Profit, Convenience or Sustainability ?

I received a request in my household this month to assemble a new-fangled tomato plant cage. You know, one of those gadgets that supports the plant as it grows and develops its fruit. This got me thinking about the competition between packagers' needs for profits, consumers' needs for convenience and the planet's need for sustainability.

Using this one episodic example, I draw two conclusions that I’ve written about before. First, low cost is the best proxy for measuring sustainability. And second, sustainability is a fad that will generate lots of hype but not much meaningful action because consumers will not give up convenience and packagers will not give up the profits that come from product differentiation. Achieving these goals, more often than not, results in over-indulgence in the application of resources.

I've been exposed to tomato plant cages my entire life. As a youngster, I remember staking up tomato plants by one of two means: cut some sticks from a tree or a scrap-wood pile and lash them together with some twine to make a tomato cage; or go to the hardware store and buy a preformed wire tomato plant cage. Both solutions were completely sustainable and recyclable. Steel wire was and is readily available and wood strips or sticks are basically renewable waste. Both types of cage would last a couple of seasons, the wire one probably lasting a few years longer, but Nature would eventually recall both types back to the earth for recycling.

Jump forward 40 years into our world with its emphasis on sustainability. Both types of cages are still available. But so are a number of new solutions, like the one my wife and daughter came home with and asked me to assemble for them. I found this curious, since we already have wire cages in the garden shed, but apparently they found something compelling in the convenience of this particular cage. The bright and colorful packaging made the case in their mind and extracted the money from their pocket.

But let's compare the sustainability of the wire cage and this new, brightly packaged plastic one.

1) The wire one will last longer - it is only one piece. The plastic one contains contains 12 loose pieces that will quickly become lost or damaged.

2) The wire one will recycle better - it will just rust away or end up in the metal scrap yard. The plastic one will end up in the land fill. Both may have already been produced with recycled material - old cars or old soda bottles.

3) Both weigh about the same, but the wire one ships in much less volume - they stack very nicely. By the way, the plastic one ships from China.

4) The wire one is typically sold using no packaging material whatsoever. Maybe someone attaches a paper price tag - maybe not. The plastic one required FIFTEEN packaging components. These components served two functions: to hold the 12 pieces together and to provide a billboard to convince the purchaser that this product was more convenient. These 15 components will immediately be discharged to a landfill.

5) The packaging labor for the plastic cage, to make and assemble those 15 components, has to exceed the manufacturing labor for the wire cage. There is likely a very small amount of manufacturing labor for the plastic one, but a large amount of consumer labor is expended in assembling these cages at home. The wire cage uses far less total labor to produce, ship, sell and apply.

6) The tomato plant won't care which type cage it is growing on. Both will do the job.

7) The plastic cage sells in a big-box home improvement store for over six dollars. The wire cage sells at the local nursery or hardware store for two dollars.

Which is the more sustainable? I think it is clear. Which provides the most profit for manufacturers and retailers? That too is clear. What role did packaging play? It made the case to the consumer to buy the less sustainable product by presenting it as more convenient and enabled the manufacturer to pocket more profit while creating more waste.

In this case, cost was a great indicator of sustainability. The manufacturer added cost and reduced sustainability to convince the consumer of the convenience of his product to create more profit. The consumer accepted the argument and paid three times as much money for the less sustainable product. Packaging made the difference. The most sustainable packaging is no packaging at all. Who's fooling who with all this rhetoric about sustainable packaging?

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Comments Keith, Excellent article, you are absolutely dead on! Everyone claims to want or deliver sustainability. Most don't really know what it is and marketing/price are the wild cards that trump it. Posted by: Tim Traub on May 28, 2010 Keith, I'm with you all the way. The wire was not only cheaper, but it didn't need to come all the way from China! I hope your wife and daughter were as easily convinced. It's not so sustainable to prove two expert shoppers wrong! Posted by: Jim on May 28, 2010 An excellent analysis of things that most of us do not consider Posted by: Mario Trujillo on May 28, 2010 Could not have said it better. But you forgot one thing - the waste in money, time and resources through massive government laws and regulations that would choke a horse and lay waste to the forests of North America to produce the paper and packaging requirements to protect and inform the "ignorance" of consumers. Maybe if we had a better educational program that made people think, and be resourceful and responsible, we could greatly reduce the overburden. The words green and sustainable are becoming political buzzwords for manipulation. Whatever happened to responsibilities, obligations, needs, value and the concept of "Good Will" or "Common Good". Remember with freedom comes the responsibility and obligation for the Common Good, not self, avarice, lies and stealing. With liberty comes the ability to only undertake action for the Common Good. I ask the question. Does freedom and liberty exist in the United States today or in so-called democratic countries? Posted by: Paul Zepf on May 28, 2010 Always love reading your thoughts; a voice of reason in the sea of insanity! While the tomatoes don't care and it's not fair to blame the victim (who can resist "bright shiny"), I'm not sure I'd blame the manufacturers. They are only fulfilling the need that is created by the "dealers" (big-box and distribution buyers). Posted by: Chris Miller on June 1, 2010 Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style) Type the word 'packaging' (required):