While packaging design has always been a fascinating creative discipline, its future promises to be even more exciting and complex. In today’s competitive market, companies are more aware of the importance of good packaging in determining the consumer’s value perception of a product. In the past, packaging served one purpose – to contain and protect the merchandise. Now, it’s a communication vehicle. The focus is just as much on the package as it is on the product inside it. Considering that more than half of purchases are based on emotional response[i], especially when a consumer is unsure and must choose between several brands of products, it’s not surprising that many companies that manage to master the art of design aesthetics and speak to the heart of their target audience, are on top of their game. Brand leaders such as Apple, Bang & Olufsen and IKEA demonstrate that design is what defines them and gives them their competitive edge. Below, Laura Drewe takes a look at some exciting trends in the future of packaging design. Sustainability A dynamic trend that is influential in package design acknowledges growing consumer awareness of the environment – consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about global environmental issues and are changing their buying habits accordingly. The 2012 Survey of Future Packaging Trends, conducted by Packaging World magazine and DuPont to identify trends shaping the packaging industry for the next 10 years, indicates the packaging industry believes consumers value convenience (76 per cent) and shelf appeal (58 per cent). However, when asked what were going to be the packaging attributes that were most important to consumers in the coming decade, respondents suggest that consumer priorities are drastically changing. The focus is on sustainability, specifically the perceived “greenness” of packaging materials (increasing by 23 per cent), recyclability (increasing 27 per cent) and reusability (increasing 13 per cent)[vii]. According to Tom Szaky, writing on sustainable packaging trends in March this year for Packaging Digest, over 80 per cent of consumers are mindful of the claims made by products about their sustainability. This consumer response has major implications for companies and agencies aiming to target environmentally conscious consumers across numerous industries, and further highlights the importance of corporate responsibility when it comes to being environmentally and sustainably-conscious[viii].

The DC Diaper Bank is keeping diaper packaging out of landfills and earning money at the same time. The diaper bank participates in the Diaper Packaging Brigade, a recycling partnership between Kimberly-Clark’s Huggies brand and recycling company TerraCycle. DC Diaper Bank staff collects the diaper packaging and for each piece sent to TerraCycle, the diaper bank earns two points, which can be converted into cash. The DC Bank uses the money earned to pay utility bills and keep the bank running. The DC Bank will be accepting donations of diaper packaging from local community members at its warehouse and any of its Ambassador locations throughout the metro area. Locations can be found at dcdiaperbank.org/get-involved/donate-diapers-in-your-neighborhood/. - See more at: http://www.capitalcommunitynews.com/content/dc-diaper-bank-recycles-diaper-packaging-cash-0#sthash.4GHEDLfn.dpuf

Stadium and venue owners and managers are constantly on the look out for new ways to make their facilities cleaner, more efficient and more environmentally-friendly. With the help of recycling pioneer TerraCycle, facility managers across the US can now recycle their cigarette waste. Instead of the butts going to landfill, TerraCycle composts the paper and leftover tobacco and recycles the filters into plastic for industrial uses, such as pallets. According to Keep America Beautiful, cigarette butts are the most frequently littered waste item. 65% of cigarette waste is disposed of improperly and accounts for 30% of litter at “transition points” where smokers must discontinue smoking before proceeding. Contrary to popular belief, cigarette butts are not biodegradable. To address the desire to rid facility grounds of cigarette waste in an environmentally-responsible way, the Nashville Predators and Bridgestone Arena have recently joined TerraCycle’s Cigarette Waste Brigade^®. Chris Parker, Executive Vice President of the Predators, said he was “proud of both the building and the community for being one of the first organisations to actively rid its venue of cigarette waste”. Parker added that he “hopes this movement catches on with other stadiums”.   Arena staff collect the discarded cigarette butts on the sidewalks outside of the Arena and in plaza areas where smoking is permitted following Predators home games and Bridgestone Arena concerts. With postage paid by TerraCycle, the boxes of butts are then shipped to a plant in New Jersey for recycling. Managers looking for additional ways to reduce waste can also utilise TerraCycle’s new Zero Waste Boxes. These boxes enable stadiums and venues to recycle everything from cleaning supplies, plastic cups, fluorescent light bulbs, Styrofoam^® and plastic cups, plates and utensils, and chewed gum. All Zero Waste Boxes can be purchased at zerowasteboxes.terracycle.com for a variety of prices. When a box is full, it is simply shipped to TerraCycle for processing. Since 2007, TerraCycle has used innovative recycling processes to repurpose otherwise landfill-bound consumer packaging waste into useful materials and products, such as recycled plastic lumber, industrial shipping pallets, and park benches. Between the Cigarette Waste Brigade and Zero Waste Boxes, there are almost no limits to what can be recycled.

