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Sustainable Products Make Presence Felt at 2008 International Home + Housewares Show

Rosemont, IL (April 7, 2008)—No one could walk the 13 miles of aisles and miss the point that housewares manufacturers were trying to make. The dominant theme at the 2008 International Home + Housewares Show was "green"—whether in products on display or as topics in Show seminars and Housewares Design Theater presentations.

As companies in the $77 million U.S. housewares industry come to grips with manufacturing sustainable products, a vast array of processes and materials are in the pipeline. At the same time, consumers are trying to sift through a barrage of green messages that can be complex and retailers scramble to understand which green products consumers actually want to see on their store shelves.

Product designer Mark Dziersk, who spoke at the 2008 Show, held March 16-18 in Chicago, describes the changing product development process as moving from "a three-legged to a four-legged stool" that includes sustainability as well as what "works well, looks good and costs little." He adds that consumers will indeed pay more for a product that includes an authentic element of sustainability.

"From Wal-Mart to Detroit to Wall Street, green has come into its own as a sincere piece of the goto- market plan," says Dziersk of Laga/One80 Design. "The mistake many companies make now is to lead with green or compromise the other three legs. Looks great, works great, costs the right amount and ‘is green' are the new table stakes in housewares, packaging and the design industry in general. Without the fourth leg, you will not be taken seriously in the future."

Creating A Sustainable Future
That said, there will be plenty of settling over the next two to three years as the green market matures. During the March 17 Show seminar, "In the Green: Connecting With Environmentally Conscious Consumers," Jennifer Ganshirt of Frank About Women, noted that while "green is hot, very today and truly everywhere," the trend is more about marketing and less about true lifestyle integration at this point. Her company's recent survey of more than 1,000 female consumers found that purchasing "green" makes a difference to women, but they want the green products they buy to also have a reasonable price and good quality. For retailers, that means embracing green wholeheartedly because savvy consumers know the difference between hype and an innovative, sustainable product that fits their budgets.

The housewares industry, in other words, must help create a sustainable future rather than just announce its arrival. "As Einstein is claimed to have said, ‘the best way to predict the future is to invent it,'" JohnPaul Kusz, of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the Illinois Institute of Technology, told his Housewares Design Theater audience.

"My contention is that we can extend the design brief to include the engagement of the end user in a dialogue with the product and its maker that creates a relationship of shared responsibility and stewardship," Kusz says. "By doing so, we can move from simply designing artifacts to designing and developing comprehensive business and system models that bring more value to the brands we create."

Fabian DeGarbo, director of sustainable packaging at Whole Foods Market and a speaker at the "In the Green" seminar, said he is constantly on the lookout for packaging suppliers that support the long-held "green" philosophy behind the success of Whole Foods Market. Mainly, he is looking for good corporate matches based on company objectives and history, while checking for conflicts such as a company's other, "non-green" products. That approach ensures that Whole Foods suppliers are in sync with the green grocer from top to bottom, which in turn systematizes sustainability.

One way for companies to ensure they are walking the walk in a systemized manner is through corporate sustainability reporting, a trend that is beginning to take hold in boardrooms across various industries. Chad Upham, founder of Covive, Inc., noted in a Housewares Design Theater presentation that every major company produces an annual financial report that helps investors and analysts makes decisions about their commitment to the company, which justifies a similar report on sustainability.

"Over the past decade, with the increase in access to global information through the Internet and media, the pubic has grown more aware of the social and environmental liabilities of the products they consume," he says. "More consumers are basing their buying decisions on social and environmental factors in addition to quality and price. Corporations that are proactive at adopting strategies to reduce environmental impacts and strengthen communities build consumer confidence and can discover tremendous economic benefits through efficiency and goodwill."

Exhibit Spotlights Sustainable Products, Packaging
To help exhibitors, buyers and everyone else who attended the 2008 Show understand the nuts and bolts of the burgeoning green housewares movement, the International Housewares Association sponsored a green design exhibit for the first time. Based on four "islands" featuring green products and the sustainable materials and processes that go into them, Design Directions: Going Green highlighted the fact that the entire industry is going to school for a degree in the true meaning of sustainability.

One island, for instance, included a gift box Artland created for its Veritas stemware that uses less material than traditional products of its kind by employing recycled paper. Because it's also lighter and smaller, it saves labor, energy and transportation costs as well. Bissell Homecare, Inc. created new packaging for its concentrated cleaning formulas that requires 50 percent less plastic and includes at least 25 percent post-consumer recycled plastic.

Other companies featured in Design Directions included Cuisinart, which displayed cookware made with manufacturing techniques that reduce carbon emissions by consuming less energy. Its non-stick coating is petroleum-free, ceramic-based and can be effectively recovered and reused. Nashville Wraps, LLC touted branded retail packaging made only from "verifiable sources," with a combination of certified forests, carbon neutral production, wind power or other ecologically beneficial materials.

Totally Bamboo featured wafer thin cutting boards that use half the material of the company's standard cutting boards and are made in a new laminating and manufacturing process with a proprietary, non-formaldehyde adhesive. Design Ideas made a new material for its EcoGen line by feeding corn starch sugar to naturally occurring microorganisms. The resulting PHBV polymer extracted from the organisms is blended with other biodegradable compounds for processing in standard injection molding machines. When exposed to bacteria in compost or soil, EcoGen decomposes into carbon dioxide, water and biomass.

Umbra LLC, is now making its popular Garbini cans from corn plastic, an alternative to petrochemical plastics. The production requires less fossil fuel, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and does not contain toxic chemicals found in fossil-fuel based resins. And Loofah-Art, whose fibrous gourd can be used as a bath or kitchen scrubber, derives its natural products from a sustainable, renewable agricultural crop that biodegrades to replenish soil nitrogen.

The Road to Sustainability
This list goes on, one approach at a time. "Manufacturers, retailers and consumers are all learning together what ‘green' and ‘sustainable' can mean in the real world," says Vicki Matranga, IHA design programs coordinator and curator of the Design Directions exhibit. "We were trying to provide sound information and show the directions exhibiting companies are taking as they discover their own paths to sustainability."

IHA Board member Jeff Siegel believes sustainable manufacturing and packaging "has a definite foothold driven mainly by the demands of our customers." Siegel, president/CEO of Lifetime Brands Inc., says, "It will manifest itself in many ways. Many products are being designed to use recycled materials as long as they are not on food surfaces. Packaging is changing to be more environmentally proper through the use of recyclable materials and through the reduction of packaging."

Housewares industry consultant Suzanne Shelton told her Housewares Design Theater audience that housewares companies should "seize an opportunity" now to connect with green consumers through bold advertising, creative strategies, branding and all their marketing communications in order to differentiate their products and respond to perceptions, skepticism and prices sensitivities. "Consumers today," she said, based on her company's national survey, "are very worried about the environment."

IHA President Phil Brandl, with an eye on the big picture, believes that green is already more than lip service in the housewares industry.

"It's really a matter of the design, materials and technological elements maturing into sustainable manufacturing of products that consumers understand and want because the process is relatively transparent," he says. "Many, many companies are doing that. They understand that ‘green' is more than putting an eco-friendly label on a product, and they understand that consumers want them to be good citizens. Over the next two to three years, we'll see quite a bit of green innovation. It's an educational process for everyone."

For more information on exhibitors' sustainability efforts, Show seminars, Housewares Design Theater presentations and Design Directions: Going Green, please visit www.housewares.org