When we think of sustainability we all think differently, you may think about plastic contamination or recycling and recycled content or reuse and green energy right through to commercial sustainability. All are valid and thankfully there are brands out there facing into this need and doing some really great things for their customers and the planet.

Sustainability isn’t only about what we put in our shopping basket, it’s how we live our lives. We have handpicked 10 sustainability leaders across a wide cross section of product categories from groceries, cosmetics and pet food through to clothing, furniture and automotive.

1. IKEARearranging the Furniture from the waste think-tank RSA and resources firm SUEZ, revealed in 2015 that 1.6 million tonnes of bulky waste - 42% of which is furniture - is sent to landfill every year, despite over 50% of it being reusable.

IKEA are trying to combat this waste in a couple of ways, not only are they setting up buy back stores but they are also looking at a furniture hire scheme.

Buy back stores already exist in some countries where customers can sell their unwanted IKEA furniture back to IKEA who then sell it for the price paid.

In an age where it’s increasingly hard to raise funds to buy a house many millennials are opting for rentals however the problem is always furniture, what works in one rental may not work in the next property so why not rent the furniture? Enjoy it while it works for you and then rent alternatives for the next rental. Win / win.

Following an earlier trial, IKEA plan to expand their sale of used, ‘patched’ up furniture in the UK. They are also launching a textile recycling scheme across the UK.

IKEA are almost ready to launch their greenest store yet in Greenwich, south London. Not only will it be run on 100% Renewable energy (inc. solar panels), the Greenwich store will have space for workshops where the local community can learn how to refurbish.

Furniture should be for life, not just a few years and both options help to breathe extended life into furniture and reduce waste. Well done IKEA, sustainable options and affordable.

2. Nudie JeansHave you ever wondered how many pairs of jeans the average woman owns, according to Jeaneology: ShopSmart the majority (91%) of women own at least one pair of jeans, but on average women own 7 pairs (1 in 4 women owns 10 or more), but they wear just 4 pairs on a regular basis with the oldest pair of jeans being an average age of 6 years.

Our ‘throw-away’ culture has extended to clothing but what is the most environmentally friendly way to live? It would be for us to live our lives naked, cultivated our own food, and asked our gut for advice instead of google. But for clothing Nudie Jeans have a great philosophy based on the Swedish word lagom, meaning ‘just the right amount’.

They produce their product in a fair and ethical way, not designed to be used a few times and then thrown away. Cherishing the well-worn and mended jeans that become a part of ourselves when worn a long time – a second skin.

Made with 100% organic cotton. Add the concept of wear and break-in (six months of daily use without laundering) and the promise of free repairs. Combine it with used denim going back into the loop as second-hand jeans or raw material for new products. All this equals a smarter way to consume, and also an environmentally sustainable product.

The Goods MartSustainability and well-being complement each other, and The Goods Mart is the perfect example. Our everyday experiences are becoming more and more digital, and no matter

how ‘convenient’ we want things, we also value personal interaction and a sense of community. The Goods Mart creates this, bringing the best products to an innovative neighbourhood space. From snacks to butter and toilet paper to shampoo, every item stocked has been hand-picked for amazing taste or function and ethical, eco-responsible practices. The Goods Mart balance accessibility with planet-friendliness and the best possible products for a range of budgets.

The Goods Mart core standards include:

• no artificial colours, flavours or sweeteners

• no growth hormones or hormone disruptors, only humanely-raised animal proteins that are nitrate-, antibiotic-, and GMO-free

• no harmful pesticides

• always better packaging and reduced use of plastics (BPA-free only)

• exclusively organic cottons

• transparency

The Goods Mart is the shop of dreams balancing budgets with sustainability in every sense, and hopefully it is the shop of the future. The original store opened in Silverlake, Los Angeles but they have also recently opened a store in New York and certainly has the potential to expand further.

They sell organic slushies in paper cups, upcycled ‘ugly’ organic fruits and vegetable for less, and always meeting their core standards:

4. Numi TeaNumi Organic Tea have a great vision, to ‘inspire well-being of mind, body and spirit through the simple art of tea. Through authenticity, creativity, and commitment to people and planet, we bring you the purest best tasting organic tea’.

This family founded brand introduce exotic, premium organic and fair-trade teas to the U.S. market. The company is rooted in the principle of creating a healthful product that nurtures people and honours the planet.

