| Unwrapping Wasteful Packaging |
| Wednesday, 21 December 2011 | Steve Graham | Blog Entry |
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The group saves material, space and shipping costs by making octagonal boxes for the round cookstoves. They realize you don’t need to put a round peg into a square hole. Right now, as we buy, wrap and open boxes full of presents, wasteful packaging is hard to ignore. But companies could save money, be more eco-conscious and reduce our frustration with simpler, easier to open, less wasteful packaging. Packaging Exposé We produce an extra million tons of garbage per week during the silly season between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. My favorite piece of the article is a breakout box regarding the 820 square inches of cardboard and 580 square inches of plastic used to package a Barbie doll that took handy adults with tools 25 minutes to open. Octagonal Boxes The inventors didn’t stop with the product in considering efficiency. Envirofit recently switched to the octagonal boxes, reducing the financial and environmental impact of transporting the stoves around the world. For example, the company can fit more stoves in a shipping container by packing the octagons honeycomb-style. Packaging Guidelines The group recognizes that many companies want financial incentives to reduce packaging. One of the guidelines regards cost and performance (including transport packaging cube efficiency—let’s hear it for octagons). Their protocols also deal with:
Wal-Mart has its own packaging scorecard. Companies that want to sell at the world’s biggest retailer will need to pay attention to their boxes. And most do. That should engender a lot of positive change. Help the Earth, Spread the Word: Share this article with family and friends by clicking on the "Email This" or "Share This" links below right. Then see TODAY'S TOP STORIES.
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Steve Graham is an award-winning freelance Web and magazine writer living in a Fort Collins, Colorado, neighborhood that will 

As part of the Envirofit project, an ingenious group of graduate students and staff at Colorado State University (CSU) have engineered a new type of 






