Clever Little Bag

Fashionista is excited about Puma's new Clever Little Bag which was designed by star industrial designer Yves Behar . The idea is as simple as it is brilliant: a single sheet of folded cardboard inside a bright red re-usable bag consisting of recycled PET.

Puma's figures are impressive : the bag/"box" uses 65% less cardboard than the standard shoe box and this paper reduction will reduce water, energy and fuel consumption on the manufacturing level by more than 60% per year. During transport 500,000 litres of diesel is saved and, 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 bag is part of Puma's more extensive sustainability programme. Until 2015, Puma is planning

• a 25% reduction of CO2, energy, water and waste in PUMA offices, stores, warehouses and direct supplier factories.
• a paperless office policy through a 75% reduction and offsetting initiatives for the remaining paper usage such as tree planting initiatives.
• a 25% CO2 reduction through more efficient product transport solutions by its logistic partners.
• to begin collaborating with its strategic suppliers and logistic service providers to offset their own footprints in the long-term.
• to introduce the PUMA Sustainability-Index (S-Index) standard that serves as a benchmark for sustainable products and communicates the products’ sustainable features to consumers.
• that 50% of PUMA’s international collections will be manufactured according to the PUMA S-Index standard by 2015, using sustainable materials such as organic cotton, Cotton Made in Africa or recycled polyester as well as applying best practice production processes.

So Puma is planning to use Clever Little Bags for its apparel collections, too, and thereby to avoid an equivalent of 29 million plastic bags! And T-shirts are said to be folded one more time to reduce the packaging size and thus save CO2 emissions and costs during transport.

Fashionista would love for The Clever Little Bag to be introduced immediately, but it seems that she will have to wait until mid-2011. The supply chain, distribution centres and retail stores all have to take this new Clever Little Bag on board, first. Hopefully, this will be sorted out, soon, and new Puma shoes, T-Shirts, and any other Puma products can be taken home in Clever Little Bags - and the bags used for more shopping even if that shopping is for groceries and books rather than fashion!