Beverage World - October 15, 2007 - (Page 53)

PACKAGING » THE ECO-SHAPE bottle from Nestlé Waters North America saves money and resources. TRENDSPOTTING dropped by about 40 percent since the mid-seventies. “Just a couple of years ago we went from a 204 to a 202 lid and from that change alone we’ve reduced approximately 20 million pounds of aluminum purchases a year,” Darnell says. “We’re always looking for ways to reduce the amount of materials we use. It’s a win-win from a business standpoint.” According to PepsiCo spokesman David DeCecco, since 2002 his company has reduced the weight of its 500 ml Aquafina bottle nearly 40 percent, from 24 to 15 grams, the weight of its 20-ounce Aquafina bottle nearly 15 percent since 2002, from 24 to 20.5 grams, and is working on reducing the weight of that bottle even more. “The weight of our 20-ounce CSD bottle is 23.5 grams today, as it was in 2002, though this bottle now contains 10 percent recycled content,” DeCecco says. “We reduced the weight of this package significantly in the nineties and we’re looking at additional ways to make them even lighter in the near future.” And finally, Coke this year alone has seen about a 10 percent reduction in the amount of plastic it is using through packaging redesign efforts and lightweighting initiatives. “Our aluminum can is 33 percent lighter than when we first introduced it,” says Scott Vitters, Coke’s director of sustainable packaging. “Our eight-ounce glass bottle is now upwards of 57 percent lighter, our two-liter PET bottle is 32 percent lighter and the Dasani bottle’s packaging has been reduced by about 30 percent through new redesigns.” BW BEVERAGEWORLD.COM Turning the Tide by jonathan ford E arlier this year I wrote about integrated “Environ- mentality,” with regard to brand proliferation and design. Design is integral to our ongoing environmental questions because we can design out the bad, excess or unnecessary, and we can design in the sustainable, the pure and the charitable. Your packaging speaks volumes about your brand—the good and the bad. But as a consumer, “the environment” is confusing, with contradicting messages about doing “the right thing,” such as recycling. In the drinks industry many beverages are packaged in glass—a good material to design with and (like aluminium) to recycle and reuse. But what about plastics? Lately, we’ve been hearing about biodegradeable plastics adopted by brands like Biota and Belu. But biodegradebale plastics are nothing without their own dedicated composting sites. Otherwise they just churn out more greenhouse gases in conventional landfills. OK, so what about the non-recyclable plastic bottles, where do they go? The landfill of course! But what if in the future we run out of them in the crowded spaces that we live in, what happens then? Recently returning from my travels to Africa and India, I saw the answer. On a beautiful eight-mile deserted Indian Ocean beach, up at the high tide mark, I was horrified to find vast amounts of packaging polluting an entire pristine space—plastic bottle after plastic bottle, often sharing the glory with a pungent background smell of burning trash (the only effective disposal method). This is the type of problem we face when we create products where there is no return for the packaging. Global brands with huge export markets and unenvironmentally friendly packaging are not only offloading hundreds of thousand of tons of packaging into underdeveloped markets, which can’t deal with the waste management, but also are extracting and paying for huge amounts of packaging material in the first place. We need to design ways where packaging can have a complete lifecycle, where its after-use or disposal is considered as part of the brand life. It’s about changing an archaic mindset, recognizing that consumer demand will be redefined and taking into consideration all aspects and consequences of our waste. The Pearlfisher mantra when designing is to “maximize and minimize”—maximize recyclability and post-consumer waste and minimize the amount of packaging. Imagine what would happen if all global brands lightweighted their packaging by 30 percent. Then imagine what would happen if they all reinvested that 30 percent in waste management systems within their shared developing markets. We could still have seductive looking packaging and maybe, just maybe, still my beautiful eight-mile deserted Indian Ocean beach. I’d like my grandchildren to enjoy that, wouldn’t you? BW Jonathan Ford is Creative Partner of Pearlfisher—a future-focused design consultancy in New York and London. jonathan@pearlfisher.com OCTOBER 2007_BEVERAGE WORLD_53 http://www.beverageworld.com/

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Beverage World - October 15, 2007

Beverage World - October 15, 2007 Table of Contents Global Recycling Trends Editor’s Note CCE’s Recycling Initiative New Beverages: VeeV New Beverage Roundup Market Metrics: Green-Minded Consumers Cover Story: Earth’s Brewer Adina World Beat Beverages • Fetzer Vineyards Kim Jeffery, Nestlé Waters North America Sambazon Icelandic Water Holdings John Compton, PepsiCo North America Dennis Puffer, Coors Brewing Co. ITO EN Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. • Cuca Fresca Exports Jeff Seabright, The Coca-Cola Company Mendocino Wine Co. Doug Muhleman, Anheuser-Busch Seth Goldman, Honest Tea Supply Chain: Waste Management Production: Environmental Operations Operations Observations Packaging: Lightweight Bottles Trendspotting R&D: Eco Beverages • Ask the Expert Sales & Marketing: Green POS Materials Distribution: Green Fleets Distribution: Fleet of the Month: Manhattan Beer Distributors FleetBeat The Beverage World Top 100 Classifieds Ad Index

Beverage World - October 15, 2007

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