In 2010, I wrote a blog post that was one of five a carried from my old website to the new. The post was titled “Expectation of Green Companies”.
I covered my disappointment in the packaging material that an eco-friendly company used to ship their products to me. As a branding and marketing professional, I had this summary:
“Every move a company makes can either reinforce or detract from what they say they believe in. For a green company, everything needs to reinforce that you believe in a better, more sustainable future.”
Lori Sullivan, One Shade Greener
Fast forward 13 years and a lot of progress has been made on the sustainable packaging front. Box sizes are engineered to be as small as possible for the product being shipped, air pouches are now an option to protect items, and programs are even in place for box reuse.
Because of these advancements, I think the bar has been raised for every company – not just those who are considered green, sustainable, or eco-friendly.
This became clear when I received a package from a Fortune 500 company this week.
My Story
I received a notification that my package had arrived. I was excited and looking forward to the contents. As I reached the porch, I thought “this can’t be it”.
The box was at least triple the size of the product purchased. I brought the inside and opened it up.
While I was frustrated by the box size, this was no comparison to how I felt when I opened the box.
Instead of the joy I expected to feel when seeing the product live, the feeling shifted to a mix of anger and disappointment.
Both of those feelings can be explained.
Why I Was Angry
The anger was my gut reaction to a too large box FULL of plastic packaging peanuts!
These were NOT the cornstarch kind. They were the old-school, polystyrene kind – the kind that can’t be recycled and are now my problem to reuse or throw in the trash with guilt where they will take 100 years to decompose.
These peanuts weren’t only polystyrene.
They were pink.
Pink peanuts are worse than white.
They have had an antistatic agent added – while I appreciate the lack of cling, I would likely take some static over the application of additional chemicals to a product that doesn’t decompose.
Why I Was Disappointed
Now to my disappointment.
I am confident this company did not consciously select the peanuts based on their lack of sustainability.
They simply didn’t know.
I doubt there was a conversation on how the choice would impact the triple bottom line – people, planet, profit.
There was no lifecycle analysis. Likely no alternatives considered.
The team didn’t know where to look and there was no process in place to support them in their decision.
Summary
This is just one example where smart people are making decisions and might not realize how those choices might land.
The decisions may be on something they are passionate about or something that is insignificant.
I would never want to force a choice on a team.
Yet, I would love if more teams were aware of how each decision impacts their customer, the planet, and their costs.
Would the understanding have changed the packaging decisions this team made…maybe….maybe not.
My final thought – Remember that EVERY choice you make and experience you create is a statement about your brand.