Puma and Yves Behar's new green packaging
by First name Last name on 04/13/2010 | 2 Minute Read
After three years in the making, a new solution to the shoebox is announced- and it's pretty sleek too!
"It's hard to imagine something as simple as the shoebox beingcompletely overhauled. But Puma and Fuseproject have done just that, ina design that will completely transform the brand's supply chain—savingmillions in electricity, fuel, and water.
"Rethinking the shoebox is an incredibly complex problem, and thecost of cardboard and the printing waste are huge, given that 80M areshipped from China each year," Béhar tells FastCompany.com. "Cargoholds in the ships can reach temperatures of 110 degrees for weeks onend, so packaging becomes an enormous problem. This solution protectsthe shoes, and helps stores to stock them, while saving huge costs inmaterials."
After spending 21 months studying box fabrication and shipping,Fuseproject realized that any improvement to that already lean systemwould merely be incremental. So instead, the "clever little bag"combines the two packaging components of any shoe sale—the bag and thebox—with high-tech ingenuity.
The bag tightly wraps an interior cardboard scaffolding—giving itshape and reducing cardboard use by 65%. Moreover, without that shinybox exterior, there's no laminated cardboard (which interferes withrecycling). There's no tissue paper inside. And there's no throw-awayplastic bag. The bag itself is made of recycled PET, and it'snon-woven—woven fibers increase density and materials use—and stitchedwith heat, so that it's less manufacturing intensive.
The impact: Puma estimates that the bag will slash water, energy,and fuel consumption during manufacturing alone by 60%—in one year,that comes to a savings of 8,500 tons of paper, 20 million mega joulesof electricity, 264,000 gallons of fuel, and 264 gallons of water.Ditching the plastic bags will save 275 tones of plastic, and thelighter shipping weight will save another 132,000 gallons of diesel.
The roll-out is planned for next year. After that? Hopefully, the design will become ubiquitous." via gizmodo.