Ahhhhhh.... Doughnuts and Packaging

Wal-Mart recently announced it had changed its packaging for doughnuts that would save space and reduce waste. The mammoth merchandiser will soon introduce a length-wise box that will require less cardboard than the traditional square doughnut box.

The company pledged to reduce all of its packaging by 5 percent between 2008 and 2013. While it makes good sense to redesign product coverings from an environmental and economic perspective, the packaging still has to supply safe and hygienic transportation to the hundreds of Wal-Mart stores.

The rising trend throughout the industry is to cut costs by optimizing. This still takes into account how much packaging is needed by volume but it broadens the definition to consider integrity, portability, recyclable potential, and the overall life cycle of the product it contains.

As far as doughnuts are concerned, the currently used flat box found at church socials and office break rooms is 609 square inches. The new box lines up the doughnuts instead of laying them flat, reducing the materials needed for the packaging by 18 percent. And it even makes room to add a 13^th doughnut, making it a true 'baker's dozen'.

Meanwhile, a simple suggestion from a couple of employees at the New Belgium brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado found that by reducing the size of the packaging holding the 12-pack bottles of beer, they could also remove the cardboard partition that separated the individual bottles.

A packaging technician with the company found the bottles supported themselves, and there was no additional breakage following the switch.

reducing the amount of waste and energy used to transport products saves money and helps keep landfills from overflowing.