Design for volume reduction

Conference paper (2007)
Faculty
Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2007 R. Wever; C. Boks; A. Stevels
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Published Date

2007

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Source:

Proceedings of the 23rd IAPRI symposium on packaging, Windor, UK, September 3-5, 2007

Faculty

Industrial Design Engineering

Abstract

Traditionally packaging design-for-sustainability (DfS) strongly focuses on resource conservation and material recycling. The type and amount of materials used has been the driver in design. For consumer electronics (CE) products this weight-based approach is too limited; a volume-based approach is needed. As this paper will show, from an environmental perspective (as well as from an economical perspective) transportation of goods from factories to the final retail outlets is about twice as important as the materials used in the packaging. Due to the low density of packed CE goods volume is the limiting factor in determining the number of products per shipment, as will be demonstrated using data from approximately 100 products. Hence design for volume reduction is an approach of major importance in packaging design for sustainability.