material.
Eco Glossary
A jungle of terms. Let´s have a look at different strategies of defining Eco-friendly products. For the consumer it is really hard to judge which choice that is the right one. Easy to realize, there is not one single answer. Knoend - an Eco-focused design firm is presenting this glossary on their web page.