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Sustainably packaged

Julia Bernert

Published on 10.12.2019

As well as being interested in the principle of sharing, the share brand is also concerned with sustainability – for both products and packaging.

The Berlin company share has set itself the task of making charitable donations an integral part of your everyday life. The idea behind the concept is that you do good whenever you buy something from the supermarket. In accordance with the company’s 1+1 principle, it provides a person in need with an equivalent product to what its social partners buy. A bottle of mineral water, for example, secures a day’s drinking water by repairing or building a well. A tracking code on each article tells you just where help is provided. This new method of donating to charity is very well received. More and more consumers find the social component is a good argument for purchasing particular food or hygiene products. Such items are available almost everywhere in the meantime. The brand is listed all over Germany, including in the REWE foodstore chain and dm drugstores. share has succeeded in bringing social consumerism to the German mass market.

As well as adopting the principle of sharing, however, share would also like its customers to use sustainable packaging. Since September 2018, share’s mineral water and liquid hand soap bottles have been made entirely out of recycled plastic. share was the only manufacturer in Germany at that time to have taken this step for mineral water. They also use a very special tube for their hand cream.

The share tube is a sustainable product innovation made by Pirlo’s tube experts. The body of the tube is made of a combination of 50 % by weight of chalk and 50 % by weight of PE. This reduces the proportion of mineral oil-based plastics during production by up to around 70 percent in comparison to customary tubes. In addition, chalk – also known as calcium carbonate – is a natural resource which is virtually infinitely available naturally.

Adding the chalk filler means that the tube is considerably thinner than conventional plastic tubes, it can be emptied virtually completely and thus reduces the amount of product waste generated. The chalk component also has another benefit in that it means the tube has a soft-matt feel to it which makes it pleasant to hold. In combination with its 360° digital printing, the tube creates a very good quality impression. It is printed on HP Indigo using thin-film processing. This saves ink and makes the recyclable tube even more sustainable.

Visitors can learn more about share and the ‘chalk tube’ in a lecture by Alexandra E. Wallner from Pirlo Tubes, held on the Forum 13 stage from 12am to 12.30pm on 8th January 2020. Alexandra will also be talking about the role played by packaging for the social brand share.

This talk is part of the “Packaging and Brand Communication” focus day at viscom. You can find the agenda with a list of all the lectures and how to register for the Packaging Business Lunch here.

Images: share