Task 3, Little Greene Eco Paints

When thinking about the eco packaging for paints, I immediately took the secondary use into consideration. Although DIY people are quite smart and creative, I could not rely on a probability that someone will make something good and useful out of the packaging when the paint is finished. Thus the packaging had to be easily to disassemble and recycle.
First sketches were considerably average as I had to consider a "metal can" possibility, which was the first to be scraped.

From the metal can - to plastic bags.
The paint industry uses a broad variety of containers, though the most of regular paints are still contained in metal/plastic cans, like online shops for companies selling packaging for chemical products.

This way of packaging is not only not eco friendly, but not very intelligent and fun either, though there already are products that are completely made out of recycled goods.
When I scraped the metal can idea, tetrapack was the first one in the line with some good ideas in japanese packaging and easy recycling.

Nevertheless tetrapack seemed too uncomfortable to be paint packaging, as it was either too little or too massive and inconvenient.
That is when I started to look at recyclable plastic bags. After doing the research about plastic bags, the bottom line was not to do it, isn't there enough plastic bags? They are recyclable, but if binned it degrades in a long time, which is the problem.

When I read that we can make paper, card, foam -like packaging from mushrooms, I thought there had to be some easier way to pack paint in a light and easy degradable package.

And there it is! Paper made from bamboo or palm leaves, the sustainable resources, that we can grow. The paper can hold any liquid on the market and is easy degradable. The discoverer of Bottle 360 is New York designer and inventor, Jim Warner, who started used those materials for packaging.

The packaging for Little Greene has features of the plastic bag and a bottle, which becomes a spice growing container when it is split in two, where showed.

Task 2, Sustainable Design/ Packaging Design/ Architecture

Arnold Barlow, Senior Manager in UPS Sustainability Solutions taking about general reduction of the environmental impact when it comes to design and transportation of a product.

Paul Whittey, Penrose Products

 According to The Eco-Design Manifesto:

1. Design to satisfy real needs as opposed to transient, fashionable or market-driven needs.
The packaging is very fashionable, resembles the idea of  the company as well as the quality (luxury products).

2. Design to minimise the ecological footprint of the product/material/service product, i.e.

reduce resource consumption, including energy and water.

The recourses used for the packaging are made out of the used wool/cotton this way reducing consumption of energy used for production.


4. Design to enable the separation of components of the product/material or service product

at the end of life in order to encourage recycling or reuse of materials and/or components.

The separation of the products after unpacking is very uncomplicated and easy to use or recycle.


5. Design to exclude the use of substances toxic or hazardous to human and other forms of

life at all stages of the product/material/service product's lifecycle.

No toxic or hazardous substances used in order to produce the packaging, the opposite - the recourses are the same as for the products.



7. Design to use locally available materials and resources wherever possible (thinking

globally but acting locally).


The products used for packaging production are locally produced and used.


9. Design to dematerialise products into services wherever feasible.
10. Design to maximise a product/material/service product's benefits to communities.
 
The packaging for the pillows becomes a linen bin after unpacking.

11. Design to encourage modularity in design to permit sequential purchases, as needs require

and funds permit, to facilitate repair/reuse and to improve functionality.

The functionality of a pillow packaging is quite intelligent and stimulating when it becomes a linen bin, this way not only improving functionality to an upper level, but saving money and energy of buying new linen bins, which are quite expensive.

13. Publish eco-pluralistic designs in the public domain for everyone's benefit, especially

those designs that commerce will not manufacture.

This kind of packaging is a stimulus to other pillow and duvet producers, to turn it into something very useful.

TASK 1, The Age of Stupid - Oil Industry

Issues:

Toxicity:

• The Crude oil is a mixture of many different kinds of organic compounds, many of which are highly toxic and cancer causing (carcinogenic). 
• Oil is "acutely lethal" to fish, that is it kills fish quickly, at a concentration of 4000 parts per million (ppm)(0.4%). 
• Crude oil and petroleum distillates cause birth defects.
• Benzene is present in both crude oil and gasoline and is known to cause leukemia in humans. 
• The compound is also known to lower the white blood cell count in humans, which would leave people exposed to it more susceptible to infections.

Exhaust:

• When oil or petroleum distillates are burned, usually the combustion is not complete. This means that incompletely burned compounds are created in addition to just water and carbon dioxide. The other compounds are often toxic to life.
• Also, fine particulates of soot blacken humans' and other animals' lungs and cause heart problems or death. Soot is cancer causing.

Acid Rain:

• High temperatures created by the combustion of petroleum cause nitrogen gas in the surrounding air to oxidize, creating nitrous oxides. Nitrous oxides, along with sulfur dioxide from the sulfur in the oil, combine with water in the atmosphere to create acid rain.
• Acid rain causes many problems such as dead trees and acidified lakes with dead fish. Coral reefs in the world's oceans are killed by acidic water caused by acid rain.
• Acid rain leads to increased corrosion of machinery and structures (large amounts of capital), and to the slow destruction of archaeological structures like the marble ruins in Rome and Greece.

Climate Change:

• Humans burning large amounts of petroleum create large amounts of CO₂ gas that traps heat in the earth's atmosphere. Also some organic compounds, such as methane released from petroleum drilling or from the petroleum itself, trap heat several times more efficiently than CO₂. 
• Soot blocks the sun from reaching the earth and could cause cooling of the earth's atmosphere.

Oil Spills:

• Major oil spills include the Kuwaiti oil fires, Kuwaiti oil lakes, Lakeview Gusher, Gulf War oil spill, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Spilt oil penetrates into the structure of the plumage of birds and the fur of mammals, reducing its insulating ability, and making them more vulnerable to temperature fluctuations and much less buoyant in the water. Cleanup and recovery from an oil spill is difficult and depends upon many factors, including the type of oil spilled, the temperature of the water (affecting evaporation and biodegradation), and the types of shorelines and beaches involved. Spills may take weeks, months or even years to clean up

VOS's: 

• Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are gases or vapours emitted by various solids and liquids, many of which have short- and long-term adverse effects on human health and the environment. VOCs from petroleum are toxic and foul the air, and some like benzene are extremely toxic, carcinogenic and cause DNA damage.
  
  
  

  Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy

  
  • 15-year limit set for switch to renewable energy
  • Biofuels favoured over further nuclear power
  • Doing so to avoid climate change and huge oil prices.
  • Dependency on oil should be broken by 2020.
    
    
  "Sweden, which was badly hit by the oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets almost all its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power, and relies on fossil fuels mainly for transport. Almost all its heating has been converted in the past decade to schemes which distribute steam or hot water generated by geothermal energy or waste heat. A 1980 referendum decided that nuclear power should be phased out, but this has still not been finalised."
  
  (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/feb/08/frontpagenews.oilandpetrol)