Innovation Design 3/4
and on average, the kettle is reboiled 2.3 times for every cup of water used,” says Sherwin.
A number of innovations have been designed in to kettles, such as separate reservoirs that boil only the water you need, filters and heavily insulated walls to retain heat – but ultimately improving the sustainability of a kettle is about changing consumer behaviour. There are limits to what design can achieve. For Coca-Cola Enterprises and other FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods companies) packaging is a key focus and big improvements can be made. Even though it is not often seen that way, “good packaging has always been about sustainability,” says Jane Bickerstaffe, director of the Industry Council for Packaging & the Environment (INCPEN). By preserving products that would otherwise go to waste, packaging can cut the environmental footprint of a product significantly, she says, citing the exam-ple of cucumbers that have their shelf life extended from three days to 14 days through the addition of 1.5g of plastic. To those that bemoan the use of fossil fuel-based plastics, she says that the amount of resources such as water and energy saved far outweighs the fossil fuel used.
Meat has a huge carbon and water footprint – it takes 15,000 litres of water and 17kg of CO2 equivalent to produce 1kg of beef – that packaging that can prevent any waste has a huge environ- mental impact. A quarter of meat sold loose used to be thrown away because people do not like buying meat that has turned brown, Bickerstaffe asserts. The change in colour is simply the result of contact with oxygen, and the use of “modified atmosphere” packaging that has a lower oxygen content allows
New vacuum packs extend the shelf life of meat and reduce packaging
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