Knowing that I had to present all my initial research for this project I started by doing some research in depth about sustainability as a whole and found :
After looking at sustainability as a whole I thought I should go more in depth as it is an important matter that I need to become an expert in. Going forward I decided to look into advertising in relation to sustainability. I found that a lot of the adverts would play on the viewers emotions. An example by looking at the image below which is 'what goes in the ocean goes in you' it is playing on the fact that all the rubbish humans litter into the ocean is going to go into you by the rubbish looking like sushi. A lot of them are very clever in that sense.
I then wrote down a couple of things i wanted to research into so I had all my ideas down in one place:
These were the first two slides I produced and talked about in my presentation
Looking at packaging that already exists in the supermarkets today I realised that there is such a waste in these aspects and that they are wasteful and not sustainable for the environment at all. From this I decided to look into sustainable reusable packaging because there is so much waste in the world at the moment and it is a huge problem in todays society. One idea I had was to try to tackle this problem with some reusable packaging.
From this I found a range of packaging that is reusable. The aspect that caught my eye was the Knot Wrap from LUSH so I decided to look into this further to deepen my knowledge.
LUSH
- from the very start lush has bee selling products that require no packaging which is a BIG part of the company
- 70% of the products they sell require no packaging
- of which about half can be taken home with no packaging
- they try to encourage customers to being their own bags and tins and tupperware so they can take the products naked
- they have also been working with improving the packaging that they do use so they started using recycled pots and bottles which has been going on for a few years and they are using paper bags instead of plastic
- they also are now using furoshiki the knot wrap which is using fabric as a way of wrapping presents which is getting the idea to the customer of re-using things and getting it back
- they ask customers to bring 5x pots back as they can’t be recycled everywhere and those pots get turned back into packaging which is then sold to the shop
- using energy in the factory and in the shops is also a big part of their ecological footprint
- in the shop they have been working with new lighting and they have opened the 1st all LED shop in bournemouth and it only uses 10% of the energy used for lighting a normal shop
- in the factory they have been king things like installing bio mass boilers, led lighting which is making their processes more efficient
- they have been buying better equipment and putting more controls
- they have this commitment of reducing their energy use by 5% year on year
- waste and recycling is also very important, they spend a lot of time finding they best recycling schemes for the shops and the factory
- in the factory in 2008 they recycled over 200 tonnes of cardboard and 100 tonnes of organic waste and 70 tonnes of plastic
- very little waste going to landfill
- they had a target of recycling 85% of all their waste by 2010 which they met
- they work to actually reduce the amount of waste they produce working with re-usable transit packaging, re using things like cardboard boxes in the factory and encourage staff not to create waste
- another big deal for lush was transport because as a global business transport has quite a big impact
- they try to reduce their air freight and they are down to less than 5% which is a target that they are committed to keeping the air freight down to 5% of the weight
- they work with other countries to reduce their air freight and they have done very well with japan and north america
- BIG policy change for them was putting a ban on domestic flights in the UK which saved about 122 return journeys per year
- for the flights they do take which are needed they pay £50 to a pot and call it carbon tax because they think the government is not taxing aviation as it should so they tax it themselves and use the money to fun transport and climate change groups
- communications is also v important so talking to their customers through campaigns, shop windows and green partied in the shops and having trained staff who can talk environmental issues with customers who are interested
- they also have a LUSH TV and a WEBSITE where they communicate these issues
- the idea of using all the passion they have in the business and turning this into actions so they become more sustainable the more they grow
Some articles
I was reading he ‘online purchase’ one
made me link to some TED talks and VICE documentary on plastic / plastic pollution and how we
need to switch from
plastic to make our world more sustainable to live in -
Vice documentary / TED talk
- in past 10 years human kind has produced more plastic than during the entire 20th century, that hardly decomposes and destroys entire ecosystems
- fungus could be the plastic of the future
- they have produced rubber and cork like materials from fungus which they can use is may different applications
- the fungus can range because of the way they are left in conditions
- the possibilities are endless, there is so much that they believe they can do to replace
- they can use the fungus as a kind of glue or as a substitute of plastic in order to make a 3D print
- They could take tree and pulverise it then could use that to print it into a wooden chair
- they use landfill waste for example oak, willow, maple and straw and you could all material from potato starch which you can print from the 3D printer
- the finish product is fire and water resistant which makes it perfect for packaging and trying to get rid of plastic waste
- hopefully they can just keep taking this further and further
- ecovative = uses the fungus for packaging
- the mushrooms are completely compostable at the end of their lives that are made from crop waste
- styrofoam is one of the worst things to use for packaging - every time you receive styrofoam you are just putting it in the rubbish which is basically like putting 1.5 litres of petrol in the trash
- the styrofoam doesn’t go anywhere, it just gets smaller and smaller but is not biodegradable so will be around for 1000’s of years and could even get into our oceans and create more damage
paper beats plastic? TED
- how you use the material dictates the environmental impact
- we need to learn to do more with less
- lifestyle thinking
- biodegradability = material property
truth about plastic pollution
- bad that plastic breaks down into smaller bits
- a lot of this is in the marine environment
- chose alternatives to single use plastics = save our oceans, save our planet, save ourselves
I then turned to social media as I had seen adverts for the reusable water bottles that are in place to try to get rid of plastic. The best thing I found was 4Ocean which was started by a couple of surfers who were sick of surfing in plastic rubbish and litter so they decided to do something about it.
Then I decided to look into other companies and places that were doing something about the overuse of plastic and how that could be overcome leading on from the zero waste supermarket shown in the slides above where you have to bring your own jars to get the produce that you want thus creating zero waste. One I found in London is called BULK as shown below. I thought this is a fantastic idea to produce no waste like plastic and be more sustainable.
Moving on from this I found this Cafe / Restaurant is Based in Brighton, their furniture and fittings are created from a dire to re-use. They choose up cycling
before recycling. Furniture is made from materials that would otherwise have
been wasted and crafted with innovation to serve function, their plates formed
from plastics bags, tables made from industrial floor tiles, work benches
crafted from filing cabinet frames. They aim to achieve zero waste all products
delivered to them come in
reusable crates and all that is not consumed by customers or them is fed to
their aerobic digester which is an amazing composer which they let their local community use
too to reduce the waste of their community on top of their own :
