Seed packaging

 

 I don't know whether I should use seeded paper or a pack of seeds? It would be greener by decreasing the amount of packaging. Look at cutting them into shapes to represent the herbs.

The One Pot Pledge

  

I really like these greener ways of growing your own using existing pots, materials and packaging. It means that the materials are being re-used and reduces consumerism. This is a similar idea to how i want the veg pots to be re-used.

Meeting with the manager of The Organic Pantry

Grow Your Own

I love the use of a single colour and the selection of type used on the mushroom growing kit, it looks rural yet modern.

 

I've found a lot of DIY gardening packs, they are all quite simple, using similar type and brown paper.

The Farmers Cart- York

Muller

Our approach to life

"To bring sustainable dairy goodness from the heart of Shropshire for the good of everyone." And over the last 18 years we've been doing just that. We believe that this effort has led to stronger relationships with our local farmers, better quality Müller products and happier customers.

Organic Farming

P&W Designs Packaging for Tesco Standard Plus Cakes

International Design Consultancy P&W has designed a range of standard plus cakes forTesco.

Inspired by trendy cake shop chalkboards these packs have hand drawn illustrations, which make each pack unique and giving a handmade boutique cake shop feel.

The design emphasizes the use of quality ingredients, hand decoration and personality of the products through ingredients based illustration. The packs speak to the consumer with the friendly approach of “I’ve got my eye on… or I’ll have a slice of”. With a 14 strong pack range from Red Velvet Cupcakes, Chocolate Whoopie Pies, Chunky Monkey Loaf Cake and Toffee Popcorn Triple Layer Cakes this range really stands out on the shelf and has a point of difference from the standard Tesco ranges.

“We are very proud of the new Tesco Standard Plus Cake range. To come up with an engaging and elegant solution that not only stands out at the fixture but also uses the whole of the pack to communicate the quality of ingredients and personality of the product, is testament to the insight and ability of our design team.”

Pearlfisher Creates New Brand Identity for The Food Doctor

Pearlfisher has created a new brand identity—and redesigned the packaging across the entire range—for the UK’s leading nutrition consultancy The Food Doctor, which provides sensible advice for achieving a healthier plan for life. From the start it established itself as a visible brand in the field of healthier eating with a range of food products from seed mixes to ready meals.

The new identity needed to embrace the ‘Eat better forever’ strapline and move the brand focus from a functional product to more of a lifestyle proposition.

Pearlfisher Creative Director, Natalie Chung, explains, “We have created a memorable symbol which bonds food & health together in a wholesome, tasty icon—the apple. The apple reflects the brand journey from seed to life and provides an inspirational identity for future celebration and growth to communicate the core truth of The Food Doctor philosophy— that this is a way of life and not a fad, nor a diet.”

Natalie continues, “The language throughout is both simple and informative, empoweringconsumers with the knowledge they need to understand their food and truly love their bodies. The use of colour across the range builds this message by injecting the brand with a sense of continuous energy and positivity.”

Launched end of 2010 with The Food Doctor bread products, the entire new-look brand portfolio will roll-out in the coming months across the UK.

Coca-Cola and Heinz Announce Landmark Partnership to Expand Use of Innovative PlantBottle Packaging

The Coca-Cola Company and H.J. Heinz Company yesterday, February 23, announced a strategic partnership that enables Heinz to produce its ketchup bottles using Coca-Cola’s breakthrough PlantBottle™ packaging. The PET plastic bottles are made partially from plants and have a lower reliance on non-renewable resources compared with traditional PET plastic bottles.

PlantBottle packaging looks, feels and functions just like traditional PET plastic, and remains fully recyclable. The only difference is that up to 30 percent of the material is made from plants. The plant material is produced through an innovative process that turns natural sugars found in plants into a key component for PET plastic. Currently, PlantBottle is made using sugarcane ethanol from Brazil, the only source widely recognized by thought leaders globally for its unique environmental and social performance.

Heinz’s adoption of the PlantBottle technology will be the biggest change to its iconic ketchup bottles since they first introduced plastic in 1983. Heinz will launch PlantBottle in all 20-ounce ketchup bottles in June with ‘talking labels’ asking, ‘GUESS WHAT MY BOTTLE IS MADE OF?’ Packaging will be identified by a special logo and on-pack messages. Switching to PlantBottle is another important step in Heinz’s global sustainability initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste, water consumption and energy usage at least 20 percent by 2015.

Coca-Cola first launched PlantBottle in 2009 on brands that include Coke^®, Sprite^®,Fresca^®, iLOHAS^®, Sokenbicha^® and DASANI^® water. By using PlantBottle packaging across multiple brands, the Company is able to significantly reduce their dependence on non-renewable resources. Heinz will introduce 120 million PlantBottle packages in 2011 and The Coca-Cola Company will use more than 5 billion during the same time. In time, plastic Heinz Ketchup bottles globally will be made from PlantBottle packaging and by 2020, Coca-Cola’s goal is to transition all of its plastic packaging to PlantBottle packaging.

Vice Versa Sustainable Packaging

Vice Versa is a sustainable range of packaging / product that wastes no packaging. Made from recycled materials and used prints. The idea is that the packaging becomes the product therefore leaving no waste.

