Puma: The Best Shoebox Is … No Box at All?

Puma, the sports & lifestyle company that brought you the iconic “Clyde” shoe, has just unveiled sustainable shoe packaging that eliminates a shoe industry mainstay – the shoe box. Puma shoes will now be going home in a “Clever Little Bag” – combining the shoebox with the shopping bag in one fell swoop.

Puma partnered with high-profile industrial designer Yves Béhar of San Francisco-based fuseproject to develop the innovative concept. According to Puma, the Clever Little Bag will “reduce the paper used for shoeboxes by 65% and carbon emissions by 10,000 tons per year” – they’ve commited to making the remaining packaging materials sustainable by 2015.

Per their press release:

“… approximately 8,500 tons less paper will be consumed, 20 million Megajoules of electricity saved, 1 million litres less of fuel oil used and 1 million litres of water saved. During transport 500,000 litres of diesel is saved and lastly, due to the replacement of traditional shopping bags with the lighter built-in bag the difference in weight can save up to 275 tons of plastic.”

The Clever Little Bag is part of Puma’s larger effort to reduce their carbon, enery water and waste by 25%. Other sustainability moves by Puma include replacing traditional polyethylene apparel bags with sustainable materials, which they say will eliminate 720 tons of PE bags per year – 29 million plastic bags. They’re also giving their Puma tees an extra fold, reducing the packaging size and cutting CO2 emissions during transport.

I couldn’t find any info on whether the Clever Little Bag is made of sustainable materials; I’m waiting on an answer back from Puma and will let you know. Regardless, this waste-reducing sustainable packaging innovation is a welcome development, and I’ll be interested to see the ripple effect throughout the shoe industry.

Nike, your move.

Update:

Kerstin Neuber of Puma filled in some of the gaps:

1. The bag will be made of recycled polypropylene.
2. Reminded me that the bag will be recyclable.
3. They won’t be in stores until the latter half of 2011.

And according to lovelypackage.com, the bags are non-woven (heat stitched) to reduce waste. Wondering about the carbon footprint of the heat-stitching process though … .