Better detergent and drinks bottles, clever car hire and a vision of the spectacle-buying’s future
Seventh Gen’s recyclable detergent bottle
Seventh Generation, the US maker of sustainably minded household and personal care products, has put a fresh spin on the traditional detergent bottle to further reduce its packaging footprint.
Its new Natural 4X Laundry Detergent bottle uses a cardboard shell that’s entirely recyclable and compostable, made from 70% cardboard and 30% newspaper.
The detergent is sealed in a plastic liner, which can be recycled at locations with plastic bag recycling bins. The plastic cap, however, is made from plastic that’s not as widely recycled (polypropylene number 5) but is accepted at certain venues. Even with the plastic liner and cap, the bottle uses 66% less plastic than the average laundry bottle.
The size has been reduced to 50 fluid ounces (1.5 litres), through the use of four-times concentrated detergent, which can handle the same 66 loads as the company’s 100-ounce (3 litre) two-times detergent.
Seventh Generation worked closely with Ecologic to develop the new packaging. The product will be rolled out slowly to gauge consumer response, and if all goes well, the company plans to increase production.
BMW’s new car-sharing programme
BMW is extending its role in the car-sharing industry with its new DriveNow programme in Germany.
Launched in Munich in April, and then in Berlin, the programme differs from those of its competitors in several notable ways. According to Frank Wienstroth at BMW, DriveNow is the only car-sharing programme to focus specifically on high-efficiency premium vehicles (initially customers can choose between a BMW 1 Series and Mini models).
There’s also no need for advanced reservations; customers can simply find available vehicles online, via a smart phone app, or simply spot an available car on the road. The system is keyless, so DriveNow vehicles are operated via a chip installed on participants’ driving licences upon registering.
Another bonus is the absence of set pick-up or drop-off locations, though for the launch there will be a defined parking zone to ensure customers have quick and easy access to the vehicles. But, for an extra one-off fee, cars can be dropped off outside the defined area. The fee will show up on the car’s touch screen once it is parked outside the zone for the customer to decide whether it’s worth the added cost.
Pricing is also competitive. Users pay a one-time registration fee of €29 and then 29 cents per minute, inclusive of petrol and parking fees.
For the initiative BMW has partnered with Sixt, which will provide the car-hire and technical expertise. The goal is to extend the programme to other European cities in the near future, followed by other continents. The company is also looking to add electric vehicles to its portfolio.
Eyewear with a conscience
Started by four friends from the prestigious Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania, US, Warby Parker is a vintage-inspired boutique eyewear company with a social mission and impressively low prices to boot.
The company was born of the friends’ growing frustration that well-designed prescription glasses cost upwards of $200, a result of a handful of companies’ grip on the industry. So the founders decided to make their own designs and sell solely on the web (save for a handful of showrooms), thus removing the pricey middlemen to bring consumers snazzy glasses for a flat price of $95.
Their premiere line includes 27 styles (plus a monocle!) in an array of appealing colours. The website is sleek and engaging, enabling customers to upload a photo of themselves to virtually try on as many pairs as they like.
What’s perhaps most pleasing about the company is that it was founded on the principle of giving back, which was – financially and logistically – built into their business model from day one.
One billion people lack access to glasses. Through their Buy a Pair, Give a Pair programme, for every pair of glasses sold Warby Parker makes a donation to its non-profit partners including Restoring Vision, who in turn supply a pair of glasses to someone in need.
“Our goal is to create an organisation that can serve as a model for how for-profit companies should behave,” says co-founder Neil Blumenthal. “We are working to build an organisation that can be a force for good in the world by being stakeholder-centric – thinking about all of our stakeholders in every decision we make.”
The founders have each spent time in their careers committed to non-profits. Blumenthal spent five years leading VisionSpring, a social enterprise that trains low-income women to start their own businesses distributing glasses to people living on less than $4 a day.
So how do the young founders talk about their business? “I hate the phrase ‘corporate responsibility’,” says Blumenthal. “It’s human responsibility. Corporations are managed by human beings. Human beings should consider other human beings in everything they do, professionally and personally.”
