This is part two of our ongoing, four part, series about the development of an imaginary environmentally friendly snowboard company. In part one, we discussed the development of the logo, and it’s influence on the brand identity. 

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“Only we humans make waste that nature can’t digest” - Capt. Charles Moore, Algalita Marine Research Foundation 

For those of you following this blog, you will know that I have spent the last few posts talking about plastics and the consequences of using them. In our modern lives, we use and discard an extraordinary amount of plastics. For example, in the United States we use and discard over 4 Million plastic cups everyday. Doesn’t seem like much, until you find out that the 4 Million cups were used and discarded on airplanes. Think about that, 4 Million plastic cups per day so we can have a little drink on the airplane.

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There is a funny quirk of the English language that has an odd way of influencing the way we think. Words have a very powerful affect, they more or less determine our ability to think. Let’s just pretend that we only know a total of 10 words, in this case all nouns and totally unrelated. Our brains only have the ability to understand and communicate 10 different concepts. Replace one of those nouns with an adjective, and we suddenly have almost doubled our vocabulary as we can now communicate at least 19 different concepts. This simplistic example showcases just how dependent upon words we actually are. The more words we know the more thoughts we are capable of having, and the more complex our thoughts can be.

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Polyvinyl Chloride better known as PVC is a prominent plastic resin with a variety of uses, but it has serious environmental issues that need to be considered. In a previous post I spoke about the various types of plastic resins and some of their associated issues. However, the implications of PVC merit a deeper examination.
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For designers, making environmentally sustainable decisions often comes down to the choice of material used for a client’s project.  When it comes to packaging design, there are literally thousands of possibilities for source materials. Plastics are one of the most common and prevalent choices available.  They are lightweight, relatively cheap (in terms of upfront cost) and readily available. 

Unfortunately,  from a sustainability stand point they lack pizzazz. The majority of plastics are made from petroleum products and are therefore not renewable.  Additionally, plastics are extremely, perhaps overly, durable. When a typical plastic container is placed into a modern landfill, it is expected to last at least 1000 years. Worst still is that the molecules that comprise most plastics are complex and don’t really break down. So in 1000 years time, the plastic may appear to be gone, but in reality it has probably just dispersed into the eco-system in really small pieces.  

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Every so often Neon Sumo likes to flex our collective creative muscles and do a creative design exercise. This time around we elected to examine the process of creating a new snowboarding brand.  As snowboarding and skiing are a big part of life here in Colorado, we decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to explore the community in a little more depth.  Since snowboarding is so dependent upon climate we also found it to be a perfect example of a business that would benefit from going green. This series is going to be released in 4 separate parts. 

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From Flickr jordan99mac under Creative Commons

“It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.” -George William Curtis

Over the course of my college career I studied business, and more specifically marketing. Over several years my professors instilled in me the “values” of the modern business world. The most prominent of which is, “does this benefit the bottom line?”  It’s a question that undoubtedly has faced many a business owner and employee. It’s a sort of flawed dogma that negates one very important fact.

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