To what extent does colour influence the visual appeal of packaging, and how does this reflect its sustainability? Where is the line between necessary packaging and the ability for a product to be package free? Intro (400 words): This essay will discuss: The extent that colour influences the visual appeal of packaging, and how can be used beneficially to promote sustainability. Waste in consumerism is having a huge impact on the environment, which affects everyone, so ways to reduce this whilst not reducing quality must be considered. This will be explored through contrasting different views to see where the line sits between the necessity of packaging and the ability to be package free. The methodology will be through books, journals, and primary research into packaging, and primary visits relating to sustainability, as well as practical work exploration and resolution. Context & Themes (2000 word): The first thing my audience will want to know is the importance of packaging within society, and how it has become one of the only and most important selling tools available to producers. They will want to learn more about how we are now a consume and discard community, what shopping has become in the eyes of consumers, and what kind of society this is creating. The next thing my audience may want to know is the importance of awareness concerning packaging impacts on environment. This will be explored through exposing figures around packaging waste and highlight the importance for change. Here I will also discuss the options for recycling and how these can manifest into incentives to help reduce the amount of waste in recycling. In the next section of the essay, I will explore the importance of packaging within retail, and acknowledge the aspects where packaging is necessary. In this part, it will begin to be revealed where the line is for the amount of packaging to be able to be used with the smallest possible impact on the environment. The next thing my audience will want to know will be the impact colour has on consumerism within packaging, and how colour is used and perceived within marketing. This will lead onto revealing how little responsibility people accept over their actions impacting on the
environment. This will also show how it has developed into a throwaway society, especially through the use of straws and disposable plastic bags, as well as highlighting the efforts taken to reduce these impacts on the environment. I will then explore the idea that companies have responsibility to force environmentally friendly products and packaging into the retail world, which will in turn influence the publics buying habits into having a more positive impact on the environment. This will explore where the responsibility lies, and how designers have the requirement to offer more sustainable solutions. Then I will explore how this can be achieved, and what tactics companies can employ to subtly promote more sustainable resolutions to the current packaging available. This will be potentially through tactility and use of subconscious environmental colours to create and promote packaging which fully meets the needs of the product, the aesthetic demands of the consumer and the minimal impact on the environment. Case Studies of Practice (1500 words): The next chapter of my essay will discuss a series of images, which will highlight the idealistic outcomes for an environmentally friendly solution to packaging. This will be a key area to show how the theories from the previous section can be put into practice and develop a strong grounding in how these solutions can be applied and used on a wide scale. Reflective Practice (700 words): In this section, I will critically evaluate my practical work, and, through using the theories and evidence within the previous section, analyse the final outcomes through how they reflect the need for a more sustainable solution to packaging. Conclusion (400 words): This section will be written second to last and will be a concise and accurate conclusion of the essay, which ties up the key theories and evidences to show an overcurrent theme and explain what impact this essay has, through it’s resolutions to ethical packaging.
CONTEXTS AND THEMES Importance of packaging within society, and how it has become one of the only and most important selling tools available to producers. We are now a consume and discard community. Plastic bags and throwaway society, how little responsibility people will take for it. 'the package is an extremely important substitute for the personal relationship that people desire'- Humphery p.65 ‘Now the package must do its own selling job, and for that reason a great deal more interest must be taken in proper packaging of merchandise’ Humphery p.87 ‘The package must ‘get attention, aroused interest, create desire, get action’’ Humphery p.87 ‘‘You use once and throw it away… you use it once and throw it away.’ This specific chant was used to promote the sale of a deodorant pad.’ Packard P.47 ‘Tomorrow, more than ever, our lives will be “disposable”’ Packard p.50 ‘’The Good Life’ here presumably means the abundant life’ Packard p.296 ‘Promoting the idea that personal well-being can be enhanced through consumption’ Smart p.203 ‘ humans are duped and dropped into a spurious consumerly conformity and happiness’ THE Bowlby p.2 ‘That is a drama of attractions and interests, desires and choices, in which mind forever seeking and whatever failing to capture the object that will satisfy their longing once and for all. The choices and wishes of love appear in same linguistic guys as those of consumption: one of the words used in relation to object choice, for instance, is the verb auszichnen, which is primarily used for purchasing something in a shop.’ Bowlby p.115 ‘because now it is more important than products that stimulate shoppers to buy’ Danziger p.xvii (intro) ‘Some packaging materials can be recycled an infinite number of times, others just 2 or 3 times’ Davies The importance of awareness concerning packaging impacts on environment. Figures and importance for change. Recycling and incentives
