To celebrate this year’s World Environment Day on Saturday the 5th of June, we’re taking a look at how companies are working to negate their carbon footprint and celebrate eco-friendly choices. We’ll look at how Samsung’s Eco packaging is being used by influencer Morfologico for a challenge to reuse television packaging, how Amazon is working to shrink its carbon footprint to reach carbon neutrality by 2040 and how your business can work towards being a little bit more eco friendly.
Samsung
Samsung created its Eco-Package by reducing oil based ink printing, before adding a dot-matrix design so that anyone could use their craft skills to make a functional piece for their home, giving a second use to the packaging of their TV and making their packaging much more sustainable.
Mexican influencer Morfologico was challenged by Samsung to create something with TV packaging and give Samsung’s Eco-Packaging a new life. Morfologico’s Neo QLED box had the instructions and guide to create a cat house. Using these instructions, he decided to go above and beyond, by building a new home for his pet cat Samanta.
The result was a cat mansion, including lighting, a rug, a portrait and even a miniature Samsung ‘screen’ for Samanta to watch mouse videos. Undoubtedly the most surprised with the level of luxury and detail was Samanta, but Morfo shared his work on social networks and impressed his followers with his creativity.
Samsung predicts that if each Eco-Package is reused within homes, it could reduce up to 10,000 tons of greenhouse gases in 2021. By doing this, Samsung is promoting accessibility, sustainability, and innovation in all its products and technologies to help redefine the role of television in consumers’ homes.
The company has embarked on a sustainability journey that puts the environment first in all business operations with several long-term sustainable programs, including eco-friendly packaging design across its 2021 display lineup, solar cell-powered remote controls, and carbon footprint reduction through the use of recycled materials.
So, to mark World Environment Day, Morfologico demonstrated that a new and fun way to recycle is possible thanks to the Eco-Package of Samsung TVs.
Amazon
In 2019, Jeff Bezos announced a climate pledge to shrink its carbon footprint to reach carbon neutrality by 2040, and encouraged other companies to join Amazon in this feat. This ambitious target convinced more than 100 other companies to join, creating a need to find innovative ways to reduce its carbon footprint each year to reach its goal.
To fulfil this promise, Amazon will need to curb emissions generated by all of its Amazon products such as the Echo dot, Fire TV devices, Fire tablets and Kindles. Experts in sustainability say this initiative will be costly but will make a great impact on our environment if Amazon adopts these practices worldwide and makes these changes permanent.
The company is making progress in some aspects:
- Fourth-generation Echo and multiple Fire TV devices released in autumn contain 100% recycled aluminium and fabric, and 30-50% recycled plastic, depending on the product.
- Amazon has a goal of using 100% recyclable packaging materials for its devices within two years. It’s working to use cardboard packaging only from responsibly managed forests or recycled sources, as well as trimming the use of plastic bags in packaging.
- It added a low-power mode feature to its newest plug-in Echo and Fire TV devices to curb power energy use when the electronics aren’t active; it plans to offer power-saving updates “over-the-air” for older products.
- Amazon has a program for taking back its electronic devices. Items can be repaired, recycled or refurbished and sold through its pre-owned channel.
One of the program’s initiatives is building wind and solar power plants that generate the equivalent amount of energy consumed by its customers’ use of their new Echo devices. Amazon claims to be the first consumer electronics company to take this step. And while it’s initially offsetting the power used by select products, it will ultimately cover the energy used by all of its devices.
So, we can celebrate the efforts being made by Amazon and the 100 other companies that plan to be carbon neutral by 2040. These steps may be difficult to implement, and costly to perform but they will help to make our environment better.
What you can do in your business to help the environment
Although big businesses are looking for ways to help the environment, there are still a number of issues that need to be addressed. Every year, a staggering 2.12 billion tons of waste is disposed of in the Earth’s oceans and landfills, 99% of items wind up in landfills within six months of purchase and every three seconds the Earth loses enough trees to cover an entire football field. This information is scary to think about but if everyone worked to combat their own carbon footprint, we can all make the environment a better place. Here are some things your business can do to work in a more environmentally friendly way.
- Sustainable Signage
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, placing signage prompts near recycling bins increased recycling by 54%. This makes it clear that physical advertising strategies can encourage your customers to participate in sustainability initiatives. You can encourage your consumers and employees to recycle products by placing signs and recycling bins in common areas, place banners where customers can find eco-friendly product choices and place more recycling bins around to encourage their use. There are also eco-friendly options for banners and signs that are PVC free and resilient so you can encourage your customers to be eco-friendly whilst acting in an eco-friendly way.
2. Encourage Community Involvement
Getting your customers involved in your company’s initiatives can help reduce your carbon footprint while also generating unique consumer touchpoints for a great cause. There are several ways you can do this within your community. You could offer discounts to customers who shop with reusable bags on World Environment Day, give away branded promotional items for customers who make donations to a local environmental group or show the work that you do for the environment in your store and encourage customers to make a donation with their purchase.
3. Go the Extra Mile
Your commitment to both customer satisfaction and sustainability does not have to stop at your customer’s purchase. You can encourage your customers to dispose of their items sustainably by giving them the information they need to do so. Confusion about whether packaging or the item itself is recyclable often leads to customers throwing the product into landfill. Unilever, for example, has found that almost 70% of its carbon footprint depends on which products their customers purchase and whether they use and dispose of these items in a sustainable manner. So, if you give your customers the information and encouragement they need to dispose of items sustainably, you can greatly help reduce your carbon footprint.
4. Get Social
Social media is a great tool to communicate these important messages to your audience. Encourage existing customers to join in the narrative with social media giveaways and discounts. This tactic is proven to drive sustainable consumer behavior and increase sales. One study found that telling online shoppers that people were buying eco-friendly products led to a 65% increase in new customers making sustainable purchases. When customers purchase a local, green-friendly product or service, prompt them to take a selfie with the item, tag your business, and use a hashtag like #goinggreen or #worldenvironmentday in their posts. Use in-store, eco-friendly banners to remind customers about your social media promotions and print the call to action and discount associated with the giveaway on each sign. On Saturday, June 5th, your business can get involved in making the world a greener place. World Environment Day is the perfect opportunity to focus your efforts on sustainable initiatives. Get your customers involved in your efforts to protect the planet and you will likely see an increase in profits and a positive impact on your community.
Overall, celebrating world environment day is a chance to take a look at what we can do to negate some of our carbon footprint, as well as to look at what other companies are doing to raise awareness for the environment. Both Amazon and Samsung are working hard to become more eco-friendly and even though this is a large feat, it’s great to see large companies taking the time and effort to do their part to help the planet.