Make More by Selling Less
Packaging case study: Yogurt containers and soda cans
Product packaging has been getting lighter for years, but designers continue to streamline food, beverage, and household-product containers, creating vessels that protect their contents yet generate less waste from warehouse to table.
This trend, called dematerialization, reduces the weight and volume of a package by essentially using fewer materials.
Food industry: Yogurt packaging
Stonyfield Farm pioneered dematerialization in its industry when it switched from plastic lids that covered inner seals to single-layer aluminum foil closures. After commissioning a series of life-cycle assessments on varieties of single-serving yogurt tubs, Stonyfield found that foil tops could cut costs by more than $1 million a year without compromising package quality. The new containers were lighter and required less energy and water to produce.
Beverage industry: Aluminum cans
Crown Holdings, a supplier of aluminum cans, redesigned its can ends to use 10% less aluminum than comparable products — without changing the diameter of the can neck and avoiding costly equipment replacements or new shipping packaging. More than 100 million of these SuperEnd® can ends were produced between 2001 and 2006, reducing aluminum use by 25,000 tons.
Coca-Cola tweaked its iconic glass bottles to make them 40% stronger, 20% lighter and 10% less expensive to make. The redesign reduced the company's use of glass by 89,000 metric tons in 2006.
Slimming down the products themselves
Re-engineering products to reduce the need for packaging is an important related trend.
General Mills changed the shape of the noodles in Hamburger Helper meals and:
- Reduced the volume of the product's package by 20%
- Saved 890,000 pounds of paper fiber annually
- Reduced shipping volume enough to keep 500 trucks off the road each year
Wal-Mart collaborated with Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and other major laundry-detergent makers to sell liquid laundry detergent only in concentrated form. Eliminating substantial water content from the soaps considerably cut packaging and shipping volume. Wal-Mart estimates that manufacturers producing detergent to be sold in its stores will save 400 million gallons of water, 95 million pounds of plastic, and 125 million pounds of cardboard over the next three years.
Posted: 13-Jul-2007; Updated: 19-Nov-2008