Nurturing people is delivered through USDA certified organic products, made with 100 percent herbs, fruits, flowers and spices with no artificial flavourings or fragrances. Honouring the planet has also been truly embraced with production facilities powered by solar energy. They also purchase renewable energy credits to offset emissions from the supply chain, their outer packaging made from 85 percent post-consumer waste and soy-based inks and tea bags are made from biodegradable filter paper and no use of plastic shrink wrap.

The founders of Numi Tea also created Numi Foundation and the key programs they support fund clean drinking water for communities in need, local community programs, and arts education for war orphans in Iraq; providing sustainability in its truest meaning far beyond the realms of packaging.

5. SploshClimate change and sustainability in many ways are exactly the same and this is especially relevant to our imminent water shortage in the UK. The Environment Agency have issued a warning that in the next 25 years a water shortage in the UK is a very real possibility.

Transporting water is not only costly but it also creates a lot of bulky, single use packaging and Splosh may have the answer. They believe that supermarkets and Big Soap brands have got it wrong, almost all their laundry, home cleaning and personal care products are packaged in single-use plastic bottles. Splosh is different – because every bottle sold is refillable with concentrates.

Splosh products are delivered as concentrates, then diluted at home using tap water, by refilling with a concentrate in a pouch you’re cutting plastic waste by around 90%. Go one step further, return the pouches to Splosh in the (free) refill box and they’ll reprocess the material into other products.

Splosh currently cut plastic waste by 97.5%, however their goal for the end of this year is 100%.

6. GooodThe pet industry has been experiencing explosive growth. According to The American Pet Products Association, almost 85 million households have a pet and over the last 30 years pet ownership has gone from 56% to 68% of all households. Some of the changes in pet ownership are due to technology and the advent of online purchasing. But most of the growth is because of changes in culture. As millennial and Generation Z consumers have come into adulthood, they have embraced the pet-owning and pet-loving lifestyles to a far greater extent than their elders.

Goood believe feeding your dog healthy, high-quality food shouldn’t come at the expense of animal welfare or the environment. Goood have recently been awarded (in the UK and Germany) Ethical Accreditation membership for their sustainable, premium dog food which is delivered, straight to your door. All packaging is recyclable, however there is a compromise, when the bags are exposed to light for a long period of time the vitamins in the food can start to break down. That is why they pack them in an easy to carry FSC-certified recycled cardboard box which ensures the dog food stays fresh and full of quality. Goood is a carbon-neutral company, offsetting their carbon output by planting trees together with the Woodland Trust in the UK and Nature Office in Germany.

There shouldn’t have to be a compromise and Goood are a great example of a brand delivering an environmental conscious, quality product at an affordable price. For your dog. For our planet.

7. Cheeky PandaThe average consumption of toilet tissue is 20,000 sheets per person per year which is approximately 2000 meters… now that’s a lot of toilet tissue! With that rate of consumption renewable resources are a must and many toilet tissue brands are made from FSC paper, but The Cheeky Panda has gone one step further.

The benefits don’t just stop there, bamboo is naturally hypoallergenic and kind to skin and The Cheeky Panda toilet tissue is also free from fertilisers, pesticides, de-inking agents, BPA, chlorine, bleach and fragrances and importantly carbon balanced with the World Land Trust.

When is comes to packaging, consumers have the choice between plastic free or LDPE - 100% recyclable and oxo-degradable. And the good news is UK start-up The Cheeky Panda has a range of sustainable products including bamboo facial tissues, kitchen towels, napkins and handtowels and have recently set up a French entity to service mainland European markets and protect themselves from supply challenges if there is a No Deal Brexit.

They make their soft and durable toilet tissue from bamboo, the world’s fastest-growing plant which is 65% lower carbon than traditional paper (that’s a saving of one tonne of carbon per 4,500 rolls).

8. LushLush offers a variety of fresh, handmade personal care products, including perfumes, deodorants, soaps, make-up, sunscreens, even Henna hair dyes. Their products are vegetarian (and many are vegan) and cruelty-free. They only purchase ingredients from suppliers who are also cruelty-free and do not participate in animal testing. Unfortunately, Lush products are not palm oil free or entirely natural, as many of them do contain the sulphate SLS.

