My colleagues and I have been grappling with what seems to be a persistent conundrum in the sustainability community: that standardization is both a rallying cry of industry and a warning cry of sustainability advocates. Can standardization (via consistent metrics, reporting structures, etc.) help to drive innovation in the long run, or does it instead reinforce the status quo, thwart innovation, and result in higher orders of “sufficiency”?
This is perhaps a false dichotomy, however, as it’s not clear that standardization and innovation are truly at odds with each other. Why should we have to choose between our need to standardize processes versus the desire for continued creativity and experimentation? Ultimately we need both for greater innovation and more sustainable practices.
It is not only PR or marketing departments that want greater consensus and alignment about which sustainability issues are important to prioritize and which are more tangential or well-intentioned “eco-noise.” The ever-present challenge of limited resources (time, attention, human, financial, etc.) with which to explore emerging sustainability issues naturally leads companies to seek standardization to ensure that such exploration is profitable.
But in the eagerness to drive sustainability into something that is more predictable, manageable, and efficient, we must realize that we are just stepping onto the learning curve, not cresting the apex of it. Otherwise the impulse to standardize terminology, conceptual frameworks, what’s important to measure, how it gets measured, and progress assessments may well create another dangerous form of inertia called “sufficiency.” If we drive everything too much toward standardization, sufficiency may move us towards the lowest common denominator—and lose the unpredictable innovation that has defined the sustainability movement.
Like forms of democracy, the human energy, creativity, and experimentation necessary for us to evolve our understanding and practice of sustainability is going to be long, messy, and non-linear. To truly balance the “planet, person, prosperity” equation will require patience, humility, and different measures of progress than we are accustomed to using.
Despite the debate of consistency versus creativity, the truth is sustainability has relied on both standardization and innovation as changes to the status quo often follow the rhythm of divergence and convergence. Pragmatism, caution, predictability, and efficiency favor the forces of convergence (standardization). Creativity, disruptive thinking, risk-taking, and experimentation favor the forces of divergence (experimentation). It is this necessary form of co-dependency that leads to innovation of all sorts. So while one side laments the glacial pace of consistency and the other laments the messiness of the process, we must remember that standardization encourages experimentation, and vice versa, which leads us, unpredictably, to new forms of innovation.
Author: user
As a brief review of Economics 101, a free market is one where prices are determined by supply and demand. In the past several years, we have seen a steady rise in the price of many commodities, most notably oil, metals and the products that are in turn impacted by these price increases. Packaging Digest
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Top Five Fun Facts: April
Eric DesRoberts continues his monthly series of facts and tidbits he’s uncovered during his research to better understand products and packaging. You can also check out his past Fun Facts here.
1. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, the liquid refreshment beverage market grew for the second consecutive year to 29.5 billion gallons in 2011. Energy drinks showed the highest growth rate from 2010 at just over 14%.
2. It is believed that nearly 200 million eggs (~17 million dozen) were purchased for Easter celebrations last year. This is dwarf by the 90 billion (~7.6 billion dozen) produced in 2010.
3. March 22 marked the 19th annual World Water Day. Nearly 900 million people currently lack access to clean water, and this number is expected to increase to 2/3 of the world’s population by 2025. Here are other fun facts around water demand:
- The average American household uses 350 gallons of water a day
- Making a pair of blue jeans requires nearly 2,900 gallons of water
- It takes three liters of water to make a one liter of water bottle (before the water is added)
4. Each second, 330 people buy something from a Wal-Mart store. At 2.1 million employees world-wide – this is roughly the cumulative population of the 50 smallest countries.
5. Data from the 2011 International Coastal Cleanup revealed that over nine million pounds of trash were collected along shorelines around the World. Cigarettes, caps and lids, and plastic bottles were the top three most commonly collected items.
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Electrolux's Vacs from the Sea
In researching options for our new office vacuum, we came across Electrolux’s Vacs from the Sea initiative. The purpose of this initiative is to raise awareness about the plastic waste that ends up in oceans and along their shore lines with the hope of increasing recycling efforts.
As the Electrolux team explains on their website: “Our intention is to bring awareness to the situation and the need for better plastic karma. So far, over 60 million people have been reached and we are continuing the initiative following the great response.”
Along with partners, and in some cases local communities, they organized collection efforts using various methods (beach/coastal cleanup, coral reef diving, and trawling) along and in our five oceans. They then took the reclaimed plastic and created vacuums with statements specific to the region from which the plastic was collected, and each one of the five is a unique work of art.
