Science

Punching up sustainable packaging

Consumers often avoid items on store shelves that seem too ‘soft.’ This can be a problem for companies that specialise in certain types of sustainable products.

While working on her MSc thesis, Industrial Design Engineering student Michelle Johnson took a look at this phenomenon. She also investigated a few of the other reasons why many people avoid environmentally-friendly products.

“Sustainability can become a liability when you’re concerned with the strength or the performance of a product,” Johnson said during her defence presentation on October 11th, 2016. “Here’s two examples: a car tire and a bottle of baby shampoo. For the car tire, you’re going to value strength because you want a durable product whereas with baby shampoo you want something mild that won’t irritate the skin so you value gentleness.”

But even when it comes to soap it can be tough to sell consumers on green varieties. For example, people might shy away from the ones made by environmentally-friendly companies like Seventh Generation because they perceive them as being weaker or less effective than more conventional brands. Furthermore, while many approve of the idea of sustainable products, they may also be discouraged from purchasing them due to high price tags. Making things even more complicated, these goods still aren’t available in many areas and ‘greenwashing,’ a technique used to deceive customers into thinking something is environmentally-friendly when it isn’t, creates further confusion.

While it can’t solve all of these problems, Johnson thinks that altering the way companies package these products could encourage more consumers to at least take a chance on them. She examined several key themes and design elements used in the packaging of successful eco-friendly goods produced by organisations including Burt’s Bees and the Australian wine company Yellow Tail. Then she turned her attention to a redesign of a garish label used by a company that makes body soap.

Johnson argued that removing the flashy graphics on the label and replacing them with subtler fonts, images and earth tones could better convey the body soap’s sustainability and value to consumers. She presented three proposed labels that utilised simpler and more refined designs that might also help the product stand out against competing brands.

Johnson, M.K.P., Communicating Packaging Sustainability to Consumers, Supervisors: E. Giaccardi and E. Ozcan Vieira, Defence: October 11th, 2016

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