‘A hypothyroid economy that can be sustained only by constant stimulation of the people and their leaders to be more prodigal with the nations resources’ Packard –p.17 ‘He found ‘an enormous strain on supplies of vital raw materials’ and added, ‘the survival of the nation is involved. An assured supply of iron ore, petroleum, natural gas, metals, coal, and a host of other materials is essential to the strength of the American economy’ Packard p.185 ‘Far more can be done than is being done to reclaim scrap, to develop substitutes (especially substitutes that do not require an enormous energy output to produce), to reduce waste in both the mining and use of resources’ Packard p.256 ‘Avoidable food waste over the course of the year amounted to 4.1 million tons’ Smart p.140 ‘Humanity uses the equivalent of 1.3 planets to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste’ Smart p.161 ‘1.14 million brown-paper supermarket bags, the number used every hour’ Smart p.171 ‘1 million plastic cups, the number use on internal airline flights every 6 hours’ Smart p.171 ‘2 million plastic beverage bottles, the number used every 5 minutes’ Smart p.171 ‘In a commercial sense, by ‘selling’ we mean disposing of or exchanging commodities for profit’ Bowlby p.94 ‘What is really important to understand about shopping today is that shoppers focus on the total shopping experience’ Danziger p.xiv (intro) ‘Currently, only half of all household waste in the UK is recycled’ Davies ‘Packaging decision-makers also need to consider end-of-life of the packaging’ EUROPEN ‘The energy used for packaging is 11% of the energy used by the whole food supply system’ Jones ‘Firstly, there is no such thing as single use packaging all plastic packaging can be recovered for recycling or the generation of energy’ BPF ‘Currently 26% of all plastic in the UK still goes to landfill’ BPF ‘generation statistics indicate that 245.7 million tons of MSW were generated in 2005’ Marsh and Bugusu Importance of packaging- where is the line?
‘The goal of food packaging is to contain food in a cost effective way that satisfies industry requirements and consumer desires, maintains food safety, and minimizes environmental impact’ Marsh and Bugusu ‘Studies have also shown that if there was no plastics packaging available and other materials were used, the overall packaging consumption of packaging mass, energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would increase’ BPF ‘A typical family might throw away just over 3 kg of packaging in a week but it also throws away approximately the same amount of food’ Jones ‘In less developed countries, absent or inadequate packaging, combined with weaknesses in distribution infrastructure, cause 30% to 50% of all food to decay before it reaches the consumer’ EUROPEN ‘packaging can carry out all the functions described in the previous section, in the most sustainable way possible’ EUROPEN ‘Having information condensed into a single label from trustworthy and reliable source would be helpful’ THE ETHICAL CONSUMERp.159 ‘it is important to recognise that consumption is itself an arena through which people learn the meanings of what it is to act morally’ THE ETHICAL CONSUMER p.23 ‘The supposed cleanliness and uniformity of manufactured goods were also sources of celebration’- Humphery p28 ‘Many of these products were imported’ Humphery p.27 Impact colour has on consumerism within packaging, how people don’t care, straws, ‘A charge of rape cannot be sustained by any adult when consent or cooperation has been given’ Packard p.19 ‘Sympathetic to social and environmental issues but not active’ THE ETHICAL CONSUMER p.197 ‘Mind is assumed to be infinitely vulnerable and impressionable’ Bowlby p.99 ‘All kinds of consumer goods offer the promise of relaxation and stress relief’ Danziger p.21 ‘the way we see things is affected by what we know all what we believe’ Berger p.8 ‘ yet this is seeing which comes before words and can never be quite covered by them’ Berger p.8
‘colour exerts a very strong influence on lives’ Cummings and Porter p.7 ‘from the very earliest times colours have been connected with emotion, magic and religion, and have been given symbolic and subjective meanings’ Cummings and Porter p.7 ‘Adverts are carefully colour structured to’ take the eye for a walk’, or to pull the eyes directly to the main message’ Cummings and Porter P. 137 ‘ high legibility hues such as red and yellow flash ‘new’ and ‘improved’ messages on packaging, while background colours on products concealed in packets, tins and bottles often use colours to communicate the actual, desired or idealised shoes of the unseen product’ Cummings and Porter P. 140 ‘but that the colour of its wrapper is psychologically transferred to the strength and performance of the contained product’ Cummings and Porter P. 146 ‘The colour green has been widely used for messages of sustainability base in visual and verbal formats.’ DeLong and Martinson P. 89 ‘ colour can be used as a metaphor for concept by establishing continuity and consistency in communication of the concept, Such as the way the colour green has been used as a metaphor for the concept of sustainability’ DeLong and Martinson p.94 ‘As “gentlemen prefer blondes” so everyone has a preference for certain colours and prejudices against others. This applies to colour combinations as well. It seems good that we are of different tastes. As it is with people in our daily lives, so it is with colour. We change, correct, or reverse our opinions about colour, and this change of opinion makeshift forth and back’ Albers P. 17 ‘Overall, the problem is that packaging is driven by the desire to promote brands and to make money, not by the desire to meet real human needs, or by the desire to protect our environment’ Green Choices ‘The packaging industry claims it is greener now than it was because packets and bottles have become lighter, which means fewer raw materials used and less energy used for transport. However, flimsy, disposable packaging also means lower costs for the producers, as well, and it’s hard to be sure that their motives are entirely altruistic’ Green Choices The idea that companies have responsibility to force environmentally friendly-ness, ‘food packaging is approximately 50% (by weight) of total packaging sales’ Marsh and Bugusu
‘Packaging decision-makers must weigh the demands of product protection to reduce wastage against the need to limit packaging volume’ EUROPEN ‘colour green became an eco-cliché’ DeLong and Martinson P. 97 ‘on the other hand, the psychological level refers to how we interpret the meaning of that colour and what type of emotions the colour evokes’ DeLong and Martinson P. 93 ‘attitude-behaviour gap in the practices of sustainable fashion that is caused by limited awareness from designers and retailers in terms of consumers’ expectation of sustainable fashion’ DeLong and Martinson P. 93 ‘In one, s/he has no choice: the choice is imposed, even if it feels like spontaneous desire’ Bowlby p.3 ‘I think it is fair to say that the most risible attempt at corporate ‘greenwash’ are probably behind us now’ THE ETHICAL CONSUMERp.228 ‘Ethical issues are becoming more important in how people judge companies’ THE ETHICAL CONSUMERp.195 ‘if consumers judge that companies are behaving badly, they can and will bring them to their knees’ THE ETHICAL CONSUMERp.89 ‘Promoting the consumption, wherever possible, of locally made and/or recycled goods, as well as foods that are in season locally’ Smart p.206 ‘Its green credentials have been challenged by critics’ Smart p.203 ‘The average United States family today spends five hundred dollars of its income each year just for the package!’ Packard p.51 ‘Already some home furnishings are being built to break down within a few years and product makers have been showing a disconcerting fascination with the idea of setting ‘death dates’ for products’ Packard p.17 ‘To these packets can be added colours, company logos, promotional spiels, and images. The identity of the product as a material thing becomes increasingly drawn into the cultural realm until even the most everyday of products seems to lose some of its materiality and becomes bound up with ideas and emotions to do with cleanliness, uniformity, convenience, progress, modernity, class status, gender roles and identities, luxury, sensuality and so on’ Humphery p.33 how this can be achieved- through tactility and use of subconscious environmental colours
‘To maintain a sustainable society, consumers must rethink their purchasing and convenience expectations as well as their material and energy usage to interact more intelligently with the world in which they live’ Marsh and Bugusu ‘Packaging decision-makers also need to consider end-of-life of the packaging selected and how it will influence their environmental impacts and cost structures’ EUROPEN ‘therefore, we try to recognise our preferences and our aversions what colours dominate in our work; what colours, on the other hand, are rejected, disliked, or of no appeal. Usually a special effort in using disliked colours ends with our falling in love with them’ Albers P. 17 ‘herewith one experiences a discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect called, in this case, a haptic illusion – haptic as related to the sense of touch– the haptic sense’ Albers p.8 ‘A a vision for how a sustainable product might look’ DeLong and Martinson P. 93 ‘By making sustainable fashion more attractive, designers can encourage the user to willingly embrace it’ DeLong and Martinson P. 93 ‘because the sustainability is a dynamic concept rather than a static one, to move from awareness to actual sustainable practice requires agreed-upon communication of the concept, criteria, and policies similar to that of other industries’ DeLong and Martinson P. 90 ‘publicity is always about the future buyer’ Berger p.132 ‘An authentic concept- A shop that pops is more than just a store selling stuff. It is conceptually driven and reflects a visionary’s values’ Danziger p.xx (intro) ‘Social responsibility becomes more of a background quality that isn’t necessarily vigorously promoted’ THE ETHICAL CONSUMERp.229 ‘’voluntary simplicity’ and ethical forms of consumption designed to counter the emphasis placed on materialistic values’ Smart p.223 ‘That it might be healthier to consume less’ Smart p.206 ‘offering minimal packaging’ Smart p.203 ‘Many food retailers recognised and embraced this shift towards sensual selling’ Humphery p.86