Green Options » eco-friendly packaging

Greening Hollywood: Sony’s Sustainable Culture

Paige Donner — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:13:51 +0000

Sony Pictures Studios believes in creating a culture on their Culver City campus. For CEO Michael Lynton and Co-Chairman Amy Pascal this includes a culture of environmental responsibility and sustainable stewardship, according to Jon Corcoran, VP, Corporate Safety and Environmental Affairs and John Rego, Director, Environmental Sustainability for the movie studio.

During a recent tour of the facilities, they each pointed out that education and employee awareness were key to behavior changes when it comes to environmental stewardship. This philosophy is in keeping with the Japanese tradition of creating an employee culture, a loyalty that reaches beyond the standard employee-employer structure, and one that gives and takes both ways. [Pictured: John Rego, Sony Studios; Paige Donner, Greening Hollywood; and Jon Corcoran, Sony Studios; photo by Ann Burkart]

Case in point: On June 29th, as part of Sony Studios “Links Green Series” they hosted a lunch time “Residential Solar and Hybrid Car Program,” presentation. This is an incentive program, offered through the studio, that gives employees a check for up to $5000 when they either buy a hybrid electric vehicle or install solar voltaic panels on their residence. This incentive “payback” is above and beyond the State and Federal tax incentives. Believe me, I asked. Don’t everyone blast your resume off to Sony Pictures Entertainment now!

How to Cut your Costs And Make Your Package Greener

mcmilker — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:49:52 +0000

I started reading this piece, Unilever Sees Green With Pared Down Color Palette in Ad Age, expecting to read about natural inks. Instead I found a discussion of more or less reducing use of spot color to reduce costs.

Using a color-harmonization program called Project Rainbow, Unilever is reducing the more than 100 hues it uses on its spreads and dressings packaging in Europe to six. Unilever’s hope is to save tens or eventually even hundreds of millions of dollars a year. By some estimates, the entire industry could save $5 billion annually if it follows suit.

Most entrepreneurs, starting out, unless they are in a fashion forward field stick to 4-color process for package printing, much easier and cheaper, but as green has gone gangbusters recently, many ecopreneurs have increased their use of spot color to make their packages stand out. OK, so I buy into this strategy of color reduction as a cost savings method.

But, then I read how this also qualifies as an eco improvement

OBV :: A World First In Biodegradable Beauty Packaging.

Emma Pezzack — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:27:39 +0000

I’ve been waiting (patiently and not so patiently) to see how long it would take for truly biodegradable packaging to hit the markets. Sure the market has been working on bioplastic polymers for sometime but there are still issues with heat & cold tolerances that make usage limited. Enter Organic Essence! This is truly the ultimate in green packaging; using recycled paper pulp, soy inks, organic adhesive and even organic glaze on the outer surface. While the jars are not exactly my cup of tea in terms of design, I’m giving these guys major kudos for developing what is sure to revolutionize the way our organic & natural beauty products are bottled.