Iggesund
Iggesund Paperboard is working via the American crowdsourcing company crowdSPRING to challenge the world’s designers to improve existing consumer packaging, and to positively impact the environment.
“Over 115 entries are already demonstrating fresh thinking. Learn more on our Iggesund.com website and submit your own creations,” urges Staffan Sjöberg, who is in charge of the project at Iggesund Paperboard.
“Every day we all see examples of packaging that could be improved by a better choice of materials or a better design,” Sjöberg explains. “Now we’re giving designers all over the world the chance to contribute their ideas on how to replace packaging made of glass, plastic or metal with solutions that use paperboard.”
He stresses that Iggesund is not looking for inexpensive ideas, which can be put into commercial use. Instead, the aim is to get a picture of how global designers as a group believe they can steer packaging development in a more sustainable direction.
“We will claim no commercial rights to the ideas that come in,” Sjöberg says. “We’re just interested in getting a snapshot of how designers believe they can improve the packaging they see in the shops they visit on a daily basis. We want to publish the ideas and maybe reproduce some of them in physical form but we are not interested in exploiting them commercially.”
For crowdSPRING the collaboration with Iggesund Paperboard is an unusual project. Normally the online marketplace’s services are used when someone wants a wide range of designs to choose from at an affordable price and short timeframe.
According to crowdSPRING Co-founder Mike Samson, “Resetting expectations for innovation and sustainability can lead to new solutions. From the 168,000 designers in our database, we expect to see a vast array of new possibilities in packaging.”
Iggesund Paperboard is part of the Swedish forest industry group Holmen, one of the world’s 100 most sustainable industrial companies, according to the U.N. Global Compact Index. Iggesund’s annual turnover is close to SEK 5bn ($600 million) and its flagship product, Invercote, is sold in more than 100 countries.
The company has two product families, Invercote and Incada, which are both among the quality leaders in their segment. Since 2010 Iggesund has invested SEK 3.3bn ($360 million) to increase the energy efficiency and reduce the fossil carbon emissions from its paperboard mills. The investments have made both mills almost self-sufficient in electricity.
Iggesund and the Holmen Group report their fossil carbon emissions to the international Carbon Disclosure Project and are on the project’s A List, which singles out almost 200 companies worldwide for their work against climate change. The two companies’ environmental data are integrated into their annual reports, which are produced in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative’s highest level of sustainability accounting.
Already, more than 110 designers have submitted entries to the Iggesund Paperboard challenge to make everyday consumer packaging more sustainable by replacing plastic, glass and metal with paperboard. Go to Iggesund.com to submit your ideas via crowdSPRING, an online marketplace for crowdsourcing creative.
