The Self Powered iPod Recycling Speaker

Did you ever wonder what you could use those pesky plastic cases for rather than just tossing them in the trash? Well Bird Electron has come up with a novel idea that turns the plastic packaging of the iPod Nano (1st & 2nd gen) and Shuffle (2nd & 3rd gen) into a portable speaker system.

The Recycling speaker system does not require any additional power source; all that’s required is to place the speaker on top of the plastic package, plug in and play. It is an elegantly simple device that can even be tailored to custom designs using water bottles or other small containers for speakers.

The Bird-Electron Recycling Speaker retails for $40 and can be found at AudioCubes.com.

via: One Digital Life

Design Students Want YOU To Recycle

This year, the Glass Packaging Institute conducted their first ever Recycle Glass Day YouTube video competition. Over 80 students from six universities participated in the battle for $5,000 by creating videos encouraging folks to recycle. The videos were judged based on originality and creativity (50%); communicating the “glass message” (30%); and production technique and value (20%).

The winner was a group of Michigan State University students who created a stop-motion animated video, cleverly preaching: “glass can’t recycle itself”. As a highly renewable natural material, glass’s diversity has played an important role in sustainable design. It only makes sense that design students where amongst the major participants in this competition.

To find out more about the competition and to further your knowledge in how glass is recycled, please visit the Packaging Digest

Forget Paper or Plastic, Wrap it Up in Banana Leaves!

Today the majority of disposable goods are wrapped in man-made, often petro-based materials that usually last far longer than the items they protect. With many companies spending millions on R&D searching for more sustainable alternatives, an Israeli designer named Tal Marco has taken a decidedly low-tech and refreshing approach to package design with his use of natural banana leaves. Banana leaves are highly flexible, easy to open and have a naturally waxy surface that is ideal for food applications.

Banana leaves have been used for centuries as plates and for preserving and cooking food in India and South East Asia but have unfortunately been overlooked in most of the western world. Although not a completely novel idea, Marco’s design uses die-cut leaves that can be folded into numerous forms and lend themselves well to many retail applications. His design was showcased in Designboom’s “Dining in 2015” design competition and the concept puts many of the most “environmentally friendly” packages on the market today to shame.

Designboom’s Dining in 2015 Competition

Paper Water Bottle Replaces Plastic

If water is life’s essential elixir, then bottled water would be a convenient way of giving us this magical liquid on the go. There are an endless number of brands with water formulations ranging from vitamin enhanced to electrolyte rich. Plain old H2O is practically obsolete. Even with all of these options, it’s hard to steer away from your run of the mill plastic bottle. A whopping 16 million bottles are tossed every day. Sure they are recyclable, but only 14% of them actually end up getting recycled. Not only that, but the energy it takes to recycle the bottles is astronomical. Most water companies recommend that you do not reuse their water bottles because of the bacteria that can potentially grow.

As the green trend grows, a demand for an alternative to the common plastic or glass bottle has risen, but using another material to house liquids comes with many challenges. Brainimage thought outside of the plastic by developing a unique food grade 100% recyclable paper bottle that can stand up to liquids of all categories.

There’s no word on when the bottle will be commercially available.

Via the Dieline- a blog dedicated to package design.

Superior Dairy Brings Back the Flattop

(Image courtesy of the New York Times)

The common milk jug has been in the marketplace for quite a while, so it’s not surprising that its redesign would cause some reservations among consumers, but Canton, Ohio-based Superior Dairy and its offshoot Design Edge, felt the need to take the task on nonetheless.  Working in the company founded by his ancestors five generations ago, Greg Soehnlen redesigned the jug by extending the flat sides upward, flattening the top, and moving the pour spout to the corner opposite the handle.  These refinements have eliminated the need for plastic crates for storage and transportation, as the new jugs may be stacked on top of one another with shrinkwrapped cardboard bands (all to be recycled afterwards) in between, which has had the added benefits that water is no longer needed for cleaning crates, labor is reduced, and more milk may be delivered by each truck (4.5 gallons/cubic foot instead of 3) in a much shorter time frame.  In fact, Superior claims that they have cut overall water use by up to 70%, and due to the jug’s efficiency, can make less delivery trips to retail locations, and thus reduce fuel consumption.

In spite of some complaints that one has to learn a new way to pour from these jugs due to the different spout, Superior’s jug may be taking hold, having been sold at Sam’s Club in limited quantities for some time already, and poised for wider distribution at Wal-Mart and beyond - who knows, it might even show up at your local supermarket sooner than you think, considering the direct correlation it has with lower fuel consumption.  Examples like this make clear that as resources become more scarce and skyrocket in value, manufacturers and retailers will be forced to develop smarter solutions to packaging, and pass along the sustainable and cost benefits to their well-informed consumers.  As Sustainable Packaging Coalition director, Anne Johnson suggests, “What are the materials we are using? How are we using them? And where do they go ultimately?” will be some common questions that we will get used to asking in the years to come.

Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Some Sources of PLA

Polylactid or PLA is a corn-based polymer that is starting to be used in several applications. It is fully biodegradable and some variants are being developed by chemical companies ir order to achieve performance quality. There are several companies producing PLA, below are some sources:

NatureWorks:
http://www.natureworksllc.com/

Plantic:
http://www.plantic.com.au/

EarthFirst:
http://www.earthfirstpla.com

Paper Foam

This is a Holland-based company that produces an interesting material: Paper Foam.

Paper Foam is made out of recycled paper and its mechanical properties are similar to pulp or Styrofoam (often used in packaging applications). It can be rather fragile, but it offers new possibilities in finishes, colors and of course a sustainable component for the design of packaging and products.

http://www.paperfoam.com/

Er Kankyo is another company that produces a similar product (based in Japan). Their website is only in Japanese, but it is worth checking out their products.

http://www.er-kankyo.co.jp/

The Biodegradable Products Institute

The Biodegradable Products Institute, based in New York, evaluates and certifies materials and products that can become compost.

http://www.bpiworld.org/BPI-Public

I recommend checking out the list of materials that have already been approved (divided in categories) as well as reading through their criteria:

http://www.bpiworld.org/BPI-Public/Approved.html

They even have a specific logo that is applied to the approved products, to make sure people know these are biodegradable.