Tag: Sustainability

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Reducing the carbon footprint and plastic waste of LFTs: Evidence-based opportunities

April 5th 2022
Dan Haworth

Dan Haworth 

Head of Diagnostics

Billions of lateral flow tests have been used worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic – over two billion have been provided in the UK alone. Debate has raged on social media about why the tests need to use so much single-use plastic and how they could be made more ‘sustainable’. The test strip caseworks is a particular source of dismay – why so much plastic to house such a tiny test strip?

With the UK government ending the free distribution of lateral flow tests for the general public – citing a transition from emergency response to longer-term management of the pandemic – now is the ideal time to look more closely at the sustainability of these lateral flow tests, and to seek the data to demystify some of the emotional assumptions being made.

Familiarity with lateral flow testing has certainly increased, as has confidence in their clinical performance. It’s expected that lateral flow devices will be more present in our daily lives post-pandemic – not just for COVID-19 and pregnancy testing but to diagnose diseases such as seasonal influenza and sexually transmitted infections – all from the comfort of the home.

We’ve carried out a high-level assessment to quantify the approximate environmental impact of lateral flow tests and identify evidence-based suggestions for improving their environmental sustainability.

Why do COVID-19 lateral flow tests contain lots of single-use plastic in the first place?

The emergence of COVID-19 was a global emergency, and vast quantities of lateral flow tests were needed urgently. Once developers could produce the right immunoassay chemistry to detect the virus (SARS-CoV-2), it required implementation in a low-cost, low-risk device, that has a mature supply chain – with proven, readily available materials that wouldn’t compromise analytical or clinical performance.

This meant using existing plastic casework designs to retain and protect the nitrocellulose test strip. Plastic is robust, low cost, lightweight, easy to transport, and easily printed for QR codes and LOT numbers. Critically, it’s a consistent material proven for the highest volume manufacturing and won’t interfere with the immunoassay chemistry.

From a performance, cost, and manufacturing perspective, redesigning the product with new materials would have been high risk. Material changes may also have needed significant R&D costs, new capital equipment as well as additional cost and effort needed to demonstrate equivalence and achieve regulatory approval – risking the ability to provide sufficient numbers of high-quality tests, at speed during the pandemic.

Our results: The sustainability of lateral flow tests

But how serious an environmental impact do these tests have? To find out, we broke down a test into its constituent components and weighed them to calculate the approximate environmental impact, using standard emissions factors to calculate the carbon footprint of a single test.

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We focused on carbon footprint (the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted during manufacture, transport, and disposal of the tests) and plastic waste (waste that would persist indefinitely if released into the environment) – the two issues that have attracted the most attention around lateral flow tests. A more comprehensive study should consider a broader range of environmental impacts, for example, the use of scarce resources and emission of other pollutants to avoid unintended consequences of any product changes.

Our results reveal:

  • The components needed to conduct the test account for around half of the carbon footprint and around two-thirds of the plastic waste. Packaging makes up most of the rest – as is often the case, a surprisingly high proportion of the total environmental impact
  • The test strip caseworks, which attracts the most comment online, is responsible for around 30% of the carbon footprint and 40% of the plastic waste. While it’s the most significant single contributor to the environmental impacts we evaluated, the large number of other small parts is also significant. Focusing on the caseworks therefore might not be the best strategy for improving the sustainability of the tests overall.
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Lateral flow tests a minor piece of UK healthcare’s environmental impact

To put these numbers into context, we can compare the environmental impact of the two billion COVID-19 lateral flow tests distributed in the UK with the UK healthcare system’s overall environmental impact. We estimate the UK’s lateral flow tests have a carbon footprint equivalent to around 0.5% of the total NHS carbon footprint. This isn’t a trivial amount, but it’s also not the largest single contributor to the impact of the UK health system.

It’s also worth considering the positive environmental impact of a user-administered test on the health system. Conducting a test at home can eliminate the need for an individual to visit a test site, GP’s surgery, or hospital (assuming the clinical performance of the lateral flow test is adequate). Based on estimates from the Sustainable Healthcare Coalition, one lateral flow test has around 5% of the carbon footprint of a single GP appointment and produces a similarly low percentage of non-degradable (plastic) waste.

And that’s before we consider travel. We estimate one lateral flow test has the same carbon footprint as driving 350 metres in an average UK car. So, if you’re driving yourself to a test site or GP surgery some distance away, at-home lateral flow tests compare even more favorably.

If a lateral flow test prevents an individual from transmitting COVID-19 to a vulnerable person, there’s a public health benefit – as well as an environmental benefit – to keeping people out of the hospital. We can all see the discarded waste from home tests, but the less visible impact from energy- and material-intensive medical interventions is often significantly higher.

These approximate figures demonstrate why building an evidence base is vital during product development targeting sustainability objectives – because the results can be unexpected and non-intuitive.

Quick ways to optimize today’s lateral flow tests

Just because waste from lateral flow tests might not be the most urgent sustainability issue for UK healthcare, that doesn’t mean we can’t and shouldn’t do something about it.

We used the ‘avoid/shift/improve’ model to find potential quick wins for lateral flow tests. These reduce the carbon footprint of each test by nearly a third and the plastic waste by almost a quarter – without impacting the fundamentals of how the test works.

They include:

  • Eliminate waste bags. There’s a case for quickly isolating contaminated waste (even given COVID-19 also spreads from infected individuals through the air), but the bags account for around 5% of the carbon footprint of the test. It’s not clear how widely used they are in a domestic setting – there may be a risk-based justification for not including them in the test kit.
  • Package all the test strips in a single foil pouch. Using a single re-sealable pouch to protect the tests from ambient humidity (rather than individually packing each test in a pouch with desiccant) is common in packs of lateral flow tests designed for use by healthcare professionals. However, once opened, the stability lifetime of the remaining tests is affected.
  • Reduce the size of paper instructions. These are important for the effectiveness of the tests and are a regulatory requirement, but account for 5% of the carbon footprint of a test – could they be reduced in size?
  • Eliminate the cardboard sleeve. This packaging isn’t essential to the safe and effective functioning of the test, and it seems likely that the functions it does provide could be achieved with less material.
  • Prefill the extraction tubes with buffer solution. This is already done in some test kits, although manufacturers need to be conscious of moisture loss and the effect on shelf life. However, the separate plastic vial used in the test kit we studied accounts for around 5% of the carbon footprint and plastic waste.
  • Increase the size of the pack from seven to ten tests. This would mean less package waste per individual test. Including ten tests in one pack instead of seven reduces the carbon footprint by around 5% (depending on how many other optimizations are done at the same time). Perhaps a pack of seven tests was originally designed to cover a week of daily testing – but is that how tests are being used in practice?
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Redesign of the test strip caseworks

Looking to the longer-term gets us into product redesign – creating a new generation of the product with sustainability in mind. Doing this can take significant investment since, for medical devices, it’s likely to require new regulatory approval, which is a lengthy and costly process.

