Understanding sustainable design choices in a complex packaging system is a challenging and exciting task. When designing sustainable packaging, we take a holistic view, looking at many different parameters with strategic and creative mindsets.

This includes visual design, material choices, packaging innovation, structural design and technical drawings, fill rates, logistics, production speeds, material sourcing and so on. 
But of course we’re also very passionate about knowing our end customers.

Producing and delivering fantastic packaging is great, but if consumers don’t buy it, understand it, know how to use it or recycle it… well, then we didn’t do our job.

Pond Design is an insight-driven strategic design agency that understands consumers, trends and design that creates strong emotional – and meaningful – relationships between people and brands. We believe that together we can make an impactful change both for business and society.

Insight

Gen Z consumers are increasingly making active choices and switching their spending power to sustainable brands and products, while also actively boycotting brands or unsustainable practices.

The brands of tomorrow have to work pro-actively to stay relevant and vital. And to become a future-fit brand, you have to understand your consumers’ needs and desires, even the unspoken ones.

As a business, always strive to be the best in everything you do. Consumers understand and reward companies that devote effort and go the extra mile in terms of design, smart packaging solutions, choice of materials and low environmental impact. If you want to win people over and gain their trust, you need to be authentic, transparent and show you care for something bigger than just your own personal gain: Not good for me, good for us.

You don’t have to choose between a profitable business or doing good.

Packaging

We buy products, we don’t buy packaging. Before being a marketing tool, packaging is there to protect the product and ensure it’s handled and transported safely. So, we can’t really evaluate sustainability without taking into account the product inside – we can’t view packaging as a single unit/self-contained entity.

For example, one third of the global carbon footprint comes from the production of food and one third of the food produced goes to waste. That’s an alarming fact! Packaging plays a key role in the effort to reduce food waste making sure as much food as possible reaches the end consumer unharmed.

When designing and choosing packaging, we need to balance functionality and efficiency with sustainability.

Most probably we’ll need some sort of packaging even in the future …BUT – we need it to be carefully designed and thought through. Done right, packaging solutions can be genuine sustainability heroes.

Storytelling

We all make hundreds of decisions every day. For people making split-second choices in a supermarket or online, it is often difficult to know which options make the most environmental sense. What makes the difference between product A and product B?

According to self-serving bias theory, people tend to perceive their own choices in overly positive terms and legitimize them, especially after the product purchase.

Based on our understanding of psychological mechanisms such as Loss Aversion, Warm Glow, Social Consumption, Closeness Theory, Home Bias etc. we strongly believe in impacting consumer behaviour to produce value for consumers, companies and the society at large.

With well written, relevant storytelling we can engage consumers and help them make better choices and, slowly but surely, change habits.

Materials

Today, new mixes and totally new material concepts are emerging at a faster pace than ever before. Entrepreneurs, start-ups and the packaging industry are working hard to improve existing materials by making them lighter, adding more renewable and recycled content, but also by seeing lost potential in otherwise discarded or overlooked recourses that they transform into completely new material solutions.

This bodes well for the future. It’s also really exciting because it opens up a whole world of new possibilities. Changing to new more sustainable standards will require open dialogue and close collaboration between designers and production teams all over the world. Together, we can create consumer-relevant packaging that performs well and meets recyclability goals on local markets.

As a design agency, we always strive to use materials with respect and never use resources quickly or carelessly. We want to understand where materials come from and where they go. Because ultimately, new materials ending up as waste is the equivalent to wasted potential. Join our journey.

Circular economy

The terms circular economy and circular thinking are frequently used today, but what do they mean? In simple terms, it can be described as careful management of available resources. An economy where we don’t produce waste. Instead, just as in nature, everything is kept in a loop – resources are transformed, serving as raw material for new cycles. But the term ”circular economy“ includes more than just recycling materials. We also need to design in smarter ways. To give products longer lifespan, design for re-use and the possibility to repair broken products.

It also includes community thinking where sharing products and services in some instances can replace consumption of newly produced products.