Sustainable Packaging Design : A Business Case Study

Abstract: Packaging is a topic under debate and scrutiny in today’s society, due to its obvious environmental detriment – but also the business opportunities – tied to minimizing or even eliminating packaging. Therefore, two major Swedish companies have collaborated with KTH in order to investigate this field by using a pair of reading glasses as an example. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the applicability of sustainable packaging design practices and theories in a business case study, and also the value generated in the case study. The results were a review of five sustainable packaging design practices and theories in relation to the case study, and the design of a new packaging called ‘Toblerone’. The conclusion was that all five practices and theories were applicable to the business case study in theory, but in practice, two of them were not economically viable. The link between economic performance and environmental performance had a massive impact on setting the ambition level of this type of sustainability research. However, the economic value generated at the end of the case study was a whopping 720% increase in shipping efficiency, while environmental and social values needed further investigations.