A popular idea circulating for lateral flow tests is to minimize the plastic test strip caseworks (without compromising the essential functions of providing a stable platform, and protecting the nitrocellulose test strip). It might be possible to halve the caseworks mass and reduce the overall carbon footprint and plastic waste by 15-20%. This would require significant investment in R&D, production tooling, and regulatory approval hoops to jump through – but could be worthwhile if future demand for tests stays high.

Longer-term options

If we consider that the world may require billions more lateral flow tests over the coming decade, a more comprehensive redesign becomes commercially viable. This could involve stripping the design back to the fundamental requirements for a lateral flow test – flowing a sample through the test strip in a way that is controlled and free from contamination. Current designs take advantage of established components to collect, buffer, and dose the sample – but, at this production volume, it may be worthwhile designing a system from the ground up that is optimized for cost, usability, performance, and sustainability.

Sustainability as a brand differentiator

It’s clear there’s scope to optimize lateral flow tests to reduce their environmental impact – and a systematic analysis reveals options beyond those that might jump out to someone when they use the tests. But it’s essential to put the impact of lateral flow tests in the context of the wider healthcare system, to focus resources where they can have the most environmental impact – and to recognize that, sometimes, the plastic waste people can see helps to avoid more serious, but less visible consequences.

On the other hand, while visible plastic waste from lateral flow tests may not be the most pressing environmental issue facing the healthcare industry, it highlights the growing influence consumer opinion is likely to have as diagnosis and treatment shift from hospitals to homes. And as lateral flow tests become (in the UK, at least) a product people buy with their own money, choosing from a range of options, there may be a competitive advantage for businesses that take note and optimize their products for sustainability.

References
  • Prime Minister sets out plan for living with COVID [Internet]. GOV.UK. 2022 [cited 1 April 2022]. Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-sets-out-plan-for-living-with-covid
  • The Sustainable Healthcare Coalition. Care Pathways Calculator. [Internet]. Sustainable Healthcare Coalition. 2022 [cited 1 April 2022]. Available from: https://shcoalition.org/

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For more information on reducing the environmental impact of lateral flow tests without compromising performance, contact Cambridge Design Partnership.

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Mastering fluid flow to enhance user experience|

Mastering fluid flow to enhance user experience

March 22nd 2022

Ice cream and blood are two things you probably don’t want to think about simultaneously. But both are full of organic proteins and fats and behave differently from a fluid like water when they’re pumped through tubes. Innovators sometimes think about these similarities when creating, for example, a novel ice cream dispenser or device that filters out platelets from donor blood .

How a substance flows is a vitally important consideration for many products, from foods to skincare to medical devices to household paints. Development teams need to keep in mind a wide range of flow behaviors (for example, flow through nozzles, non-Newtonian flow, and foaming) to hit the sweet spot: a positive user experience that makes a product stand out in a crowded market. This means thinking about the science of how liquids and gases behave (fluid dynamics), as well as how the product responds to user interaction.

Look at how the squeezable plastic ketchup bottle differs from the glass bottles that were standard before 1983. The new design completely changed the user experience – no more digging down into the bottle with a knife to get the ketchup flowing again. Things became even easier for ketchup lovers with the debut of the upside-down squeezable bottle – no more awkwardly storing ‘regular’ bottles upside down in the fridge.

Or think about how the experience of washing your hands changed after the arrival of the liquid soap dispenser. Instead of having to share the same bar of soap with others, people can now wash “without the soapy mess”, as Robert R Taylor, who introduced SoftSoap liquid soap, put it, and can take only as much soap as they need.

While the flow of some liquids is analogous to water, whose behavior is well understood, other substances behave in much more complicated ways, requiring in-depth analysis work to understand when designing new products. For example, the air bubbles in ice cream make it behave as a liquid foam. Ice cream’s flow will change depending on how you’re dispensing it: Push it at high pressure through a narrow channel or nozzle, and the air bubbles will be compressed, allowing more ice cream to flow through the nozzle at once. When the ice cream is returned to normal pressure, the air bubbles re-expand, and the ice cream returns to its original size. Because of this complex and variable behavior, designing a product to dispense ice cream relies on hands-on experiments… which can mean going through gallons of ice cream before you can create a design that works as intended. Only by conducting these experiments to understand ice cream’s behavior can you build the mathematical model required to effectively develop a high-performance machine.

While it’s a shame to use gallons of ice cream in the quest for a better product, it’s not an environmental disaster. But shipping water-based products around the world does contribute to fossil fuel consumption and climate change. Removing water from laundry detergent helps cut shipping emissions by reducing bulk and making shipping more efficient. But it also dramatically changes how detergent flows and gets used by consumers. For example, measuring out 10 ml more detergent than recommended likely wouldn’t have an impact if you’re using a product that’s mostly water. But being off by 10 ml when detergent is concentrated could make a big difference for your laundry. So, it’s vital to ensure that dispensing is accurate, which requires an understanding of flow.

There are so many flow behaviors that can affect a product’s design. For example, should a container for insecticide include a mechanism to avoid skin contact and spillage? How could a medical device for freezing tumors be redesigned to eliminate vapor locks without the use of heavy and bulky high-pressure gas cylinders? Is there a way to dispense foaming hand soap in a decorative pattern for a premium experience?

Getting the design right for a flowing substance can differentiate between a product that fails and one that creates an experience that shifts category norms and delivers breakthrough consumer delight.

References

Product design: Is plastic ever the best choice?

Product design: Is plastic ever the best choice?

February 16th 2022

Mark Buckingham 

Amy King

Amy King 

Head of Insight & Strategy

Plastics’ reputation has gone from miraculous to maligned in the last half-century. Suppliers have even resorted to disguising their use with brand names and faux-natural finishes. However, if good product design means selecting the right tool for the job, there are many applications where these unfashionable materials may still be the best choice in products with design lifetimes of many years.

Below we look at the case for considering plastics in the design of durable products, and why they don’t need to spell disaster for the environment when used responsibly.

The rise and fall of plastics

Short for ‘thermoplastic’, the term ‘plastics’ describes materials that will soften and melt under heat, meaning they can be molded into intricate shapes at moderate cost.

The first synthetic plastic was patented in 1907, and by the mid-20th century, plastics were enjoying a heyday. As manufacturing techniques and costs improved, products, such as plastic bags and cling film wrap, became prolific. By the end of the century, the realization that these packaging materials could take thousands of years to break down (and may cause environmental harm when they do so), resulted in an anti-plastic movement.