While Electrolux is not currently able to use the reclaimed ocean plastic in mass production they are thinking of auctioning off one of the vacuums to further research in this area.
“Right now, only post consumer plastic on land meets our commercial safety and quality standards. However, as part of our commitment to researching new materials, we should explore how the ocean plastic might be used in the future, and one such step is to make a single concept vac that we can auction out,” says Electrolux’s Cecilia Nord.
Check out their blog on this great initiative.
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A World Without Branding
What would the world look like without branding? What if everything in the store came in plain white packaging?
Brand Spirit can answer that. For 100 days, branding professional and Tumblr blogger Andrew Miller is exploring a world without branding. Each day, he paints a new item white, “reducing the object to its purest form.” He is restricting the project to everyday items he finds, is gifted, has laying around the house, or can buy for less than $10. Call it pop art for branding nerds.
Miller’s project reveals a great deal about how we perceive different items. Looking through the photos, I noticed that I identified some items as a product void of branding, and some items by the brand. For example, I immediately identified the Scotch tape and Heinz ketchup packet as tape and ketchup packet. Or the Conair hair dryer as “that purple folding hair dryer I once had.” They are pretty universal shapes, and show just how important branding can be.
On the contrary, I immediately identified Tabasco and Sharpie as Tabasco and Sharpie. My brain practically superimposed their labeling. Both of these items have pretty iconic shapes associated with the product, making shape and form part of brand recognition.
It’s a familiar phenomenon—similar to a generic trademark. Zipper, aspirin, cellophane, and escalator all became so identified with the product that the trademarked name became synonymous with the product.
What do you see when you look at each item?
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Go Local: Compost
Today’s post features guest contributor Eric Walter, who runs Black Bear Composting, an organics recycling company located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Black Bear Composting helps local business shrink their waste stream by recycling their food scraps via composting.
With all of the benefits of composting commonly given, I have yet to see a story on how composting is a great way to keep things local. Going local—eating local foods, or supporting local businesses—reduces environmental impact by cutting down on transportation. Composting tends to happen locally by its very nature, because the materials being collected for composting are very heavy and can’t be transported long distances economically.
Our clients are taking the densest, heaviest materials (typically food scraps) out of their waste stream and setting them aside for a direct trip to our compost windrows—less than 40 miles away from most customers. The rest of the waste takes an initial trip to a local transfer station about 18 miles away. From there the food scraps we recycled would have otherwise had an additional 70 miles to travel beyond the transfer station for final disposal.
Separating the densest, heaviest part out of the waste stream also cuts the transportation costs of remaining materials. With wet, heavy food out of the mix, dumpsters are lighter to move, thus burning less fuel. Use a compactor on the (now lighter) remaining waste, and you can even collect less often—reducing the transportation footprint even more.
By giving us their food scraps, one of our clients—a 600-student middle school—has reduced its waste by 1,300 pounds per week. That’s 1,300 pounds not traveling an extra 50 miles, for just one school. Imagine that environmental impact multiplied by all schools, business, and households.
By reducing transportation, composting is a great way to shrink your environmental footprint. It deserves to be part of the conversation about ways to go local.
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Gaming for Sustainability
I hate it when I’m wrong. Who doesn’t? But in this case, I’m happy to admit I was wrong about “gamification,” a concept I was introduced to at the Sustainable Brands ’11 conference in Monterey last June. My reaction was disbelief that gamification—using games to encourage users in certain behaviors—could really influence something as significant as sustainability. Now, I’m thinking gamification may really have a positive, even transformational role to play in promoting and achieving sustainability. What made me reverse my thinking? An initiative being championed and led by former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (aka The Gubenator).
I just got clued into a venture Mr. Schwarzenegger is heading with DONG Energy, a Denmark-based leader in renewable technologies, particularly wind energy, and some leaders from the United Nations. It’s a virtual/alternative universe game, along the lines of “Second Life.” Players, or perhaps the more accurate term is avatars, will be able to enter “SUSTAINIA,”an alternative universe where they will be able to apply and implement existing sustainability technologies and best practices to create a virtual reality of what our real world could look like if there was more widespread adoption and implementation of these technologies and practices.
What a great education tool for individual and corporate citizens of all ages and vocations! Due to launch sometime between June and October of this year, it might just be the first online game this IT Luddite actually engages in. I’m really excited. And, it’s got me wondering…is there an opportunity for a business-engaging NGO like GreenBlue to develop a parallel game targeted at Chief Sustainability Officers and other sustainability executives, leaders, and champions, through which they could create an virtual reality version of their companies, and create and demonstrate scenarios by which business and industry can actually redefine growth for a more sustainable future?
