Packaging Made Not to Be Thrown Away

A shipping box's life usually ends at the front door. We set out to make a box that begins right there.

Background

According to the client's European logistics data, 390,000 shipping boxes went out in a single year. Each box is sealed with paper tape, the recipient tears off the tape, and the box is flattened and discarded. On average, the materials and printing that went into a single box are used for just 40 seconds.

Design

We eliminated adhesive and tape entirely. A single sheet of cardboard is folded twelve times to form the box, and the lid locks shut by fitting into a tab on the side. When the recipient pulls the tab, the box opens — and the same tab folds in the opposite direction, turning the box into a lidless storage container. The motion of tearing it open and the motion of assembling it are one and the same.

The hard part was strength. A structure without adhesive is vulnerable to crushing in transit. We repeated vertical load tests nine times, adjusting the angle of the fold lines and the width of the tabs, and the final design withstood 92 percent of the load the original box could bear.

Result

Tape and adhesive use dropped to zero, and the material cost per box fell by 7 percent. A year after rollout, a logistics team survey found that 34 percent of returns reused the original box — a figure that simply didn't exist to measure under the previous structure.

• Zero tape or adhesive used
• 7% reduction in material cost per box
• 34% of returns reuse the original box
• 9 rounds of vertical load testing