The challenge for today’s innovators is that the case for durable-use plastics got swept up in the backlash against single-use items. There have also been many examples of low-cost reusable plastic items which are often thrown away after being used for only a brief time. This has made it harder to convince manufacturers, product designers, and consumers that sometimes plastics may be the most suitable option for products designed to be used for ten years or longer.

When plastic may be the only choice

There are many factors to consider when choosing the most appropriate material for an application: properties, price, ease of processing, and sustainability. These have different weightings depending on the intended application.

For example, in ‘life-or-death’ products, a material’s properties will often outweigh its eco-score. For example, would you choose a biodegradable yet less effective version of the following: a bulletproof vest, hospital machinery part, or heart valve? In less critical applications, choosing between different materials may be more finely balanced, and selecting a material that permits a long design-life remains a key factor.

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A versatile material

Plastics’ original (and ongoing) attraction is that they can be blended with additives, such as colored pigments, stabilizers, antioxidants, flame retardants, and reinforcing fillers, to take on an incredible range of properties. The flip side of these additives is that they make recycling harder, so they should only be included when they provide an important benefit. The range of properties includes:

  • Durability – plastics’ perceived environmental weakness can also be its strength: if a plastic product works well and is designed to last many years, it’s a better solution than an alternative with a shorter lifetime. Buried PVC plastic pipes outlast iron or concrete pipes, with a service life of over 100 years.
  • Resistance to bacteria – more relevant than ever is the ability of specially-designed additives to make some plastics repel or inhibit the growth of microorganisms. As well as reducing the transmission of disease, the product’s lifetime may also be extended.
  • Heat and electrical resistance – most electrical products need housing to keep dust, water, and fingers away from live current. It must be electrically insulating, protect components, and provide an opportunity for branding and ergonomics. For many applications, plastic housing is more suitable than metal.
  • Density – the low comparative weight of some plastics can lead to them becoming the most sustainable option. For example, replacing metal parts with plastics in cars makes a vehicle lighter. A 10% drop in weight leads to a 6-8% improvement in fuel economy. That’s a lot of fuel (or electricity) over its lifetime.
  • Ease of manufacture – the processing temperatures of plastics are much lower than for glass or metal, and less energy is needed to heat the material for manufacture. Substituting plastics with alternatives would increase lifecycle energy consumption by over 50%.
  • Availability – the materials which form plastics can be any one of a wide range of synthetic or naturally derived polymers. As issues around sourcing and disposal become increasingly important, this is leading to the increasing selection of bioplastics in some applications.

‘Designing in’ the responsible use of plastics

A comprehensive design process should look at the whole lifecycle of any material, including sourcing and afterlife. Here are three ways to ensure plastic is used responsibly:

Look for sustainable sources. In the medium to long term, all plastics will need to come from a renewable resource. In many cases, a part- or wholly recycled material may be suitable. Lego, for example, has started designing its bricks from recycled plastic bottles. Designing with plastics, such as nylon and polyethylene, for which plant-based sources are already available, enables these to increasingly compete with fossil-fuel sources.

Design for ease of repair and longevity. In our article, Making it last, we looked at how materials and design can work together to ensure a long useful product lifetime. The ‘Right to Repair’ will become increasingly important for durable products. Where wear is anticipated, the product should be designed so individual parts can easily be repaired or replaced. We examined these issues in the context of electronic products in another article, Ten ways to reduce e-waste in product development. Many of the same principles may be applied to reduce plastic waste.

Take responsibility for the afterlife of plastics. We can design plastic products with as long a lifetime as possible. Still, we also need to consider their eventual disposal and the likely changes in regulations during the product lifetime. The diversity of plastics means it’s hard to recycle them all. Manufacturers will need to take increasing responsibility for the fate of products at the end of their useful life. They will also be required to work locally with legislators to design waste streams so plastic products are specifically designed for ease of recycling and users are incentivized to recycle or reuse them whenever possible.

The right material for the job

Evaluating materials is a key element of product design. Putting a product’s intended application at the center of this choice leads not only to a better end-user experience but can be the more sustainable option too.

References
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CDP triumphs in challenge to help the British Antarctic Survey reach net zero

December 16th 2021

Cambridge Design Partnership’s concept to help the British Antarctic Survey reach net zero led to triumph in a Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership challenge.

The virtual one-day hackathon, held on December 3 2021 and run by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) in collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Cambridge Zero, brought together global innovators across business and academia. Nine teams were challenged to devise ways to help BAS achieve net zero by addressing one of three categories: energy reduction and generation, backup systems and energy storage.

Cambridge Design Partnership’s (CDP) winning submission offered a novel combination of three solutions for energy storage at BAS’s Rothera Research Station, in one of the most isolated and formidable environments on Earth: Adelaide Island to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Given BAS’s emphasis on resilience and reliability, the CDP team prioritized applying established, proven technologies in novel ways. This led to three potential solutions – all aiming to reduce investment cost and reliance on more expensive and technologically challenging forms of energy storage:

  • Distributed heat storage using latent heat to lock room temperature with phase-change material (PCM) panels
  • Modulating building temperature set point to store heat in the fabric of the building in periods of over-supply, to reduce demand when it risks exceeding supply
  • Behavioral nudges based on energy generation and demand data that encourage activities to be scheduled for periods of over-supply, reducing storage needs

Eithne George, Program Director at CISL, said, “It was great to see companies with local roots like CDP competing in the hackathon. When it came to CDP’s presentation, we particularly liked the people-centered approach to thermal comfort, recognizing that in extremely remote locations, demand needs to meet supply to some degree. The team had a clear rationale for the use of innovative materials as well as behavioral nudges to make the most of oversupply from renewables at certain times of the day. The judges were unanimous when it came to the judging: In their view, CDP’s proposal was the strongest.”

Nopi Exizidou, Senior Carbon Manager (Net Zero transition lead) at British Antarctic Survey, said “What stood out from CDP’s entry was the solution the team presented was actually very simple but at the same time innovative – something we hadn’t thought about. It was great to see fresh ideas coming together based on the fact that CDP put a multi-disciplinary team together, addressing one of the greatest challenges we have in Antarctica.”

The industry-leading sustainability team at CDP has a proud track record of helping businesses make the transition to sustainable operations. Sustainability specialists work closely with market insights, science, and engineering experts to move ideas from the earliest ‘Phase Zero’ and opportunity definition, through the lab, and to market. The team delivers at the speed clients demand to adapt to the rapidly changing regulatory landscape and lead the sustainability revolution.

