2009 Australian packaging awards for sustainability

O-I’s Lean+Green lightweight wine bottles have won two awards at the 2009 Australian Packaging Awards in Melbourne.

Lean+Green won gold in the Carter Holt Harvey Sustainability Award, edging out packaging from confectioner Cadbury, which won the silver award for its new box alternative for chocolate. The other silver winner was Amcor Fibre Packaging for its recyclable broccoli packaging. MYOB Mac Software range packaging from Colorpak won the bronze and the BioNet shopping bag from BioPak was highly commended in this category.

The sustainability award applauds packaging that has been reinvented or created to demonstrate a significant advance in environmental considerations and provides a benchmark for its product or market segment.

Lean+Green also took out the Packaging Council of Australia’s (PCA) Best of Show Award. The Best of Show Award goes to the entry that represents the greatest overall achievement in its category and is selected from the event’s nine gold-winning entries.

“The judges specifically applaud the impact of the lightweight wine bottle range as a supplier initiative that benefits both customers and the industry as a whole. This innovation comes at a time when there is a confluence of imperatives at play,” the PCA judges said.

“Issues of sustainability, emissions, energy and moderation of packaging and resources are paramount, but so are matters of domestic manufacturing, economic viability and exports, and all are addressed through this solution.

“The saving of almost 20,000 tonnes of glass packaging a year has a massive flow-on benefit for industry and the environment. The reduction in cost, weight, energy and water usage from each bottle is staggering. The advances can potentially be applied to other products and, due to the sheer volume of the application, this design solution has the capacity to impact on millions of products worldwide,” the judges concluded.

This latest recognition for Lean+Green comes after two awards at the 2009 Packaging Evolution Awards in Sydney in August, taking the product’s total number of awards to four.