Environmental information in purchasing decisions

As of late, I have been impressed with the initiatives of two stores operating in Canada - great merchandising efforts in an effort to facilitate environmentally conscious consumer decision making.



First, is RONA. They have a line of private label "green" friendly products and in-store they have information about the life cycle of each of these products. Pretty neat! More information here. I hope that they put together a more detailed corporate social responsibility report too, because they have a lot of initiatives that I would like to know more about.



Today I went to Ikea for the first time in ages and noticed that in the product details they have started including basic environmental information about the product. For example, for cotton placemats they added that it is a renewable resource (unfortunately nothing about heavy pesticide usage). For LED lights, they added the fact that it uses 70% less energy than incandescent lights. I mean, it's not thorough but certainly, the approach to educate is moving in the right direction. And I think it all makes sense in Ikea's philosophy of being extremely efficient in all that they do.

So, all that to say, I'm glad to see movement in the marketplace.

Changing habits with superconcentrates

While I am thoroughly excited that consumer packaged goods companies finally have decided to re-concentrate products again, reduce the amount of water and excess packaging shipped around aimlessly, I have noticed that they have not adjusted the packaging to adjust for the reduced amount needed for use. For example, if I am used to pouring X amount of unconcentrated detergent to do my laundry with one bottle and actually only need 1/2X of the concentrate and its packaged in the same bottle, habit will make me pour X amount of the concentrate. There is a need to readjust the mouth of the bottle to adjust for this.



I have also noticed this same problem with Dish Detergent, Dawn in particular. Dawn has always been marketed as the ultra concentrated dish detergent, however the size of the spout is the same as unconcentrated dish detergent such as Sunlight or Palmolive. To be honest, alternating between these dish detergents, I have never noticed a huge performance difference despite squirting out the same amount of concentrated Dawn versus unconcentrated Sunlight or Palmolive. I wonder if we have to go back to those days of side-by-side advertisements comparing and contrasting the efficacy of dishwashing liquid performance.

On yet another panacea note.....

Bamboo has been touted as the new miracle fiber. Bamboo is strong, grows quickly, and does not require pesticides, which is often the case with cotton. However, I found out the other day that the process of converting bamboo to a fiber is extremely toxic. This is the same with bamboo flooring, where finishes can be extremely toxic.

What can we do?

The fallacy of bioplastics

Recently, I was at a client meeting. The client was a large retailer, and the topic we were discussing was bioplastics. I was surprised to hear that they were against them. In theory, bioplastics are a great idea - they don't require us to change our current consumption of plastics, just substitute them. And they biodegrade!

However, as the fellow who managed recycling for the retailer indicated, bioplastics are a logistical nightmare. He said that there are a wide variety of bioplastics available, and a wide quality of bioplastics available. This makes them hard to recycle. On top of that, they are often mistaken for normal plastics, and thrown into the same stream, often contaminating what is usually a profitable recycling venture. And lastly, some of the claims of biodegradability of these bioplastics are not as good as they seem - apparently the three month time frame for biodegrading is under really specific conditions.

So, in conclusion - until there are standards and facilities for bioplastics, they are not a packaging panacea. What are your thoughts on bioplastics? Will a resin identification code system need to be created for these too?

Kudos to HP!

This article about an HP laptop being featured at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club just came into my Google Reader. I want to see one of these computers and bags in the flesh, but judging by the picture, what an ingenious way to make sure that the packaging gets reused many times! Also, what an ingenious way for consumers to promote the HP name not only through the computer lid, but also through the bag. Next: should HP have created multiple versions of these bags?

The Primer.......and progress on Nissin's front

The past couple of days I've been working on making the primer 100% awesome with the appropriate graphics. Look for it at the end of this week!

On another kudos note, Packaging Probe talked about Nissin's wasteful usage of styrofoam in its cup noodle packaging and it appears that Nissin converted it to paper. Read about it here in Ping Mag.

Kudos to Poland Spring!

On the weekend, I was in New York and had to pick up some bottled water because unfortunately, I forgot my trusty water bottle at home reserved for tap water. Upon opening the fridge and choosing a sport top Poland Spring 700mL bottle, I noticed that they had completely updated their cap! The new one, called the "Grip N' Flip" bottle, not only used much less material, but it also worked better than the old one. The old one always had a cap that you lost, and the retractable top always seemed to use a lot of material. I am certain that PS has seen a reduction in costs too from the less resource intensive bottle.

I hope they can adopt this bottle elsewhere now - since Nestle owns the company, I am certain that they will roll this out elsewhere. You can see the bottle here.