Lush, known for their wide range of packaging free products are doing a great job on the packaging they do use. For creams, bottles, lipstick tubes, and the like, Lush uses a simple black plastic pot, a simple, no-frills packaging that “ensures customers pay for the ingredients inside their product, not the distractions on the outside”. These Lush black pots can supposedly “have more lives than a cat”, made from BPA-free mixed polypropylene (PP) that can be reused again and again. Because PP plastics are harder to recycle, Lush will do it for you at an in-house recycling centre where old pots are chipped, washed, melted, and remoulded before refill. As a thanks for returning your pots and reducing plastic waste, they’ll send you a free face mask. But take all this one step further, Lush have developed a range of ‘carbon positive’ packaging made from cork. Cork is entirely biodegradable and comes from cork oak which has the ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere estimated at over 1kg per Lush pot, making it carbon positive.

There are many other Lush packaging initiatives including partnering with the Ocean Legacy Foundation to use recovered plastic from the oceans and replacing their gift-wrapping service with knot-wraps (square scarves made from organic cotton or a silky fabric made from recycled plastic bottles).

9. Dirty Hippie CosmeticsWhen it comes to sustainability with ethical products, there are few that can compete with the Dirty Hippie Cosmetic company, I just wish they were British. Although their products can be bought globally, to benefit from their recycling program you need to be based in Australia due to the air miles that are used.

With their mantra being, ‘Products you can trust to be the best for you, the environment and your pocket’ they have a lot to live up to but thankfully they do. Selling everything from deodorants, hair and skin care to reusable femcare products, re-usable makeup remover pads, crockery, and organic bamboo plasters. The list in endless but they all have a lot in common including that they are handmade with love, vegan, cruelty free, organic, toxin free, ethically sourced, fair trade (where required), formulated to suit all skin types (including sensitive), eco-friendly packaging and refill options and zero waste generated: labels are printed in-house using vegetable based ink and recycled paper, green energy powered and rain water supplied lab.

For those lucky enough to live in Australia, Dirty Hippie Cosmetics accept empties on all of their full sized, tin and bottle products then refill them. Due to the vast amount of air miles that are ultimately used this isn’t available to overseas customers however Dirty Hippie Cosmetics use newspapers and recycled paper to ship their products to reduce their carbon impact wherever possible.

All of this for reasonably priced products, what’s not to love about this business and their products.

10. RiversimpleYou would be forgiven if you instantly thought of Tesla when thinking sustainable vehicles but what about Riversimple, have you thought about them?

Riversimple are based here in the UK and manufacture hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric vehicles. They have a great goal and purpose ‘To pursue, systematically, the elimination of the environmental impact of personal transport’. Being more sustainable than others is not good enough for Riversimple, they want to be truly sustainable.

The problem with many electric vehicles is they are heavier than combustion-engined cars and they emit higher levels of particles. The Riversimple answer is to explore the design to a deeper level. The Riversimple Rasa is strong but light, less than a third of the weight of other hydrogen fuel cell cars. The fuel cell provides electrical energy while emitting only water with ultra-capacitors that store energy.

With the Riversimple Rasa you need to think differently, they don’t sell cars they sell mobility as a service, they retain ownership of the cars. What they do do is offer customers the first affordable, hassle free, fun-to-drive eco car, delivered as a complete and cost-transparent service and all produced in a small Welsh town.

Sources

i - https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/

ii - https://www.nudiejeans.com/

iii - https://www.thegoodsmart.com/

iv - https://numitea.com/

v - https://www.splosh.com/

vi - https://goooduk.dog/

vii - https://www.thecheekypanda.co.uk/

viii - https://uk.lush.com/

viii - https://dirtyhippiecosmetics.com.au/

ix - https://dirtyhippiecosmetics.com.au/

x - https://www.riversimple.com/

Get in touch

+44 (0)1274 200 700hello@sunbrandingsolutions.com

We are a multi-disciplinary packaging consultancy working with global brands and retailers.

We align packaging strategies to meet your corporate goals, your values, brand equity, value chain and the key market drivers for today and tomorrow.

Our results produce powerful, measurable deliverables and a road-map for the future.

Our independent positioning allows us to offer a truly unbiased approach to design, material and implementation.

For more news, views and insight, go to:www.sunbrandingsolutions.com