How Should Materials Influence Your Design

Green design from brainstorming to production - say goodbye to choosing your materials as an afterthought.

Do you know why plastic is such a popular material when discussing food packaging?

“Plastic packaging can reduce food waste by extending shelf life and can reduce fuel consumption for transportation by bringing packaging weight down.”

Plastic has attributes that protect food well, making it useful in packaging. Did you know that one third of all food is lost or wasted somewhere along the food supply chain? This is often due to improper packaging, making plastic a perfect solution. This low weight barrier is a great solution to ensuring the freshness of your product before and after shipping. Plastic, however, is mostly based on oil and oil is responsible for one-third of global carbon emissions. What then, can we use to protect our products, and how does design come into play?

Working Your Design Around Your Goals

Rather than editing the materials to fit your design - reverse it. By coming up with a list of goals you want to achieve you can better design for your true goal. Employing factors such as circular business models, alternatives to paper or plastic and designing with overall less materials in general are great ways to start.

Recent studies show that consumers are interested in buying sustainable alternatives and aren't afraid to pay more for it. Through eco-designs we have the ability to make our customers and planet overall happier. To learn more about plastic as a material and the up-and-coming sustainable habits of our consumers check out Plastic-and-Climate-Executive-Summary-2019.pdf (ciel.org) and 74% Consumers Are Ready to Pay Extra for Sustainable Packaging (environmentalleader.com)