Last month Senior Project Manager Minal Mistry and I spent ten days in Hong Kong launching the Asian premiere of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s popular training course, The Essentials of Sustainable Packaging. SPC members had suggested bringing the course to China as part of the SPC’s International Education and Outreach initiative, and it brought the total number of countries in which the course has been offered to four. The course was offered twice in Hong Kong, once in a general session coordinated by the Hong Kong Productivity Council and once in a private session for a retail company, and additionally we spent a significant amount of time training a cadre of six professionals who will continue to teach the course throughout China with the SPC’s Hong Kong-based partner, Sustainable Packaging Limited.
Ten days proved to be ample time to feel immersed in an unfamiliar culture, and we experienced many interesting cultural differences, including one specifically related to packaging: the prevalence of beverages in aseptic cartons. On day one when we arrived to meet the future course trainers and commence the “train-the-trainer” portion of our visit, we were quickly offered a citrus-infused herbal tea—in a good old punch-the-straw-through-the-top juice box.
The more we traveled around Hong Kong, the more we realized that this choice of beverage container wasn’t at all out of the ordinary for Hong Kong consumers. Vending machines frequently contained aseptic cartons with every non-carbonated beverage imaginable, and I know I personally enjoyed several juices, teas, and coffee-based drinks from aseptic cartons—all while trying to take myself seriously and not feel like a kid chugging apple juice.
What’s the reason for the difference in “beverage container culture”? My bet is that the Asian preference for non-carbonated beverages plays a role, as might their preference for room-temperature drinks (now think about the sustainability implications of that preference—no refrigeration necessary!). Most of all though, there’s some kind of underlying perception in the US that juice boxes are for kids, and that perception simply does not seem to exist in Hong Kong.
It turned out that the ubiquity of juice boxes was quite helpful, because the aseptic carton is a wonderful example for an instructor in a packaging course. Taking into account the straw and its wrapper, the container includes at least four different major packaging materials in its construction. It uses adhesives and several colors of direct-printed inks. It’s one of the best examples of cube-efficiency. It highlights the often-overlooked sustainability advantage of shelf-stable packaging that does not require refrigeration. The particular carton you see in these photos had thoughtful end-of-life messaging (something to the effect of “pull corners out and flatten before disposal”). It even became the centerpiece of a conversation about packaging legislation and how we try to define categories of packaging (e.g. does the straw wrapper count as beverage packaging?). And of course, it’s a prime example of the changing landscape of recycling.
So thanks go to the Hong Kong culture for providing us with ample opportunities to discuss the aseptic carton in the context of sustainability. And thanks Hong Kong, for reminding me that it’s okay to sip from a juice box while wearing a suit.
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SPC Unveils Spring Meeting Program
The Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) has announced the final agenda for its Spring Meeting 2012, the group’s largest annual event and one of the longest running sustainable packaging conferences. Green Retail Decisions
I recently attended the Store Brands Decisions Innovation and Marketing Summit in Chicago, IL, through which I gained a greater appreciation for private label brands, also called store brands or own brands. The Summit brought together a really interesting group of speakers, that included a number of retailers with successful store brands including Walmart, Family Dollar, and Office Max. The first misconception the speakers shattered is that store brands are mostly “knock-offs,” or “generics.” In reality, many store brands have created products through which consumers not only find value, but also feel good about their purchases and develop the same type of loyalty that national brands often earn.
Before the conference, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition presented a three-hour seminar focusing on packaging sustainability. Highlights of the discussion can be found here. The audience was diverse, and included a number of marketing professionals wanting to know more about how to differentiate based on sustainability. From the blog: “Bedarf said that if the industry worried less about the consumer — which so far does not fully understand sustainability — industry could move forward more quickly. “We should worry less about how we’re going to market it to the consumer and focus more on making it a better package,” she said.” I also challenged the notion that sustainability is solely focused on selling more and saving money, focusing on the business, social, and environmental case for triple bottom line thinking.
It was a harder sell than I thought it would be. While we intuitively know that the value proposition for sustainability of packaging goes far beyond eco-efficiency and less waste, the discussions were a good reminder that businesses will continue to look for marketing differentiation and cost savings when integrating sustainability thinking into their product and package design processes.
