Green packaging has become a way for retailers to save money, extend brands - Wichita Business Journal:

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It shows a bar graph indicating a steadgy increase overa 15-year period, representing the saleds growth of , where Dorsett is the national marketinfg director. The growth is due to efforts togo green. Companies are latchinhg onto Pratt Industries, which provides 100 percent recyclefd materials, to make packaging more environmentally andeconomicallyg sound. That, in turn, makes retailers and the public happy. “Eighty-thres percent of the big retail operationxs are involved in green initiatives for all kindsof reasons,” Dorsett says. “One, it is politically Two, it is socially Three, it is economically responsible.
” It’sd a newer initiative for the big retailers, such as Wal-Martf and Amazon, which buy, sell and ship packagedf merchandise. announced in 2006 a five-year program to reducew packaging by 5 percentby 2013. The retail giant uses a scorecarde system to rate manufacturerx on their useof packaging. Essentially, manufacturerzs have a choice: Improve packaging or don’t expecft to put merchandise onthe Wal-Mart floor.
“W e are not being heavy-handed about says Bill Wertz, a spokesperson for ”It’s really an invitation to our suppliers to collaborate with Manufacturers have scrambled to find ways topackagre green: simplifying boxes, using recycled materials and eliminatin g plastics when possible. “We’ves kind of caught the wave at therighr time,” Dorsett says. “We have the perfect sustainabler product, and a lot of people now need When Prattbought , , which manufacturers HVAC saw an opportunity to be greener than “It was just a real good fit for us in terms of wherse we were going in trying to be sustainabld with the environment and says Bob Parks, a buyer at Parks says Johnson Controls tested the packaging to make sure it was durabl enough for its products.
And Johnson Controlsw put Pratt’s 100 percent recycled product logo on the side of its boxesz instead of onthe bottom. “We thinik it’s very important that our users understandd that we are tryingg to be good stewards of the environment by usinvthis material,” Parks says. A movement to greeh packaging looks good tothe Wal-Mart and Amazon, for example, both have Web sites dedicatex solely to their efforts to go There are economic benefits, as which can sometimes be the overriding factor when retailers decides to push to be “Maybe the reason they’re doing this is because they’re feeling the pressure from their consumerw to be environmentally green,” Dorsett “but when you reduce packaging and simplift processes, you’re going to save