TRENTON, N.J., (March 19, 2014) – Today, TerraCycle® announced its  Recycled Playground Challenge  - a new initiative in partnership with Colgate, the global oral care leader, and ShopRite, which has more than 250 stores in the Northeast - to help encourage healthy smiles and environments among school children and consumers. Beginning now through June 30, schools located throughout New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut and Maryland are eligible to compete for a new playground made completely of recycled material by joining TerraCycle’s Oral Care Brigade®  program. Through the Oral Care Brigade, a free recycling program run by Colgate and TerraCycle, schools will earn one ‘Playground Credit’ for each shipment of empty toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, and floss containers sent to TerraCycle.  Schools can earn additional Playground Credits by encouraging parents and teachers to vote online by logging onto www.terracycle.com/colgateshopriteplayground. “Colgate is committed to contributing to our communities and respecting the environment,” said Justin Skala, President, North America and Global Sustainability, Colgate-Palmolive. “Programs like the Colgate® Oral Care Brigade™ and Recycled Playground Challenge offer us an innovative way to reinforce these commitments and for consumers to positively impact the environment by repurposing their Colgate® oral care products.” The winning school with the most Playground Credits will be announced by July 18, 2014 and the playground will be installed during the 2014/2015 back-to-school season.  The first runner-up school will win 500 upcycled tote bags, 500 upcycled pencil cases, 500 upcycled pens and a $750 ShopRite® gift certificate.  The second and third runner-up schools will win 250 upcycled tote bags, 250 upcycled pens and a $500 and $250 gift certificate, respectively.  Finally, five honorable mention participants will win 250 upcycled pens and $150 ShopRite® gift cards. In addition to donating gift certificates for the runner-up schools, ShopRite is also encouraging community participation in the contest with displays throughout its stores. “ShopRite has a long history of caring for the communities it serves,” said Karen Meleta, Vice President of Consumer and Corporate Communications for ShopRite. “This program is a fun way to engage our customers in this commitment and to bring to light the importance of recycling and preserving our resources for generations to come.” All participants in the Colgate® Oral Care Brigade™ program are making a difference for the environment and their community.  The Brigade initiative is an ongoing activity open to any individual, family, school or community group.  For each piece of waste sent in using a pre-paid shipping label, participants earn money toward donations to the school or charity of their choice. “At TerraCycle, collecting the oral care waste is only half of the story,” explained Tom Szaky, TerraCycle Founder and CEO.  “The real magic happens when our partners choose to reuse the waste in a way that has a lasting benefit a community, like Colgate and ShopRite have done with these playgrounds.” For instructions on how to participate in the Recycled Playground Challenge, please visit www.terracycle.com/colgateshopriteplayground or your local ShopRite retailer. To learn more about the Colgate® Oral Care Brigade™ program and to sign up, please visit www.terracycle.com/colgate.

In our free-market, capitalist economy, it’s only natural that there will be large companies and small companies. Furthermore, bigger companies will always tend to over-shadow the smaller ones, and are often less concerned with the environmental and social effects of their business models. With fewer resources available, it’s especially difficult for smaller companies to get the same exposure and create the same impacts that corporate giants are capable of. One way for non-profits and start-up companies to be heard is to partner with other small companies that share the same values and mission. By working together, they can better-amplify their voices, and grow their potential to influence for good. As a ten-year veteran in the world of eco-entrepreneurship, I am convinced that social enterprises and non-profits must work together if we want to ‘swim with the sharks.’ These types of partnerships not only benefit the companies involved, but they also reinforce and benefit their goals. This is the case with the recent partnership between Recycle Across America, Participant Media and TerraCycle. Through our partnership, we hope to create a better environment. Did you know that only 34.5% of waste generated in the US is recycled or composted? Recycle Across America (RAA) is trying to change that. RAA is a non-profit dedicated to streamlining recycling labels across the country. Recycling labels can be complicated and they’re not uniform across the US. RAA’s goal is to implement simple recycling labels so that everyone will know how to recycle properly, hopefully raising the annual recycling rate in the process. If there were standardized labels on all recycling bins, recycling could be increased by more than 50%. If the recycling level in the US could reach 75%, it would create 1.5 million new jobs and it would have the same effect as removing 50 million cars from the road each year. Participant Media is a widely-respected entertainment company, responsible for producing movies like An Inconvenient Truth, Super Size Me, and Food, Inc. The company’s stated mission is to focus on creating movies and television shows that are socially aware and politically active. To that end, their new TV channel, Pivot, broadcasts shows and movies that have social messages revolving around the economy, equality and the environment, just to name a few. Pivot TV is committed to producing shows with a social message that make people think. This is why Pivot TV is launching an unscripted reality show called “Human Resources,” which will follow the employees of TerraCycle and their efforts to change people’s opinions on recycling waste. For those unfamiliar with TerraCycle’s business model, we collect waste that can’t typically be recycled by your local municipality, and then recycle or upcycle that material into useful products. You receive points for your collected waste, which can then be turned into monetary donations for the charity of your choice. By partnering with RAA and Pivot TV, all three companies are strengthened in their goals and initiatives. Through our partnership, RAA, Pivot TV and TerraCycle have created the Recycle Right campaign. Recycle Right focuses on transforming recycling as we know it. Through “Human Resources,” viewers will be able to see that it’s possible to recycle almost anything, and the show will include PSAs and commercials to create awareness around proper recycling techniques. TerraCycle and RAA show people how to recycle more effectively, while Pivot TV provides the platform, the reach, and the ability to get this valuable information to millions of consumers. By combining our strengths, TerraCycle, RAA and Pivot TV will bring more awareness to reshaping recycling and bettering the environment. Although this is only one partnership hoping to better the environment, it is still better than no initiative at all. After all, it takes a planet to save a planet, and you always have to start somewhere.

