Proctor & Gamble's Gillette Fusion razor received a dubious distinction when it was awarded the Golden Dump Award. The Golden Dump Award is given annually by Environment Victoria the leading non-profit environmental organization in Australia's Victoria state. The award recognizes a commonly available supermarket product with the most environmentally damaging packaging.
Gillette Fusion is packaged in plastic, cardboard and paper and received the award for "gratuitous use of packaging." Judges said the razor’s packaging “clearly demonstrates the unsustainable trend for encasing goods in far more packaging than is required to protect, efficiently transport and market the product’’.
The annual Dump awards expose the seven worst types of environmentally damaging packaging being sold on supermarket shelves. DUMP is an acronym for Dangerous and Useless Materials in Packaging. In addition to the Dump award Gillette Fusion also took home the Excessive Use of Material award.
It is unknown which packaging firm handled Gillette Fusion packaging for the Australian market. According to published reports, the Rob. Leunis & Chapman Group (rlc), a long time Gillette packaging partner, handled central packaging management for the entire European product launch. The rlc group used premium-finished materials, elegant designs and attractive shapes to effectively communicate the Fusion brand image in all packaging for this product range. The upmarket outfit: up to eight colors plus UV gloss coating on paperboard and PET, supplemented in some cases by blind embossing and silver hot foil stamping.
It has also been widely reported Gillette used RFID chips in much of
its Fusion packaging. The technology allowed the company to get its
product on retail shelves quicker after its initial launch and provided
useful tracking data on supply and distribution.
The fact this award exists signifies an increased interest from environmental groups in packaging. You can bet we will begin to see similar actions in the US and everyone involved in packaging should be aware of the increases scrutiny on them. Excessive packaging is a bad idea and one that will backfire on companies who choose to use it.
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you environmental people are a laugh with your obsessive pathetic concern about the packaging. So Get a life.
Posted by: Barry B | January 12, 2009 at 05:35 PM