Licensing Industry

I totally support Caroline's comment - as an industry let's be proactive rather than reactive. Jackie Ferguson, BKN New Media

Europe’s “Food Production Daily” reports a study published by WRAP suggests that manufacturing light-weighted glass is less carbon intensive than manufacturing polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles on a per unit weight basis. WRAP Director of Retail and Organics Programmes, Richard Swannel, said in a statement that this report: “demonstrates the positive environmental impact of lightweighting and the incorporation of recycled content. It will help inform the wine packaging and retail industries on the environmental impact of their packaging choices.”

for more info on green packaging check out http://keepitorganic.org and also find them on facebook.

True, green packaging is IN (Very IN) and industry needs to find good packaging companies like ABC-Packaging (www.abc-packaging.com) for their custom packaging solutions.

It's time to take a leap.

Mike

My experience in developing products with licensees tends to prove that manufacturers put packaging only where it is needed. Whenever they can reduce packaging they will do it, not because they care about the environment but because they want to save money in raw materials, printing but also transport (a big box takes more space in a container).
So let's not always put the responsability on manufacturers but also make efforts individually.
In many countries and cities, consumers now have the possibility to recycle their packagings, I bet very little do this regularly (personally I dont), and I also bet the Swedish or the Germans recycle more than the French or the Italians do.
Maybe our role as brands is to raise the level of awareness of consumers as to why and how they should recycle packagings but also why they should wear organic cotton, eat fair trade products and so on.
As we are dealing with kids or teens, why not use the power of our brands or characters to educate them to be the responsible people at home.
After all research show that kids have their word to say when parents by a new car, we should make sure they also push their parents to deal with environmental issues.Kids are the ones who can change the world.
Mr Smiley

In publishing significant changes have happened over the last few years to be more environmentally friendly. The Random House Group Limited makes every effort to ensure that that the papers used in its books are made from trees that have been legally sourced from well-managed and credibly certified forests. Any move to reduce packaging is a good one.

I think Caroline has prompted some serious thinking amongst her colleagues. Licensing is an industry that reflects popular culture and the popular mood. With this in mind, it is probably wise for us all to reflect on what the public mood is towards issues like packaging and presentation of products.

I think we can all become a little removed from the development process in the haze of a busy schedule. Maybe we should all spend some time reflecting on these issues and seeing what we can do to practically influence things.

Related to this, I think we should also be looking to exert more influence over licensees to try and capture the individual traits and characteristics of our licences in products. I fear that if we forget that licensing is an added value business with characters and properties having USPs, we will lose market position and consumers will not see any intrinsic value in licensed ranges.

Attention to detail and individual thinking is important.

I have been in the gift industry over 20 years now and times have changed markedly over the last couple of years. There used to be a commonly used phrase of 'big box value', ie what you were buying was over priced for what it was and the only way of increasing perceived value was to over pack the product.

As a company that develops its own product, Paladone tries to give value for money for the product before we even think about packaging.

As packaging costs are increasing in the same way as all other costs from the Far East at the moment, then reducing the size and therefore the cost of packaging is becoming a necessity economically.

Furthermore, trading standards are now enforcing legislation aimed at over packaged product. The wheel of change has begun to turn and there will be no stopping it now.