Via behance



I love how this poster is re-used to make products such as the speakers, how experimental can I be with the re-use of the pot? or other materials.

Fiber boxes

MARKETPLACE FOR SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS
Another company that’s taking a holistic approach to sustainability is Distant Village Packaging in Chicago. When president Rich Cohen took a year off to travel the world, he discovered many skilled artisans along the way. When he returned to the States, he started a business selling handcrafted gifts. “My original goal was to preserve handmade crafts,” he says, “but then I decided this was not the best way to support the artisans. Even though we had great success, we were selling a dozen items at a time. Then we discovered the opportunity for using the same materials to make custom packaging.” His company now sells a variety of tree-free, handmade boxes, which are sustainable not just in materials, but also because “they’re so damn gorgeous, they won’t get thrown away. If you make something beautiful, it will get reused.” For Cohen, material choices are just the beginning. “We do our best to use environmentally conscious materials,” he says, “but that’s only part of our goal.” He’s preserving indigenous craft traditions by creating a marketplace for them. As these artisans make more money, they spend it in their own communities, which creates more economic growth in remote places. And as more parents are able to send their children to school, the cycle of opportunity and growth is furthered. However, he doesn’t wear much of this do-gooding on his sleeve. “Externally, you don’t feel any of that in our presentation and marketing,” he says. “All you see is a slick packaging design company that just happens to connect the richest classes with the neediest classes. It is ironic that we have vendors who don’t have shoes, and yet their artisan packaging is being bought at exclusive department stores by women wearing $2000 shoes.”

Packaging from Distant Village uses agricultural products that would otherwise be discarded, including banana fibers from trunks and stems, as well as waste material gathered from forest floors. These papers are made without bleach, chemicals or artificial dyes, use alternative fuel sources, and their manufacture provides additional income for farm workers in remote villages. The materials used in making these boxes, from the upper left, clockwise, are: banana fiber aged for color, waste gathered from the forest floor, reclaimed banana fiber with a coconut button closure, and tree-free paper woven by hand through a loom.

Cargo lipstick

SUSTAINABLE SUBSTITUTES
One of the most important and simple ways a designer can move beyond conventional packaging solutions is to consider alternative materials. PLA (polyactic acid) is fast becoming the favored alternative to plastic. Clear so consumers can see the product and stiff enough to stand up to processing equipment, PLA is made from renewable resources such as corn, and uses fewer fossil fuels and generates fewer greenhouse gases in its production than traditional plastics and some other polymers. PLA can be composted. However, even this product has its detractors, who point out that huge amounts of petroleum-based fertilizers and gas-guzzling equipment are used in the production of those “natural” resources.

Fortunately, other materials are coming to commercial viability. Shannon Boase, president of Earthcycle Packaging in Vancouver, notes that “plastic has been around for 60 years, and it takes a long time to unseat the convenience and dependency that we’ve developed. Our idea of what packaging is and should do needs to change.” Her company is providing one such alternative. She discovered that palm-oil manufacturers were creating an enormous amount of waste as they harvested fruit. Surrounding the palm fruit is a “giant husk that looks like a hedgehog.” This husk is made of long-stranded virgin fibers that have the same tensile strength as titanium alloy. They can be steam cleaned, chopped, pulped and turned into slurry that can be molded or sheeted into effective packaging. Not only is this packaging making use of a waste product that would otherwise be burned, but it can be home composted. This is an essential difference—because PLA only breaks down with sustained moisture and high heat, it must be industrial composted; Earthcycle Packaging breaks down in the more variable conditions of the backyard pile.

One company that’s using the benefits of both PLA and other materials is Cargo Cosmetics. According to Hana Zalzal, president and founder, “We examined the standard lipstick case and asked ourselves, ‘How can this be better?’” Research led to a two-package, three-tiered solution. Their PlantLove line of lipsticks comes in a tube made of PLA and an outer carton made of biodegradable paper embedded with real flower seeds. Simply moisten the box, plant in the garden and watch your wildflowers sprout. In addition, a portion of the sale of each lipstick is donated to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “This lipstick case is, for us, a way of protesting against global warming and environmental issues,” notes Zalzal. Groovy graphics were an important part of delivering their message. “We were reminded of how, in the ’60s, people would take the time to protest. So we wanted the graphics to have that ’60s feel. Plus, a love-in kind of graphic seemed appropriate.”

PlantLove is the first biodegradable lipstick tube made entirely from corn. “Our manufacturer is Natureworks. What we loved about their product is that their PLA is greenhouse-gas-neutral,” says Hana Zalzal. The surrounding carton is made with biodegradable paper infused with wildflower seeds—just moisten and plant—and the lipstick itself is also environmentally friendly, without mineral oils or petroleum.

B.T. McElrath

Packaging for B.T. McElrath Chocolatier uses a system to “maximize flexibility while minimizing waste. A printed paper strap secures the stock, unprinted boxes, [which] can be ordered as needed,” says creative director John Moes of the firm John Moes Design. “By creating a system of independent components that, when assembled, become a unified whole, we reduce the waste and expense of an all-inone unit.”

