As I've posted previously, sustainability is the hot marketing topic and dominates many conversations around future brand strategy.

An important development is Stella's move into lightweight glass, which reduces the weight of the bottle by 7%. It's important because Stella is a significant player in the beer market and could encourage other beer and indeed the whole alcohol industry to follow suit. How long will it be before lightweight glass becomes commonplace in the wine industry? Watch this space. It seems that Stella are undertaking a whole range of environmentally friendly initiatives. Click here for more details.

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I read recently that a number of big brands have signed up to a government initiative to reduce waste throughout the supply chain. Of course, reducing waste is not a new development, but being such powerful brands their actions are likely to have a bigger impact on our lives in 2010.

For example, Tesco is trialling plastic bottles for its spirits brands and lightweight glass for its wine range. Expect this to become the norm as other wine brands follow suit.

Other examples I’ve come across in the past year include:

Vapur:  a reusable waterbottle that can be flattened when empty. This feels like a step on from Evian’s crushable bottle which was launched over 10 years ago. There’s a lot of room for eco friendly packaging innovation in the drinks category so look out for similar developments.

KFC switching from cardboard boxes to paper bags early in 2009. Again massive scope for reduction of fast food packaging waste

Concentrated formats in detergents, for example Persil’s Small and Mighty.

So, watch out for more examples of crushable, recyclable, minimal and re- usable packaging in the year to come.

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In a previous post I talked previously about the importance of sustainability in defining future brand strategy and how important it was to get to grips with this topic

One brand that’s addressed this in a simple and powerful way is Kenco. What I like about this is the fact that they’ve focused their sustainability efforts on 2 strong initiatives which consumers can easily understand and relate to:
1.The refill pack resulting in 97% less weight in packaging
2. Clarity on their sourcing: 75% of their coffee comes from Rainforest Alliance Certified Farms

Neither of these initiatives is particularly new – refill packs and ‘ethical’ sourcing are used by many brands. However, what’s laudable is the marketing investment they’ve put behind them, particularly the Eco Refill pack which is used in tv advertising. (Nice Joanna Lumley voiceover, shame about the music). It demonstrates that this is not just tokenism. They’re committed to these initiative and see them as important.

 
Compare this with Gold Blend which still is trying to inspire us with its vacuous ‘Coffee at its Brightest' message. I'm sure Nescafe are undertaking a number of important sustainability initiatives. I just wish they'd talk about them a bit more.

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Now that our obsession with the recession is (just) beginning to end, one of the biggest topics of debate is how can marketing and brands make positive contributions towards the sustainability challenges that we're facing. It's a huge and complex topic with no easy answers . I'm trying to get myself more immersed in the subject. This link is really good. Its called the Top 9 viral videos of the Green Movement

Click here to view it.

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