With a little creativity, packaging for consumer products can be significantly reduced to avoid waste, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday at an award ceremony lauding 10 businesses that utilize green packaging.
The winners, including six designs for commercial packages and four for industrial packages, were selected from 86 entries by a panel of professionals including EPA representatives, school professors, as well as the Taiwan Package Design Association (TPDA) chair Lawrence Hsu (許富堯) said.
“In addition to rating environmental friendliness, we take into consideration cost-effectiveness and creativity,” Hsu said.
Eco-friendly packages are not only good for the environment, but also cheaper for businesses, the chairman said.
“We eliminated many entries because they overpackaged their products, which causes waste in shipping and storage space,” Hsu said.
One of the winners was AU Optronics Corp (AUO, 友達光電), the world’s third-largest maker of liquid-crystal-display (LCD) units, whose team designed a glueless and staple-free cardboard package that holds four LCD units each.
“In 2003, we introduced our first-generation cardboard package for LCD units and stopped using styrofoam … In 2007, we came up with an improved and minimized design that is stronger [holding aup to 800kg in weight], and takes up even less space,” said AUO OM component engineering senior manager Jamie Huang (黃舜杰).
“With the new design, we can now fit 1,600 32-inch LCD units into a package, in comparison with 500 units with the old design … To businesses, that means less transportation costs and more revenue,” Huang said.
Another winner, Use Brand Image, which won with a package it designed for a client that manufactures bicycle seats, took the seats out of cardboard boxes and opted to display them on open-faced cardboard sheets.
“We want products to speak for themselves, so we chose to let potential buyers see the seats,” said company director Peter Tsai (蔡建國) when asked about his design inspiration.
“The cardboard sheet uses less material and we made a point of not using glue or staples so that it would be easy for consumers to discard the packaging as no garbage sorting is needed,” he said.
Consumers who wish to do their bit in protecting the environment can choose products with packaging that uses minimal amounts and types of materials and make use of minimal amounts of printing ink, Hsu said.
“This is becoming more and more important, as we only have one Earth,” he said.
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