Procter & Gamble has replaced 57 percent of the plastic in its packaging for the Gillette Fusion razor with moldable plant based pulp. And, the company has pledged a major commitment to coming up with sustainable materials and eliminating polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is common in clamshell and blister packaging.
The new Fusion ProGlide clamshell's outer packaging and razor tray combination not only has less plastic, it also now weighs 20 percent less than the original Fusion packaging did, and eliminates 100 percent of PVC.
Procter & Gamble replaced 57 percent of the plastic in its Gillette Fusion clamshell/tray package with moldable plant-based pulp. (Source: Procter & Gamble)
The move comes as part of Procter & Gamble's ongoing sustainability efforts, which include incorporating 100-percent renewable or recycled materials into all of its products and packaging. The moldable plant-based pulp is made of fibrous materials, such as bamboo, sugar cane, and bulrush, by Be Green Packaging, which designs and makes compostable, moldable fiber pulp packaging.
The new razor package design reportedly withstands compression, sealing and opening forces, and doesn't add cost to consumers. Although the amount of PVC in the packaging materials previously was low, the redesign has completely eliminated it. The new packaging, which debuted in Western Europe last year, will appear in the US sometime during the first half of 2012. The revised packaging has already received an award for innovative redesign in DuPont's Awards for Packaging in 2011.
Be Green Packaging states that its blend of plant fibers are Cradle-to-Cradle Certified, BPI Certified, and Certified Recyclable by Western Michigan University. The company's pulping technologies can be used with both mechanical and chemical pulping methods. The fibers it uses include bulrush, kenaf, wheatstraw, bamboo, rice, and bagasse, which are all non-food crops that grow in the wild. The company has facilities in China and South Carolina.
Getting sharp draft angles has long been a challenge for designers and engineers working with moldable pulp. Be Green says it can execute draft angles of under 2 degrees, making it possible to create containers and packaging with as sharp lines as the Gillette clamshell and tray.
I'm cynical, too, about some things. But I think it's important to keep in mind that, like the old metaphor, a few bad apples don't make all the apples bad. I've been surprised at some readers who seem to think that any "green" announcement must be a greenwashing stunt. Healthy skepticism is a long way from a closed mind. Meanwhile, the willingness of consumers to pay a bit more for at least some green alternatives is increasing, while the price differentials come down.
9 of 10 may be green. But until the 9 of the top 10 new cars purchased are green and more expensive, I think we are still seeing the world through green colored glasses. The all mighty dollar which is spent by the American consumer will determine if green goes. I hope it does. And I will do my part to pay a little extra when given the chance. But as the economy struggles and people are having trouble just getting food on the table do to unemployment it will be difficult for people to pay more for green.
You can hardly blame people for the cynicism. But there some real advances and many of those are being initiative by young teams living inside large corporations.
Good thing this is not greenwash. Unfortunately, the amount of greenwashing out there has apparently made a lot of people so cynical about green anything that they find it difficult to grasp the reality of actual improvements like this one.
I agree, Chuck, there is tons of greenwash. I receive scores of press releases from PRNewswire for Green Scene. The majority of "green" releases are items like a compnay that has reduced the energy consumption of its call center by 5% due to a green initiative.
Major corporations like P&G, Ford and DuPont make technology decisions about how to fulfill sustainability goals based on both economic and technical feasibility. This became clear to me during an interview with DuPont's head of renewable materials, some of which appears in my upcoming bioplastics feature in the March issue of Design News. It's also become clear with nearly every new materials technology I've reported on. So the replacement materials must have the same features, be about the same cost, and most likely (and practically a necessity in automotive manufacturing), their process should ideally be either a drop-in replacement during manufacturing, or easily appended to the existing manufacturing process.
But none of those factors tells us why these companies have sustainability goals in the first place. The main reason for those goals is customers, specifically consumers. The Freedonia Group analyst I interviewed for the same feature made it clear that, at least for bioplastics, consumer demand for sustainable solutions is what's driving innovation. It's consumers who are willing to pay a price premium for ecological plastic bag replacements or EVs, for instance, not aerospace engineers who care if their aircraft components are made of green materials.
Rob: Good point about it not being greenwash. Although there is admittedly still a lot of greenwash out there, I'm seeing more and more efforts at real "greenness." In the auto industry, hybrids are becoming the norm for new vehicle introductions. I recently finished a slideshow on concept cars, an nine of the ten mentioned are either hybrids or pure electrics.
I can understand your view that P&G's change in materials was likely economically motivated. I agree, but the economic equation may go beyond material cost and include competitive considerations. If the use of green materials is tested and found to help persuade the customer to choose the P&G product, the company may choose those materials even if they're more expensive than plastic.
The saying is usually ascribed to the Iroquois. However, the Constitution of the Iroquois Nations (aka the Great Binding Law), codified for the original five nations and a very interesting document indeed:
http://www.indigenouspeople.net/iroqcon.htm
doesn't actually say "seven." In fact, seven is a "magic" or symbolic number more often associated with continental Europe and the Near East than with native peoples of the western hemisphere. The relevant passages in the Constitution say:
"Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground – the unborn of the future Nation."
"the Five Nations...shall labor, legislate and council together for the interest of future generations."
But the oft-misquoted line, "In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation" reads shorter and sweeter to modern ears.
Inspired by the hooks a parasitic worm uses to penetrate its host's intestines, the Karp Lab has invented a flexible adhesive patch covered with microneedles that adheres well to wet, soft tissues, but doesn't cause damage when removed.
Engineers at the University of California, San Diego are designing a robotic arm that takes inspiration from the loose, flexible, yet very strong structure of the armored plates on a seahorse's tail.
Researchers at the Missouri University of Science & Technology have designed a new nanoscale material that can transmit light faster than the 186,000 miles per second it usually takes to travel through air.
It has often been said that as California goes, so goes the nation. This spring, the state's wind power is setting energy generation records and solar energy generation is expected to rise sharply during the second half of 2013.
The latest model of Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider autonomous, unmanned marine vehicle (UMV), the SV3, is reportedly the world's first hybrid wave- and solar-power-propelled unmanned ocean robot.
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