By admin on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 19:30

 I just lost my Nokia's Bluetooth while security check last night at the airport. Its a great thing for me to be handsfree and explain myself overphone without any extra stress of holding the phone on one hand or tilting my neck on one side. So I had to quickly needed to buy one more. I went to airport gadget shop Croma and bought the new bluetooth headset of Nokia.  I was surprised to see such a big package for such a small accessory. Then I looked around at the store and others were also not really different. The disturbing fact is that it says on the bottom line: "No Charger, less package, less waste"  We can see it uses oversized big card board and big blister. So it is wasting cardboard natural resources and also adding to plastic waste. It is also taking extra space on display and extra space on transportation so more carbon emission. Why we do that? Can these such big companies not think of smaller packages and truly help to reduce the packaging waste rather than saying No Charger, less package, less waste. If no additional thing in the same pack, of course it would have less packaging and then they would be using that packaging when they pack the charger. So why such a declaration?

Comments

Dear Sir whether it is Nokia or any other company they are using big big package in the name of marketing the product and to have more visual display on shelf. Most of the companies are saying about the packaging sustainability and reducing the packaging for environment, but there are few companies only who are doing this. This is where the role of packaging technologist comes. They can organize Presentation , seminars and whatever other means to communicate to the marketing people and other to create awareness about this. This way we can save our environment and can put a foot forward towards "GO GREEN "
Sat, 04/10/2010 - 00:17
Badal (not verified)

Dear Sandeep,   Nice observation. You are right. In my view, Nokia has standardised certain cards sizes for some group of items and are continuing the same for years. Probably they need to have a review and corrective action on this.   warm regards Chakravarthi
Sat, 04/10/2010 - 00:35
Chakravarthi AVPS (not verified)

Dear Sandeep Sir, It was a very gud observation, Badal and chakravarti have raised some valuable points and even i feel------ Marketing, shelf appeal and sales form the primary criteria for most of the Packaging companies and the fear of loosing the present market share also makes them relectant to make changes even after identifying the loop holes. This is not only present in Nokia but also in many of the Indian Companies where we start with a bigeer package and reduce to a smaller one rather taking the last option at the start and it is the attitude that has to be changed by many of the companies.
Sun, 04/11/2010 - 03:01
Raviteja (not verified)

Ravi, probably you are right that this is due to marketing reasons but people like Nokia have multiple ways of marketing their products and why by spoing the atmosphere. I am sure they can think better ways of communications. Its not only Nokia but many more. I just observed this one when I bought this accessory. My bigger concern is their statement of less package waste on the bottom of the pack while they are adding more waste. Such communications by such biggies are misleading and I think we as consumers deserve to get more responsible communications
Sun, 04/11/2010 - 20:27

No doudt it is a wastage of packaging material. What could have been packed in half of pack size has been over packaged. But just a thought is the less package, less waste being featured in comparision to the earlier packs of the bluethooth with the charger? Need to check.
Tue, 04/13/2010 - 00:57

All points are valid, but no one mentioned the problem of theft. Most companies also have the problem of their item being stolen, so they make the secondary package large enough so that is is harder for the consumer to slip in their pocket. So with the marketing, there is also the theft issue. I agree, the package can always be smaller but there are other issues that come with that. They may be using a common card size as well as common blister size for several different products--and maybe this current package is smaller than it used to be (?). It would be less expensive to use one common card and blister for several products rather than to customize for each product.
Tue, 04/13/2010 - 08:00
sylvia (not verified)

Do not know what exactly the reason is but it definitely looks too big for the size of the product. And the comment below No Charger, less package, less waste does not qualify. If no charger then definitely less package. its like no phone, even more saving of the package and if no product then no package. Theft is the valid point but at the same time, these are hitech companies and I am sure they can always have simple alrm sytems built in for the stores.  I am not convinced that instead of resolving the complexities, we can afford to waste more
Wed, 04/14/2010 - 01:05

Dear sylvia I disagree with the theft problem that due to this the package is bigger. today if you go to malls , the screen is there for continuous monitoring. I was travelling to Oman and saw the Nokia charger and some other items , which was packaged in less size carded blister. So with the advent of new technology ,the theft problem is a minor issue and we cannot justify this for bigger size carded blister . The last two point mentioned by you is an excellent one of using common carded blister. Here the inventory cost as well as the printing cost can be saved a lot. While designing a package it must be taken into consideration that can we use same packaing material for multiple product. If this can be done , we can save a lot of developmental cost also.
Fri, 04/16/2010 - 07:58
Badal (not verified)

hey,I find that your blog is very beneficial and helpful and we were interested if there can be a possibility of acquiring More article content like this on your website. If you willing to help us out, we would be willing to compensate you... Sincerely, Nancey Wimer
Tue, 06/01/2010 - 19:11

Hello, So what is your idea to compensate? I am looking forward to hear from you, Thank you Sandeep Goyal
Thu, 06/03/2010 - 06:38