Pepsi Redesigns Packaging

PepsiCo. (PEP) announced the release of its lightest 16.9 fl oz bottle to date. The PET bottle will be used for flavored non-carbonated beverages like its Lipton Ice Tea, Tropicana juice drinks, Aquafina FlavorSplash and Aquafina Alive.

The new bottle features a twenty percent reduction in PET plastic which the company estimates will save twenty million pounds of waste.

In addition to the reduction in plastic the new bottles will also feature a ten percent reduction in label size and a five percent reduction in the shrink wrap filmed used to wrap 12-pack multi-packs of the products.

“The challenge was to deliver significantly lighter packaging that would provide the same shelf life as the heavier bottle, withstand the manufacturing and distribution process yet not compromise aesthetics,” said Robert Lewis, vice president of worldwide beverage packaging and equipment development, PepsiCo.

Pepsi's new bottle design was chosen from over thirty proposed designs in consumer testing conducted by the company. After the final design was established a team worked on making it the lightweight package soon to be available to consumers.

The new bottles are expected on store shelves this month.

Curtis Packaging Offering over 100 FSC Certified Stocks

Connecticut-based Curtis Packaging has increased its range of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paperboard stocks to over 100. The company is a leading provider of more sustainable packaging solutions catering to a wide range of companies.

As Sustainable is Good reported Curtis is producing the FSC certified Mixed Source packaging for Target's Archer Farms Organic cookies currently available at Target stores nationwide. 

Curtis produces packaging for a number of cosmetic and personal care companies who value the company's focus on sustainability.  Two major companies Curtis has done FSC certified packaging work for are Origins (Estee Lauder) and Crabtree & Evelyn.

A member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, Curtis uses renewable energy to power its operations and is the first printing and packaging company in North America to be carbon neutral.

FSC is one of the most reputable and recognized “green” certifications. We expect FSC certified packaging to become increasingly in demand in 2008.

Target's use of FSC certified packaging for its Archer Farms Organic cookies was one of the first nationwide main stream uses of FSC packaging in a food product.

Dell Responds to Excessive Packaging Claims

Following up on a story we covered on excessive packaging from Dell, the company has posted a response and outlined steps they are taking to address the issue. 

The way Dell choose to respond to this issue is interesting.  As soon as the stories began appearing on various blogs including this one, a representative from Dell was posting comments indicating they were concerned and looking into the matter.  The company also provided some information on what happened and assured readers they would follow up.

Just over two weeks after the story broke Dell did follow up as they promised.  The company posted yesterday on their Direct2Dell blog.  Todd Dwyer, Dell's Community Liaison - Environment explains in the posting how the company is concerned about the excessive packaging issue and taking steps to insure it will not happen again.

Dell's public response is admirable.  Contrast it to the approach other companies we've covered recently have taken, namely Whole Foods and Target who both opted not to provide information on issues.

Dwyer writes:

It's no secret that Dell aims to be the greenest technology company in the world. But on Earth Day last week, sites like The Consumerist, Gizmodo, and other blogs showed us that there's still more work for us to do.

Shortly after we read those posts, we had a team on the road to Dallas to meet with the vendor that shipped this flash drive to see how we can improve the process. End result, there's some easy fixes and some longer-term issues for us to address. Here's an outline:

* Immediate: Directive to use envelopes for small items such as these.

* Short term: Use of smaller boxes. We have requested an optimization analysis of product volume to box size.

* Short term: Implementation of Dell-defined volumetric metrics on void space in the package to be incorporated into our periodic vendor business reviews.

While third party items such as these make up a very small portion of our overall shipping volume, folks here know we need to fix it. Our sincere gratitude goes out to everyone who pointed this irregularity out to us. We hope that all of you will continue to provide feedback like this on any of our green-focused Direct2Dell posts, or if you have ideas about ways we can make improvements, please share them in the Environment section on IdeaStorm.

via Direct2Dell