 

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CDP’s Sustainability Lead Matt Morris said, “First, we analyzed the problem to discover focus areas that would benefit BAS. Then our multi-disciplinary team generated as many solutions as possible, followed by a structured evaluation to decide which solutions to pursue. Finally, we conducted targeted research and analysis to provide evidence the solutions could solve BAS’s problems. It was tough to fit into a one-day event, but the team’s energy and enthusiasm carried us through.”

“We see a role for innovation in finding creative solutions to help close the gap between global sustainability goals and our current trajectory – the implementation gap,” said Matt Morris. “BAS’s challenge was a perfect example of this, and we wanted to use our approach to problem-solving to help uncover solutions that might not be obvious using conventional methods.”

Competing in the energy reduction and backup challenges, two other teams of innovators were announced as winners. London-based start-up Greenpixie came up with a series of digital solutions to facilitate and encourage further efficiency. Solutions ranged from utilizing waste heat generated by servers to intelligent load balancing, to better optimization of data transfer. The final winning team, coordinated by Turkish university ODTU teknokent, proposed an innovative approach to maximize the potential for wind energy through wind turbines that are resistant to extreme weather conditions, feeding in to an electrolyzer.

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For further information and media enquiries, please contact: media@cambridge-design.com or call 01223 264428

Ten ways to reduce E-waste in product development

Ten ways to reduce E-waste in product development

June 7th 2021

We all have that drawer – the graveyard for discarded electronics. What’s in yours? A cracked phone, an obsolete activity tracker, maybe an original iPod? You hang onto them, because it seems wrong to throw them away.
You’re right. Globally, 53.6 million metric tons of electronic waste, or E-waste, were generated in 2019 but only around one-fifth of this was recycled. Roughly half this pile comes from personal devices, which can be hard to round up from consumers.

Any product that includes some form of circuitry or electrical components is classed as electronic equipment. Once this product has been discarded without the intent to reuse, it falls under the category of E-waste.

The problem is not just environmental; in some cases it’s pragmatic. Many minerals in the products we throw away are difficult to obtain. The long-term consequences are serious. For example, a shortage of lithium or cobalt, both critical materials in electric vehicle batteries, could slam the brakes on our migration to greener transport.

As with most environmental issues, the solution to E-waste lies with government, industry, and the consumer. This article focuses on how product developers can play their part in helping to reduce e-waste.

Ten ways to reduce E-waste

1. Think modular

If devices become more modular, it becomes easier for the consumer or an engineer to perform repairs. It also makes it easier to break up devices at the end of their lives, a growing incentive if more industries become responsible for waste disposal.

Small product changes can make a significant impact, for example identifying which components tend to break first. Is there a way to make the component easily removable and replaceable? And if not, could it be designed to be more resilient?

2. Anticipate legislation

E-waste is a growing area of concern for governments, leading to a marked increase in the regulatory restrictions on disposal. This is noticeable in the electric car industry, where the EU and China have made manufacturers responsible for collecting and disposing of car batteries.

Both regulation and taxation are likely to increase. There is an opportunity for product developers to anticipate these factors when designing new products.

3. Respect the Right to Repair

A generation ago, mending your own possessions was a standard solution. Commonplace electrical repairs involved a loose wire or blown fuse. Today, electronic goods are much harder to fix, not helped by moving from screws to adhesive in assembly. You can no longer replace the battery in your phone and must go to a specialized repair shop for a damaged screen – think back to that drawer of retired electronics.

Product reviews now include ratings for ease of repair. France has introduced a law requiring an index of repairability which has encouraged manufacturers to offer online fixing guides. Other EU countries are rolling this out, including a requirement for manufacturers to ensure that spares are available for up to a decade. Sweden is also reducing the VAT rate on repairs and spare parts.

The ‘Right to Repair’ is a growing consumer rights issue. Designers can reduce E-waste by making it easy to mend common faults.

4. Use recyclable materials

As materials and processing research have progressed, the range of options for easily recyclable electronics has increased. These vary from paper RFID tags and biodegradable PCB substrates to chemical methods for breaking down coatings which have traditionally complicated the recycling process. These are all options to keep in mind when starting a design.

5. Design for E-waste recycling early on

The E-waste recycling process has the potential to be very expensive, so designing with this in mind early on is vital. There is also the challenge of encouraging consumers to return their devices in the first place. It’s much more challenging to recycle post-consumer waste than materials still under the manufacturers’ control.

Material resources for electronic devices are becoming increasingly difficult to source and therefore more expensive. This highlights the benefits of setting up a ‘reverse supply chain’ in which waste products are returned to their suppliers for recycling, allowing manufacturers to extract reusable materials.

The electronics in many home appliances often only make up a tiny proportion of the product. If a more modular design is selected, it becomes far easier to separate the E-waste from the product for recycling.

6. Top the ratings

Concerns over “fast fashion” in the retail industry could easily translate into customers rejecting low-cost, short-lifetime electronic products.

A public rating system for electronics that includes ease of recycling and repair as two separate metrics would prompt brands to question their design choices. Are there other less toxic or less scarce materials that could be used instead? Are there different versions of the product with lower E-waste potential?

Eupedia, an online guide to the EU, recently combined four indices covering a range of sustainability factors to rank brands, including ratings for recycling and repair.

7. Question whether electronics are necessary

Recently, electronics with ever-increasing features have been incorporated into previously ‘dumb’ products. In many cases, this enables functionality that was previously unachievable. However, sometimes we can obtain the same advantages without electronics, leading to a lower-cost and more straightforward solution.

Designers should carefully consider the range of solutions available and weigh up the relative user benefits, costs, and environmental impacts to find the most appropriate one for their product. For a simple maximum temperature monitor, do electronics provide a unique additional benefit, or can a different type of innovation such as a chemically triggered color change give the same information to the user?

8. Partner with smart devices

The obvious way to reduce E-waste is to produce less in the first place, but is this realistic? One route is to design electronics-free devices made smart through combination with a phone app. This often allows for the same functionality with no extra electronic components. For example, in diagnostic healthcare, agriculture and food safety testing, a phone camera can read and analyze colored test strips.

9. Consider a more sustainable business model

Some companies, such as Rolls Royce jet engines, have pioneered a service business model, in which customers hire products and return them to the supplier after use. This allows the manufacturer to perform necessary repairs or replacements between hire periods. Under this model, the burden of recycling shifts back to the supplier, further encouraging them to design products with minimal E-waste.

10. Reduce material usage

Mobile phones have shrunk in size from a brick to a calculator. This has been made possible by the miniaturization of electronic components, printed circuits, and connectors. The amount of material contained within each device has reduced considerably, even though complexity has increased.