Oliviers & Co

I love how the fresh vegetables are exposed in this packaging, it does not conceal the food, it is proud of its products. The simple band is enough, it would probably be ok just with a tag on the string yet the band allows the brand to be seen clearer.

The Collective Dairy

Innocent Ads

Innocent Pots

Le Buro

Daylesford Organic, 44B Pimlico Road, London

They cook with wonderful ingredients at Daylesford Organic, so why does the menu make diners giggle?

Reviewed by Terry Durack

Sunday, 13 April 2008

I have left Earth as we know it, and entered the three-storey Daylesford Organic shop and café in Pimlico. The people on this planet are different – richer, certainly, and somehow softer, cushioned in cashmere and linen. The food is different, too. While the mother ship may be the organic farm shop at Daylesford near Kingham in Gloucestershire, Pimlico is fast being colonised, the shop being joined recently by a village butcher, garden nursery, and fashion/lifestyle store and café in Sloane Square.

The planet of Daylesford Organic is almost completely self-sufficient. Breakfasts consist of its own organic eggs, boiled, with toast soldiers. Bread is baked from its own flour, "milled for us by a local miller". Organic milk from its own Friesians goes into its own cheddar cheese. Organic vegetables are grown in rotation on its "rich loam soil". Meat is from its own estates in Gloucestershire and Staffordshire. And Daylesford Organic even sells its own wine, from another sister estate, Château de Léoube in Provence. All estates are owned "and preserved" by Lady Carole Bamford and the Bamford family.

In Pimlico today, an elegant row of outdoor tables is buffetted by ugly squalls, but spring sunshine floods intermittently through the windows, resting on thin-crust pizza, apple tarts, and lunchtime sandwiches sold in the bakery area.

There is food everywhere, piled high against white walls and on wooden tables. A long, marble communal table leads towards a serious cheese counter, while stairs go down to a wine shop and up to things for the home and kitchen. Around me, stylish locals hunch over slimline computers, architects discuss swatches with American clients, and French women order croissants for their well-behaved children.

It's beautiful in a perfect-world, dream-like way, but it's also a bit much. Everything is for sale, from the willow cockerel (£19.95) perched in the middle of the table to the hand-blown water glass (£45) and egg cup (£11.95). I came for breakfast – three gently baked, brightly yolked eggs topped with a few folds of harshly smoked salmon and a lick of cream in a cast-iron fry pan (£13) – and now return for lunch.

The menu reads like a simple list of soups, salads and mains, but the reality can be more arthouse than farmhouse. A deep bowl holds leek and potato soup (£6.95) that is rich and subtly creamy; and the freshly baked breads and olive oil (£4) are terrific. A springtime main course of salmon and truffled chicken boudin in carrot butter (£13.95) is well-cooked, colourful, and quite delicious, but other dishes seem completely ill at ease with their surroundings. A salad of Jerusalem and globe artichoke is an artistic creation of swirls and curls more suited to Michel Bras; and my neighbour's oxtail (£13.95) is bizarre, the meat re-formed around chicken mousse, served with an upright Ferris wheel of potato gallette. This is so not farm-shop food; it sets the entire table giggling.

To drink, a refreshing, uncomplicated Château de Léoube biodynamic rosé (£4/ £16) is a good-value lunchtime wine, while a Domaine Vacheron 2006 Sancerre (£5.55/ £28) is clean and balanced; class in a glass.

The management maintains there is a "team of chefs" rather than one, so perhaps they, too, are free-range and allowed to roam the culinary world where'er they like. But they are missing the point, and should be responding instinctively to the wonderful, chemical-free ingredients they are given, cooking them simply and well.

Daylesford Organic could lead the way to a future when every high street has its farm shop, selling directly from the land to consumers, reducing food miles, packaging and supermarket power. Or it could peter out in a welter of designer produce served up in a rural fantasy for the privileged few. I hope the former. I fear the latter.

13/20

Scores: 1-9 stay home and cook, 10-11 needs help, 12 ok, 13 pleasant enough, 14 good, 15 very good, 16 capable of greatness, 17 special, can't wait to go back, 18 highly honourable, 19 unique and memorable, 20 as good as it gets

Daylesford Organic, 44B Pimlico Road, London SW1, tel: 020 7881 8060. Open from 8am-8pm daily. Around £60 for lunch for two, including wine and service

Read Terry Durack's new column at independent.co.uk/eat

Second helpings: More organic outlets

The Walnut Club

The Square, Main Road, Hathersage, Derbyshire, tel: 01433 651 155

Idyllically located in the Peak National Park, this was one of Britain's first organic restaurants. The lively modern menu runs to duck and licorice ravioli

The Duke of Cambridge

30 St Peter's Street, London N1, tel: 020 7359 3066

The world's first certified organic gastropub serves up hearty pub grub made with fresh organic produce, as well as a range of organic beers and wines

Percy's

Coombeshead Estate, Virginstow, Devon EX21, tel: 01409 211 236

Set on a 130-acre organic estate, Percy's serves up its own lamb, eggs, herbs and veg, as well as local wild mushrooms, game, chicken and ducks from Exmoor