What is packaging design?
Packaging design can be viewed in four different ways:
- a means of protecting the contents of a package
- a contributor to the cost of the end product
- a sales canvas on which to promote the product's attributes and benefits
- a part of the product experience itself
The role of packaging
Packaging plays many functional roles from protecting contents to helping the user employ the product but perhaps its main job is still seen as one to help sell the product at the point of purchase. Most products are meaningless (or at least undifferentiated) without their packaging - just take a look at any shampoo fixture and think about how you’d chose one from another. So, once functional considerations are completed the most important design consideration is how best to create and tell a story that stands out from the crowd.
From aesthetics…
In the 80s and 90s it could be argued that packaging designers concerned themselves mostly with how their craft could help add value in terms of improving aesthetic appeal, to then improve sales. The use of foil bags, embossed and etched bottles, textured papers and wax seals, latest print techniques and new materials were options endlessly considered as designers tried to enhance product perception and standout.
…To ethics
More recently there has been a marked shift in focus towards environmental issues and the role of packaging. Design pundits often quote the egg carton as being a design classic. It is somewhat ironic therefore that this simple eco–friendly, yet beautifully functional design is perhaps also a contemporary benchmark for environmentally sustainable packaging. While the repackaging of many grocery items in foil wrap may still be wholly appropriate in many instances to improve shelf life and product perception, the rise of the 'savvy shopper' in the last few years has forced packaging professionals to look at alternatives. The growth of retailer 'basics' brands and a growing awareness of the impact on the environment of excessive packaging have driven a desire for packs to be wholly recyclable.
The rise of green packaging
But ‘green’ packaging isn’t just about recycling. We now also live in the world of food miles where we measure the distance a product has to travel from source to point of purchase. Therefore truly green packaging needs to consider more issues than recyclability. We need to consider palette maximisation too. In other words how can we design our packs to minimise the amount of air that is shipped during transportation.
Companies like Tesco, Wal-Mart and Ikea can make savings of millions of pounds on fast moving consumer goods by maximising the number of products they can ship per palette and thus saving greenhouse emissions too. So, in the modern day we need packaging to drive top line sales and drive down waste and bottom line cost.
A well designed pack must also address the needs of its life cycle. This life cycle runs from the moment it is used to wrap its product (whether this is by hand or in a factory), to the point of sale, to the point of use, and finally - with current tough environmental laws - to its after-use.
Packaging helps reduce consumers’ carbon footprint, for example:
Packaging makes things last longer. Soap hardens in the air. Wrapping stops it drying out and
keeps perfumes and essential oils inside the pack – so the cauliflower next to it in your shopping basket doesn’t end up tasting of soap!
Packaging can make products look attractive. Lush’s elaborate gift wrapping is part of the product for an occasional treat.
Packaging protects valuable resources. Individual portions of milk may seem like excessive
packaging at first glance but a little plastic pot weighing just one gram helps consumers reduce
their carbon footprint by preventing the milk going to waste. Dairy foods have a huge carbon
footprint – the energy to produce a litre of milk is over 5000 kJ so it’s important that consumers don’t waste it. They are also hygienic. Few of us would relish pouring milk from a half empty jug that had sat on a cafe table for several hours and had been used by numerous customers before us. Packaging also allows UHT milk to last many months.
Over 6 million tonnes of food goes to waste each year from households. Good packaging helps
prevent this by keeping food fresh for longer and by helping us buy food in portion sizes that suit our needs. A cucumber loses moisture very quickly and is unsaleable within 3 days of being picked. A tiny 1.5 gram piece of plastic wrap keeps it fresh for up to 14 days.
Packaging prevents far more waste than it generates. Under-packaging is ten times worse for the environment than the same amount of over-packaging.
What's the carbon footprint of a potato?
total carbon footprint written on the packaging, 75g it says but what it means for a regular customer ?
carbon labeling is now on the shelves in the UK, I think we would have a chance to choose our carbon free products. Well i hope.
Walkers Crisps is the first firm to put carbon footprint figures on its products, with nine more companies set to follow. How are these figures calculated?
On taking a food item off a supermarket shelf, consumers can instantly read in detail the impact it will have on the body. But what about the effect on the planet?
In April, Walkers Crisps began labelling its cheese and onion bags with a carbon footprint - how many grams of greenhouse gases were emitted in its production - and that has been rolled out to other flavours.
THE ANSWER
Impossible to calculate, but agricultural process accounts for 33g per bag of crisps
The calculations are done by the Carbon Trust, a private company set up by the government to reduce the UK's carbon footprint.
It spent several months working out that 75g of greenhouse gases are given off in the production of a 33.5g bag of Walkers crisps, taking into account the energy used in:
1. FARMING: Planting the seeds for sunflower oil and potatoes, the manufacture of fertilisers and pesticides, ongoing management of the growing process, the diesel used by the tractors to pick the potatoes, and storage of the potatoes in sheds and farms.
Graphic showing how carbon footprint of bag of crisps is calculated
3. PACKAGING: Sourcing the aluminium and plastic that goes into the packaging, then making and printing the packets.
4. DISTRIBUTION: Taking bags of crisps in lorries to retail stores.
5. DISPOSAL: From kerbside litter bin, into the back of a dustbin lorry and off to landfill.
Nine more companies, among them Coca-Cola and Cadbury, are committed to following Walkers when the methodology used by the Carbon Trust is approved next year.
Boots already reveals footprint figures on certain products at the point of sale, and Innocent Smoothies has the information on its website.
WHO, WHAT, WHY?
Question Mark - from original architect's doodle design for BBC TV Centre
A regular part of the BBC News Magazine, Who, What, Why? aims to answer some of the questions behind the headlines
"Ultimately the aspiration is that everything you can buy will have a carbon measure with it - 75g is the first number out there and actually there's not much context for it," says Euan Murray of the Carbon Trust. "But when we can start making comparisons across different products, then we can make choices as consumers."
And businesses can identify "hotspots" in the production process in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and costs, he says.
Tread lightly
The label comes with a two-year commitment to reduce the size of the carbon footprint. Although firms will be able to do their own calculations, their sums will be checked by the Carbon Trust. Will consumers care enough to change shopping habits?
CARBON TRUST METHODOLOGY
Includes product and packaging of one item
Includes all greenhouse gases
Doesn't include store emissions or those during product's use
Nor 'indirect' emissions, such as workers commuting to factory
And it does not offset the CO2 absorbed by plants
Yes, says Mr Murray, many are already starting to take an interest. Research last year suggested two-thirds of shoppers want to buy products with a low carbon footprint.
A Walkers spokeswoman says the company's own survey shows nearly 80% of consumers are aware of the labels with 20% dismissing it as "purely a gesture". And the crisps manufacturer has promised to reduce water use per kilo by 5% year on year, and energy use by 3%.
But Chris Goodall, author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Lifestyle, thinks labelling should be broader, indicating whether the product is from a high-carbon industry like dairy or beef, or has clocked up the food miles from being transported long distances by air.
"These are the signals people need on the packets, not a number that is, frankly, pretty meaningless."
Traffic Lights for food
What is it used for ?
Food products with traffic light labels on the front of the pack show you at-a-glance if the food you are thinking about buying has high, medium or low amounts of fat, saturated fat, sugars and salt, helping you get a better balance.
Here are some examples from my fridge for traffic lights on foods,
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