TRENTON, N.J. , June 5, 2014 – Stadium and venue owners and managers across the nation are constantly looking for new ways to make their facilities cleaner, more efficient and more environmentally-friendly.  With the help of recycling pioneer TerraCycle, facilities managers can now recycle cigarette waste instead of trashing it.  Instead of the butts going to landfill, TerraCycle composts the paper and leftover tobacco and recycles the filters into plastic for industrial uses, such as pallets. According to Keep America Beautiful, cigarette butts are the most frequently littered waste item. Sixty-five percent of cigarette waste is disposed of improperly and it accounts for 30% of litter at “transition points” where smokers must discontinue smoking before proceeding. Contrary to popular belief, cigarette butts are not biodegradable. To address the desire to rid facility grounds of cigarette waste in an environmentally-responsible way, the Nashville Predators and Bridgestone Arena recently joined TerraCycle’s Cigarette Waste Brigade®. Chris Parker, executive vice president of the Predators, said he was proud of both the building and the community for being one of the first organizations to actively rid its venue of cigarette waste. Parker added that he hopes this movement catches on with other stadiums. Arena staff collects discarded cigarette butts on sidewalks outside the arena and in plaza areas where smoking is permitted following Predators home games and Bridgestone Arena concerts. With postage paid by TerraCycle, boxes of collected butts are then shipped to a plant in New Jersey for recycling. Managers looking for additional ways to reduce garbage can also use TerraCycle’s new Zero Waste Boxes.  These boxes enable stadiums and venues to recycle everything from cleaning supplies, plastic cups, fluorescent light bulbs, Styrofoam® and plastic cups, plates and utensils, and chewed gum.  All Zero Waste Boxes can be purchased at zerowasteboxes.terracycle.com for a variety of prices.  When a box is full, it is shipped to TerraCycle for processing. Since 2007, TerraCycle has used innovative recycling processes to repurpose otherwise landfill-bound consumer packaging waste into useful materials and products, such as recycled plastic lumber, industrial shipping pallets, and park benches.  Between the Cigarette Waste Brigade and Zero Waste Boxes, there are almost no limits to what can be recycled.

The world is always moving forward with new inventions and ideas coming in and old ones going out day after day; the speed of progression is almost hard to keep up with. Practices deemed safe for years are now being discovered as unsafe, and change is always upon us. Luckily for the environment, this is a good thing. Scientists and researchers alike are finding that many of our traditional ways of environmental preservation are not as good as they thought. Changes in how our Waste Management handles garbage and recycling are sure to be on the way. Now that we’re coming up with effective ways to cut down on our paper and plastic waste, what about all of those cigarettes? I don’t think I can walk down a street without seeing a few cigarette butts scattered around. It’s gross. According to terracycle.com, 38 percent of the litter on the road is cigarette waste. TerraCycle, a company focused on recycling and bringing awareness and action to environmental issues, created the Cigarette Waste Brigade recycling program. The program allows an individual over the age of 21, organization, or business to collect and send cigarette waste directly to TerraCycle. Once TerraCycle receives the waste, they then compost the paper and filter and recycle it into shipping pallets, ashtrays, and a variety of other products. At the moment, it doesn’t seem all too convenient to run around picking up cigarette butts and shipping them off to get recycled, but it’s a good start. If anything, the idea is to bring attention to the enormous problem of cigarette littering. For more information on TerraCycle’s Cigarette Waste Brigade recycling program, visit terracycle.com. We definitely have a long way to go with waste management, but with major cities like San Francisco banning plastics and New York City starting programs for mandatory composting, we’re moving in the right direction.

A phone call regarding last week's column inspires this week's message. The caller had recently visited Coyote Howling Shop for a Cause and learned of the commitment to TerraCycle to earn rebates to feed more children. She reported that, at the time of her visit, she had decided TerraCycle would be "too much work." She called to explain her original response had changed; she would be bringing items to Coyote Howling to TerraCycle.

In honor of Earth Day, we ran a challenge on our Woodpellets.com Facebook page to find out about some uses for empty pellet bags. Some great prizes were given out (a free professional pellet stove cleaning and PelletBucks) but we also learned so many new ideas for how to repurpose bags. The winner uses her empty bags for sorting her TerraCycle Brigade recycling. It looks like she uses an empty diaper box for sorting as well! The Terracycle Brigade program collects previously non-recyclable or hard to recycle waste, with free shipping as well as a donation for each piece of garbage recycled. We loved that she takes extra time and care for not-so-simple recycling, and that our empty Cleanfire Douglas Fir pellet bags are a part of her process.