Moving from milling and other subtractive manufacturing technologies to molding and 3D printing has reduced waste. There are opportunities to mirror these changes in electronics. Instead of making a flat sheet of copper and then dissolving most of it to produce a printed circuit board, additive techniques such as printed electronics can lay down patterns of conductors and insulators only where they are needed.

Putting E-waste in context

Our customers want smaller, lighter, longer-lasting devices that are easy to recycle. We can take all these factors into account every time we create a new design.

Solutions to E-waste must be looked at in the unique context of a product’s market and usage.

If we follow rules such as the above, we will make the optimum use of our planet’s limited material resources, and lay the electronics graveyard drawer to rest.

Which improvements will you design into your next electronic product?  Want to discover more and connect with our sustainability experts?

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For more on how to reduce e-waste through smarter product design and development, contact Cambridge Design Partnership.

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Why testing is vital to product sustainability|

Making it last: Why testing is vital to product sustainability

March 25th 2021

Jonathan Wilkins 

Mark Buckingham 

How long do we expect a product to last? Many sophisticated technology products, such as phones and tablets, are routinely replaced after a few years as specifications evolve rapidly. But what about a chair or a toaster? There are a huge range of products that we only replace when they wear out, but how long will this take, and how do we decide when minor changes add up to justify a replacement? When we prepare new product designs, how do we test to predict whether the lifetime will be months, years, or decades?

The challenges of biomaterials

Many consumer products contain large quantities of plastics derived from crude oil. But there’s increasing consumer interest in products made from bio-based materials derived from plant matter. While bio-based plastics are renewable, many are recent innovations. There may be a temptation for designers to make a direct substitution between a well-established plastic derived from crude oil and a bio-based plastic. Yet the two materials are unlikely to behave on a “like for like” basis. Because of limited service experience, there’s often a lack of data or understanding of how new types of plastics degrade and age over time. As a result, long-term testing and lifetime predictions of bio-based materials is a particularly relevant topic and can begin right at the start of a design project, while still in the materials selection phase.

Designing for the long term

We want newly designed products to have a long service life and to withstand normal rough handling. If we buy a shiny new phone, bike, or car, we expect it to start looking slightly rough and worn after a while, but we don’t want it to break or change color too soon. How do we check for this? We need to think about how the product will be used and how it might fail.

We can look at this challenge in terms of material selection. How do products age under different applications? What types of rough handling will a product need to withstand, and will the result be sudden failure or a gradual loss of properties? How will subtle changes in the appearance of the product over time affect its suitability for continued use? Does it matter if it becomes less glossy or even changes in color? Is it easy to keep clean? Do certain design elements require local reinforcement to prevent early failures at potential weak points? It’s easy to overlook these questions when an existing product is redesigned, particularly if a change in material is proposed.

Even when changing the grade of the same plastic material, such as polypropylene, small variations in the amount or type of fillers and other additives, or the length of the polymer chains, can modify its behavior. We can’t look up a single set of properties for polypropylene as there are a huge number of grades with different characteristics. The impact of even a small change may be to move a design from rugged to marginal, with a substantially increased chance of failure. It’s vital to select specific tests in order to evaluate the risks for a particular application.

 

Better, or just different?

There are many perfectly sensible drivers for changing materials, including cost or weight reduction, improvement in properties or sustainability. In each case we seek to improve, but have we unwittingly introduced a new way in which the product might fail? If the appearance or feel of the product has changed, might it be used differently? If it appears to be stiffer and more rugged, is it OK for me to push it harder? Have we considered how to test the product design to take all possible failure modes into account? If the customer could misunderstand how to use the product there’s an increased chance of unanticipated rough handling.

If we design a product to have a long lifetime, we also need to take customer preferences into account. Until recently, there were drivers to replace products simply because they look a little old and tired. But much greater awareness of environmental issues has encouraged customers to continue to use well-liked older products until they fail, and to consider repairing them to enhance their useful life. Whatever nature can create, nature can also degrade. So, if we consider replacing a synthetic plastic with a natural material, then it may be biodegradable under the conditions of use and so it may fail in new and unexpected ways.

Mechanical performance testing is always a good place to start. As well as testing the finished product, additional trials on small pieces, or “coupons”, of the component materials will highlight any changes in properties after environmental aging. For many regulated applications, such as medical, food packaging or toys, there are specific mandatory tests, for example measuring levels of extractable or leachable materials. But in a novel design it’s often other, non-mandated tests that show up how a particular product might fail. It’s then the responsibility of the designer to investigate and mitigate the possible failure modes in a new product. Key tests will show up early signs of wear, damage or other aging and it may not be necessary to test the item to destruction.

Taking it outside

If a product is to be used outdoors or at high or low temperatures, the risk of failure must be checked over a wide range of conditions. Artificial weathering environments with water spray and UV light mean we can quickly predict the impact of many years of outdoor exposure. As well as possible changes in mechanical performance, the stability of color and other aspects of appearance can also be tested. For example, we expect the paint on a car to begin to degrade only after many years.

Specific environments will put additional stresses on some types of materials. The salt in a marine environment or the sand in a desert may cause wear much more quickly. Beneath the hood of a gas-powered vehicle, the components will be exposed to high temperatures and oil, fuel, and other fluids. Materials used in aircraft, high voltage systems and nuclear power stations also need to perform reliably in very specific ways.

Standing the test of time

Long-term subtle changes can be difficult to detect. For example, many plastics undergo creep when subjected to loads and specialized test regimes are needed to detect when substitution with a stiffer material is necessary. Exposure to fluids can also cause long-term changes, particularly when plastics slowly absorb the fluid and become softened and distorted.

If a product is designed to last for decades, for example if it’s installed within a building, then we need to carry out accelerated aging evaluation to test how its properties will perform over this period. One response is to apply the rule that the rates of chemical changes increase with temperature in a predictable, mathematical way.

By storing samples in ovens at a range of elevated temperatures and testing them periodically, we can build a picture of how the same material will perform over decades at room temperature. This methodology is often termed the Arrhenius approach. For example, it may allow us to predict behavior after 10 years at 20°C in only around six months, by accelerating the testing at 60°C. We can even immerse the accelerated test samples in fluids if we want to simulate use in wet conditions, for example in food or beverage applications.

A route through the maze

With appropriate experience in design, material selection and evaluation, it’s possible to devise a new product and to put together a suitable test plan. The data generated can be applied to provide confidence that a new design or a change of material will lead to a product with a long lifetime. After all, when we like a pair of shoes, we want them to wear out slowly, and there’s no reason why the same can’t apply to our favorite products.

