Green drive to promote no-fuss packaging: It's cheaper
By Dominic Nathan
THERE is more to the sparse packaging of Pembrush, Singapore’s patent winning electric toothbrush, than meets the eye.
Its tubular cardboard casing and clear-plastic top are totally recyclable.
It has also done away with styrofoam, commonly used in packing electrical products. Instead, it has opted for a corrugated cardboard interior which provides the same protection for the product, but is recyclable, unlike styrofoam.
The Pembrush is one of an increasing number of products here which come with minimal packaging, and then in recyclable materials too.
To further promote this practice, the Packaging Council of Singapore, a non-profit industry grouping, is looking into starting a packaging design competition for schools and tertiary institutions.
Mr C. S. Wong, the council’s head, said the competition would help generate public awareness of the environmental benefits from the practice.
On the industry’s efforts, Mr Wong said: "It has been an ongoing process. But in the past, companies were doing it for purely economic reasons, because packaging added to their production costs."
But the growing environmental consciousness has provided a new impetus for research into "light-weighting", the use of new materials, designs and processes to reduce the weight of packaging, he added.
A spokesman for packaging manufacturers Tetra Pak said that through light-weighting, the weight of an average food can has dropped from 68.9 g in 1970 to about 56.6 g in 1990.
Tetrapak now packs and distributes 1 kg of milk in a 28 g pack. Mr Fong Ban Meng, a director of Su Yeang Design, a packaging design consultancy firm, said that over packaging was not a major problem with local companies as they were very cost conscious.
But some markets, like Japan, and some product lines, like cosmetics, value packaging highly, he noted.
"The elaborate packaging is part of the image and lifestyle they wish to portray," he said.
Ms Ann Enkoji, business development director for Addison Design Consultants, designers of the Pembrush packaging, said: "While we have a strong corporate policy to explore economical types of packaging, our local clients also have a strong financial rationale for seeking minimal packaging."
‘The less we spend on packaging, the less the consumer pays for a product’ - Body Shop spokesman.
She added that the trend in product marketing is to move away from trying to dominate competitors’ products on the store shelf with large packaging.
Instead, colour, size, design and other visual elements now influence consumer choice more.
One company that sells on the quality of its products rather than packaging is The Body Shop, which deals in beauty products.
The packaging used in 83 per cent of Body Shop products are recyclable; of this, more than 60 per cent are in the form of refillable containers.
"The less we spend on packaging the less the consumer pays for a product," said a company spokesman.
Minimal packaging is slowly catching on in the music industry.
A decision taken by the US recording industry to replace the "long box" package for compact discs — cardboard boxes twice the length of the discs — with one roughly half the size later this year, will mean local stores can expect more environment-friendly stocks next year.
An industry official said that compact discs imported from the United States account for 10 per cent of discs sold here.
Source : The Straits Times, June 3, 1992
Recycling Point Dot Com
(C) 2000 All Rights Reserved