PepsiCo’s plant-based bottles
Global food and drinks giant PepsiCo has topped its competitors with the world’s first PET plastic bottle that’s 100% produced from plant-based, renewable resources.
At the development stage, the company experimented with a variety of biomass but settled on switch grass, pine bark and corn husks for its 2012 pilot programme, as these sources won’t divert otherwise usable food sources for packaging.
In the future, the company aims to source agricultural byproducts such as orange peels, oat hulls and potato scraps from its own food companies to create the green bottles.
“The ability to manufacture the ‘green’ bottle via a closed loop system is unique to PepsiCo and further reinforces PepsiCo’s ‘Power of One’ advantage by driving a strategic beverage innovation via a food-based solution,” says PepsiCo’s Jennifer Ryan.
According to Ryan, scientists have been working on the 100% plant-based bottle for years, but have increased their efforts in the past six months. The pilot will run two hundred thousand bottles and, if successful, PepsiCo intends to start full-scale production.
Kellogg’s breakfast campaign
Kellogg’s is helping needy schoolchildren in the US gain access to breakfast through a simple photo or text.
Through its Share Your Breakfast programme, whenever someone shares a picture or description of their breakfast (Kellogg’s or otherwise) online or by text, the company will donate a breakfast to a needy child in school. The goal is to share one million breakfasts, roughly $200,000 worth, by the 2011-12 school year.
“The campaign is important now as one in four US children live in food-insecure households,” says Kellogg’s spokesperson Jacqueline Baron. “As the breakfast leader, Kellogg’s believes it is our responsibility to be active in ensuring kids start their day the best way possible. To us, that is on a full stomach.”
Kellogg’s has been working with Action for Healthy Kids since 2005 to help provide funds to develop school breakfast programmes. This is the company’s largest integrated marketing campaign to date.
Care packages go virtual
The Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (Care) has taken its original Care packages, for which the international humanitarian organisation became renowned following the second world war, to the web.
Though Care’s mission has greatly expanded beyond emergency relief to help eradicate global poverty (particularly among women) and operates in 70 countries, the organisation sought to re-envision how it could best promote Care packages in the 21st century.
The site www.Carepackage.org was born, which enables anyone to build a virtual Care package that can help women gain an education (fund a year of schooling, train a teacher), live more healthily (equip a birthing centre, train a health worker), and earn a living (purchase a garden kit for crop production or money for management training). Package offerings also include non-monetary assistance, such as asking governments to support comprehensive maternal and birth care.
Users can donate their own Care packages or create a group Care package to give together. Since the site’s March launch hundreds of virtual Care packages have been made, with over $25,000 donated to help underprivileged women worldwide.
NGOs launch contest against Hershey
In an effort to expose the cracks in US chocolate maker Hershey’s cocoa supply chain, Green America, Global Exchange and the International Labour Rights Forum joined together for a Hershey’s “brand-jamming” contest.
The contest covers three categories: mock tagline, mock print ad, and mock TV commercial. Whoever devises the most creative ad about Hershey’s supply chain operations per category wins $1,000.
The contest builds on the three organisations’ collaborative work to spur Hershey to take responsibility and to act on behalf of its cocoa growing communities particularly in west Africa, which produces 70% of the world’s cocoa and yet is continuously plagued with cases of child labour, trafficking, and forced labour. Hershey is the largest US chocolate manufacturer, with 42.5% of the market.
In the 2010 campaign report Time to Raise the Bar the three organisations (along with non-profit Oasis) assert that Hershey lags behind its competitors in sourcing cocoa that’s certified by independent third parties to meet acceptable labour, social, and environmental standards, such as Fairtrade. Only its recently acquired Dagoba line of chocolate includes Fairtrade certified products.
“It remains our hope that Hershey will put an end to these unconscionable labour abuses,” says Global Exchange Fairtrade director Adrienne Fitch Frankel. “That day is likely to come about more quickly as even more Americans tell Hershey to clean up its chocolate mess.”