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CDP on inhalation trends and what we learned at DDL2020

December 17th 2020

We’re living in an ever more virtual world. The rate of adoption and adaptation of technologies enabling remote connections and interactions has surpassed even the most optimistic predictions. An example of this is the annual Drug Delivery to the Lungs (DDL) conference, hosted by The Aerosol Society, that a group of CDP colleagues attended last week. Usually held in Edinburgh, this year it was a virtual event. With the content available as a live stream and on demand and virtual booths providing instant access to downloadable material, this approach facilitated a wider reach and more flexibility for attendees seeking to learn about advances in the industry.

The first day highlighted the move to more sustainable lifecycles of products and how this must be balanced with effective drug delivery. With 630 million pressurised metered-dose inhalers (pMDIs) being produced each year and low rates of recycling, even small changes could have a big impact; whether by moving towards biobased polyolefin materials, inclusion of foaming agents to reduce the mass of plastic, or changes to another dosage form. This mirrors the trends that CDP has seen from our clients and the complex nature of plastic sustainability, discussed here by our colleague Dan. It was great to see the different approaches and how we are tackling this as an industry, making many small improvements that can add up to a significant change.

The second day went deep into specific formulations for targeted therapies. It’s always great to hear so many passionate scientists talk about their work and the benefit that it can have for patients. The biggest insight for us is how a deep and seemingly narrow investigation into a specific area can provide inspiration for unrelated therapies; the pharmacodynamic challenges of formulating an inhaled form of a parenterally administered product, engineering of particle sizes through spray drying, and the visualisation of drug particle distribution. Working across different sectors, this is the approach taken by CDP’s science team in projects such as determining the factors influencing vapour droplet size and technology scouting for novel delivery therapies. We were particularly excited to hear how advances in X-ray microscopy (XRM) are enabling the visualisation of active pharmaceutical ingredient distribution in pharmaceutical blends, giving real-life validation to predictive models of distribution and behaviour.

During the final day, the focus shifted to advances in delivery devices and challenges to the limits of their operation. Despite being widely used for over 60 years, studies show that over 70% of MDI users do not use the device as intended – so clearly there’s room for improvement. Whether the resolution is an adaption of the current MDI devices or switching to dry powder inhalers (DPIs) remains to be seen. With a step change in technology adoption this year, there is certainly a place for digital and connected solutions but as the final discussion group highlighted, in order to provide value from the digital advances the underlying technology needs to be robust.

CDP’s multidisciplinary, cross functional teams are here to help with your project needs. For more information, contact drug.delivery@cambridge-design.com

The future is smaller

The future is smaller, faster, cheaper… and more energy efficient

November 26th 2020

James Baker 

Ed Shelton 

Power electronics technology is enabling big advances in electric transportation and smart energy delivery, as well as playing an important role in meeting the ever-increasing demand for global connectivity and data storage. In this blog, we explore some of these opportunities and the up and coming technology solutions that are already revolutionizing the world.

Electric Vehicles are fast becoming mainstream. For example, Tesla has developed from a start-up to a company with significant production capability, and we can see dozens of new models entering the market helped by financial incentives and tax breaks aimed at reducing fossil fuel demand. Market analysis firm IHS Markit predicts over 300 electric car models will be available in the EU by 2025. Batteries, electronic drives and the charging infrastructure are the foundations of this revolution, facilitating a transition from energy delivered rapidly in liquid form, to the clean and convenient power conducted by copper wires. However, right now the UK electricity grid infrastructure, like many around the world, can’t cope with significant adoption of EVs. So it is likely that smarter grid solutions, enabled by power electronics will be needed to support this innovation.

Another major application of power electronics is renewable energy conversion, both in consumer and commercial applications. While cleaner energy is a longer-term play, governments around the world are investing and carbon emissions are being driven down; for example, the UK has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050, and is poised to bring forward a ban on new fossil fuel vehicles to 2030 from 2040 as a way to help speed up adoption.

Other demands on energy are growing fast as well. For example, the number of devices connected to the Internet is exponentially increasing each year as our desire to consume data, such as online streaming services continues to grow. This in turn drives networks, storage, bandwidth, and ultimately an increasing requirement for the electrical energy that powers these systems.

These applications all depend on power conversion or moving the electricity from one format to the next as the energy travels from generation to storage to point of use. To support this revolution, the electronic building blocks needed must become smaller, cheaper and more reliable, and most importantly, more energy efficient.

Advances in semiconductor technology such as new power switching devices based on Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN) wafer materials offer faster and more energy efficient switching performance than ever before. These WBG devices are a crucial ingredient to achieving higher power densities and greater efficiency when compared to traditional Silicon-based power converters.

WBG devices can switch faster, run hotter, handle higher voltages, and are available in smaller foot-print packages. Cost is a critical factor at the moment, but for the right applications they can offer a step-change improvement in both overall system-level converter cost and efficiency; representing a significant breakthrough and enabling new and exciting end applications. In the longer term, as production volumes rise, WBG devices are expected to reach price parity with Silicon MOSFETs. For GaN on Silicon devices, perhaps cost parity will even be achieved with Silicon IGBTs, due to their common Silicon wafer processes and greater process simplicity for the GaN device. As an example, both Tesla and Toyota have already used Silicon Carbide semiconductors in the traction drive systems for their electric cars. These devices have also found application in the DC and AC power converters in both the off-board and on-board charging systems.

However, WBG devices are not a simple drop-in replacement for existing Silicon devices. They present significant implementation challenges, often resulting in performance that is far from optimal, or designs that prove unreliable and prone to failure. Engineers have passed through a learning curve with each new generation of Silicon switching device. WBG devices are a significant step in that evolutionary path and require even greater attention to circuit details; in particular, a good understanding of low inductance high current printed circuit board design.

Fully accessing the benefits of WBG devices requires significant detail engineering. What was once the realm of the power electronics engineer has now become a significant cross-functional challenge. The latest chip-scale packaging requires careful attention to thermal management that is a collaborative design between electrical and mechanical disciplines to create a multi-physics solution. Also, in these high-performance circuits, test and measurement present significant challenges as fast switching edges generate harmonic frequencies that are well into radio frequency engineering.

But the business opportunity is the potential to get a better product to the market and avoid getting left behind in an inevitably changing technology environment.

CDP has a specialist team of engineers who can create new products with energy conversion utilizing the latest WBG technologies, and get them to market rapidly. Using our core capabilities, technology building blocks and quality processes, we can help realize the promise of smaller, faster, cheaper…. and a more energy efficient future.

