Shoebox storage days are numbered

Shoebox storage days are numbered

Puma - Clever little bag
Perhaps you’ve seen this newfangled fanciness or perhaps you haven’t. Either way, the idea’s pretty good. Next year Puma’s bringing a whole new game to the shoe world, The Clever Little Bag. More after the jump.

Puma's Clever Little Bag
Puma’s really bringing it on this one. For The Clever Little Bag they teamed up with the design firm FuseProject to do some amazing work. Those in action sports / youth culture have probably seen their work, Nixon went to them to design their whole headphone line (which is pretty amazing looking).

Puma's Green, too!
One has to assume that Puma’s trying to get in the “we’re green, too” game and I’d have to say that they did it as good or better than any other brand out there. In fact, with the exception of sneakerheads who want their boxes in perfect shape and people who like to keep junk in shoe boxes, everyone’s going to be happy about this thing.

Boxes, Puma don't need no stinking boxes.... errrr at least not the whole thing.
Boxes, Puma don’t need no stinking boxes…. errrr at least not the whole thing.

Here’s what FuseProject says about their project:
In partnering with PUMA, a leader in sportswear, shoes and products, FuseProject looked to create a game changing packaging system that would greatly reduce their footprint and build on their initiatives toward cleaner, greener, and safer practices contributing to a better world around us.

The challenge was to look at one of the most difficult and stagnant issues facing the retail industry in regards to sustainability and environmental harm: packaging, and more specifically shoeboxes. Boxes contribute to millions of tons of waste a year and even with proposed second uses, they are eventually thrown out.

For 21 months, boxes and systems were studied: how to fold them, how to ship them and how to reduce them. But all of these were incremental steps; reduction can only do so much. Finally, they explored getting rid of them altogether. They discovered a new design solution, a “clever little bag”.

Why is it so clever? By providing structure to a cardboard sheet, the bag uses 65% less cardboard than the standard shoe box, has no laminated printing, no tissue paper, takes up less space and weighs less in shipping, and replaces the plastic retail bag.

The cardboard structure is die cut from one flat piece of material and has no additional printing or assembly, thus it can be returned to the stream faster and more efficiently. The structure was created with four walls that taper in to allow for secured stacking, another important element left over from the original shoebox.

The bag is non-woven which means less work and waste (it is stitched with heat). It protects the shoes from dust and dirt in the warehouse and during shipping. The “clever little bag” is an iconic brand element upon leaving the store as it replaces the plastic shopping bag, and it is also used for shoe storage in travel suitcases. The bag is made of non-woven polyester consisting of polypropylene, and eventually is also recyclable.

With our ‘clever little bag’, Puma kicks-off the next pivotal phase of it’s sustainability program. The tens of millions of shoes shipped in our bag will reduce water, energy and diesel consumption on the manufacturing level alone by more than 60% per year. In other words: approximately 8,500 tons less paper consumed, 20 million Mega joules of electricity saved, 1 million liters less fuel oil used and 1 million liters of water conserved. During transport 500,000 liters of diesel is saved and lastly, by replacing traditional shopping bags the difference in weight will save almost 275 tons of plastic.

In changing the packaging and distribution life cycle from the ground up, we want our new design and comprehensive solution to encourage other retail companies to follow suit. That such a little bag can have such a big impact…you can see why we called it clever.

The roll out of the new packaging and distribution system is planned for 2011.

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