Circularity in context|

Circularity in context

October 19th 2020

Picture the scene: a room full of executives are watching a presentation on company strategy (actually, let’s move with the times… they’re all at home, watching on Zoom). A simple, elegant image of a circle dominates the screen. Will they support the adoption of circularity principles across the business? In unison, they nod. Not only is this the right thing to do, but it’s what the rest of the market is doing. Circularity is an essential component of a forward-looking business strategy.

But in each of their minds is a nagging question… How?

Why is circularity important?

“Circularity” is a word that has become ubiquitous in the sustainability strategies of many of the world’s biggest brands, from Apple (variations of the term ‘circular’ appear 27 times in their latest sustainability progress report) to AstraZeneca. Spearheaded by advocacy groups like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the concept has intuitive appeal: maintaining the value invested in materials and products for as long as possible seems like good sense, given the effort, skill and resources required to produce them. It should also be good news for a planet that is running out of capacity to supply us with raw materials and soak up our waste.
Behind the elegant concept of circularity, however, is an incredibly diverse range of steps with varying degrees of applicability – and environmental benefit – in a given situation. But the need to simplify this into marketing messages and calls to action has led to Circularity becoming a buzz word, applied so broadly that it risks becoming meaningless. Companies, keen to move into this green and pleasant new vision for the economy, are looking for simple, off-the-shelf ‘cricular’ measures that they can adopt quickly – sometimes at the expense of a proper assessment of whether the approach is appropriate and truly beneficial for them, their customers or indeed, the environment.

In this blog, we look at why Circularity in Context is of fundamental importance and the approach CDP takes, working in partnership to provide our clients with the best possible sustainable outcomes, instead of pushing a square peg into a circular hole…

Context is King
Take this as an example. An enthusiastic company want to generate a new beverage offering that is due to launch in an up and coming developing market – let’s call it ‘Circular Soda’… for now. They want something that has the kudos of being ‘Circular’, which seems an attractive USP for a marketing message. Time is spent identifying the right grade of rPET (recycled PET plastic); starting with a circular material in the first place seems like a great idea. But… when the brand launches with sustainable claims emblazoned on the label, it’s not long before journalists realize that this ‘recyclable’ rPET is not being recycled in practice, as there is no recovery or recycling infrastructure in this market! Context is king… had the company thought it through a ‘circular’ solution, based around recycling, is actually not the best fit for this market, even if it is perfect for other regions. Sadly, in some instances, this kind of example is not that far from the truth.

A great real-world example is our old ‘frenemy’ the plastic bag. Few are aware that this innovation in 1959 had sustainable circularity front and center in the mind of its Swedish designer, Sten Gustaf Thulin. Sten calculated that a plastic bag that could be reused time and time again was a far more durable and far less energy intensive product than the common 1950s cotton or paper bags. He always carried his beloved innovation in his pocket, just in case he found himself doing a spot of shopping… (70 years later we find ourselves reaching into our own pockets for Sten’s reusable bag, in a consumer culture that aspires to be more circular… if only we could remember not to leave them in the car!) Unfortunately, the context that became king in the 1950s and decades following was convenience. Bags were so cheap to produce and so desirable for consumers as a disposable convenience, that Sten’s planet-positive pack has become a slur on sustainable living. This is where the introduction of filters in the process of innovation is key. What are the factors that might pervert intended circularity, and how can the design counter this?

Back in the boardroom, chief execs are still looking at the circle on the screen and scratching their heads with a killer question in mind.

How do we put circularity in context?

At CDP, our Circularity in Context model enables client teams to look at a brief through a broader lens, with the ability to consider what’s happening now as well as what will influence innovation in future, via 4 key filters that will help drive our understanding of which circular opportunities are most applicable. These filters extend far beyond the business or product itself, looking at the wider ecosystem and emerging trends that are shaping it.

  • The societal filter looks at the ways in which governance and politics influence the markets our clients are operating in, and how society as a whole might embrace or reject certain opportunities due to attitudinal or legislative parameters for change. This can drive future regulation, infrastructure development, or R&D investment.
  • The economic filter helps us understand ‘viability for change’ from a commercial perspective; what commercial pressures occur in the context that their brand and product is operating in? What criteria are used to appraise investments? What is the existing asset base?
  • The user filter puts us in the shoes of the end users, either ‘consumers’ (B2C) or customers (B2B); how should a proposition meet their needs and does a move toward a more circular solution provide gains or create pains for them? How might their habits and behaviors have a positive or negative impact on the viability of a more circular solution?
  • The technological filter is an exceptionally important one that’s often overlooked. CDP rely on a broad group of experts with deep knowledge in science and technology to determine how a ‘circular idea’ can become a technically viable reality, as well as identifying emerging technologies that could enable new business models in the future.

As much as people want to be unfettered when pursuing creative thinking on how to adopt circular approaches, these filters constitute whether a circular concept could become a viable reality for our clients. So, developing a brief with our clients for a successful outcome with these filters underpinning innovation – aiming to be circular, but doing it in context – is the key to success.

Game-changing?

As a team of researchers, designers, engineers and innovators, we want to develop great sustainable products! Much of the focus of current efforts to embed circularity into products has focused on utilizing circular materials; the leaders in the field are extending their ambition to more resilient, returnable or repairable models. A great example of the adoption of ‘game changing’ circular thinking, at different levels, now exists within the Toy industry. The first level in improved circularity is moving from dispose to recycle; at the end of 2019 Mattel announced its goal to achieve 100% recycled or recyclable plastics in its products and packaging by 2030. New entrants to the toy market (such as Toy-Cycle and Whirli) have gone a step further and established a ‘recommerce’ platform, where outgrown toys are shipped directly to the company to be sorted, repaired, resold and returned into the system. This commercial model for a lending library – recycling parts, not materials – is perfectly in keeping with a new generation of consumers who don’t want to condemn their child’s personal plastic Toys “R” Us store to landfill, or even the recycling bin. The societal context is shifting!

However, being circular in our choice of materials and components is often only one opportunity; bigger ones might exist if we are willing to look beyond the product as it is today. We opt for a telescope before a microscope – we’re interested in the detail, but we’re just as interested in the bigger picture, where the big innovations often lie. Applying systems thinking and looking beyond circular material usage could uncover a totally new way of delivering the benefits people currently derive from the existing product.

Some entrepreneurial businesses have had a eureka moment when their context is well placed to offer them the chance to do something radical and reimagine a product, system or service altogether. With the games industry booming, (in no small part due to the current pandemic), this year it’s set to reach a phenomenal $159.3 billion in sales¹. With many asking where the potential for growth is, innovation has pivoted away from games linked to hardware formats. Inspired by smartphone innovation and leveraging an expertise in cloud computing, Google Stadia and Amazon Luna have emerged as serious challengers to established players such as Xbox and Playstation. Hardware tomorrow will be so yesterday. Brands in this new gamer age look like the style of their landing pages and the quality of their games and content, not the console or the cartridges or discs that once ran on them. By 2021 video gaming sales are due to hit the $200 billion mark; one can only imagine how the absence of hardware will increase the profit margins within this behemoth entertainment industry.

By considering the wider context around a business, and how this might change in the future, it’s possible to identify opportunities that – like in the game-changing example – offer enhanced value to customers precisely because they are more circular and less reliant on consumption of materials. As the famous quote goes, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole”!

A partnership approach

We are known for working in close partnership with our clients (it’s in the name!), but also for offering an evidence-based, independent perspective when assessing circular options and the surrounding context using both a telescope and a microscope. We believe this approach can de-risk circular innovation strategies by identifying opportunities that fit the situation, and even reimagine the product or service entirely. Circularity is definitely not one-size-fits-all – but with careful consideration of context, we think there is a circular opportunity that’s right for everyone.

Connect with CDP

For more on how to apply circular design thinking in the right context for your business, products, and markets, contact Cambridge Design Partnership.

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Packaging - perceptions & preferences during the pandemic

Packaging – perceptions & preferences during the pandemic

August 5th 2020
James Harmer

James Harmer 

Head of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

When we ‘locked down’, as a nation we had very little idea what to expect or indeed for how long. Major behavioural changes have come about as a result of the pandemic and our lock-down experiences, but what has been incredible to watch, as someone who has spent many years looking at consumer behaviour, is just how big an impact the Covid pandemic has had on our global preoccupation with ‘consuming’, and our physical relationship with packaging.

Packaging perceptions

People’s perceptions of packaging have changed during the course of the pandemic. It’s fundamental role as a ‘first line of defence’ to protect our products came under scrutiny. With many questioning whether packaging itself could actually be a ‘superspreader’. During the first month of lock-down, as well as the government guidelines on how to socially distance and take precautionary measures, we adopted many more of our own. For example, every crate of food that was delivered to my front door was sanitised! It became a family event, getting bags of new products out on the worktop and wiping them down with disinfectant! Plastic bags that had once been banished became a ‘disposable saviour’ in the handling of food quickly and efficiently without prolonging time at the front door. Although I found this behaviour irrational after a few weeks, especially after the FDA and other respected bodies announced there was no data to support the notion that COVID could be transmitted via interaction with packaging, astonishingly a snap poll of 1,000 people interviewed in April 2020 by communication agency G&S, stated that 44% of respondents were continuing to clean products with disinfectant. Although this cleaning frenzy has now subsided and my family are back to the normal habit of letting me pack all the shopping away, single-handedly… the COVID pandemic has left a significant mark on our relationship with products and packaging.

Packaging semiotics

One of the areas where some marketeers have responded quickly, are the semiotics of packaging. This can be as simple as the language used on a pack to reassure consumers, in some cases, it can be a total visual overhaul. Clients in a large global soap manufacturing firm were considering the launch of a new visual identity for some of their brands in the midst of the pandemic. They told me recently that there was an immediate U-turn in keeping with the consumers need for reassurance about hygiene, responding to the pandemic. In this case “kills 99.9% of germs”, was a more reassuring message for consumers than ‘lifestyle’ graphics or colour schemes suited to the interior design of the bathroom. How long the u-turn will last is yet to be seen, but it’s clear that consumer reassurance is a high priority and will probably continue to be for some time to come.

A great case in point, when it comes to our relationship with packaging and how we handle our food, is fruit and veg. As part of the backlash against plastic, supermarkets were being encouraged to remove single use plastic wrappers around these items. But ‘naked’ vegetables, shrouded in protective shrink wrapping, have proven favourable over loose items during the pandemic. Clients in the beverage world have recently been exploring ways to generate new forms of secondary carry handles that enable consumers to pick up part of the pack that has not been handled by store staff, or indeed anyone else within the supply chain. Although this might seem unnecessary, consumers spend less than 5 seconds on average choosing products in frequented commodity isles. So leveraging consumer auto-pilot decision making that’s been influenced by a heightened awareness of risk avoidance and safety, will naturally present opportunities for brands to stand out, in commoditised categories where points of difference and unique product positionings are increasingly hard to find.

Packaging convenience

Of course, convenience has always been king in many of the decisions we make about the products we buy and the packaging we are attracted to. But this need increased during the lock-down period as pre-packaged meal kits enabled us to conveniently avoid the shops altogether and dramatically rose in popularity. I was ‘a Gousto virgin’ until April of this year. But I now eagerly await the delivery of restaurant quality cuisine delivered straight to my door in a chilled red box every week! Each part of the meal individually packed for convenience, pre portioned for exactly what’s needed as I don my apron and fool myself into thinking I’m Jamie Oliver. (For anyone that’s unfamiliar with the recipe box phenomenon, think painting by numbers with food). Although, you simply can’t avoid feeling guilty when putting a red Gusto box full of cardboard out for the weekly bin collection (as well as finding a way to reuse the fleece, included to keep the pre-packed food cool!). Gousto reported challenges in keeping up with demand on their packaging lines and Mindful Chef, offering a similar service reported a 425% spike in new recipe box customers during the lock-down period. A McKinsey report on the 2nd June stated that consumers have continued spending more time cooking at home and that most expect that the impact of Covid on their routines will last for well beyond two months. So as we re-evaluate how we want to shop post lock-down, it will be interesting to see if pre packed food delivered straight to your door dwindles or continues to go from strength to strength. What is evident in this increasingly buoyant e-commerce era, is that excessive packaging is at odds with manufacture, retailer and consumer commitments to move toward less packaging.

Conclusion

Consumers foundational packaging needs are safety, trust and the associated reassurance it provides. The Covid pandemic has exposed many associated consumer foibles and anxieties around the perception of packaging and its importance in our modern day world. It has also catalysed new future business models for how we might prefer to shop in convenient and reassuringly distanced ways in future. But we have yet to reconcile this with the increasingly important need to move away from excessive single use packaging, in light of the environmental crisis that still looms, albeit behind the immediate challenges of this Pandemic. Innovation will be essential in balancing all these needs in a new era of packaging that can reassure, add value and minimise the environmental impact. If you’ve enjoyed this article, watch out for my next instalment of the blog, where I wrestle with the challenge of packaging sustainability and some brave new ventures in response to the increasingly urgent need for radical ideas and innovation.

If you wish to explore packaging sustainability challenges and avenues for innovation, benefiting from CDP’s expertise across categories and markets, contact: