On April 22, Tmall Genie fully launched the "Environmental protection packaging replacement plan". The plan will start with the industry's leading shipments of "sugar line" smart speaker products, gradually covering more products. The first new packaging saved about 156 tons of paper, equivalent to the weight of 30 elephants.
This is also a rare decision to environmentally protect the entire line of packaging in China's consumer smart products in recent years. In the past, in order to ensure the user's sense of the process of unboxing, digital products in the Chinese market placed great emphasis on product makeup photos and plastic encapsulation on the packaging. Even brands such as Apple are adopting more environmentally friendly packaging, but the approach is not radical.
The Tmall Genie design team chose the main line product packaging box for innovation, boldly promoting the "three noes" packaging without color, plastic and film. "This decision has also been debated internally, but it is indeed a more explicit advocacy of design trends." Designer Xue Zhichao introduced that the new packaging practices the 3R principles of environmentally friendly design - Reduce (reduction), Recycle (recyclable), Reuse (reuse), which also comes from the Tmall smart design team in the Beijing Winter Olympic Torch "flying" design, by the concept of zero carbon emissions.
The first batch of packaging using kraft cardboard and kraft cardboard material, compared to before, the surface of the card does not need to be coated with PP film for protecting the ink, does not contain plastic components, can be 100% degraded; the internal paper tray part is replaced by the original white pulp to yellow pulp, while reducing the bleaching process. Its printing also uses water-based environmentally friendly inks, and some products have also eliminated non-degradable EVA and other materials, and the paper area is only 70% of the original.
In recent years, environmentalism has become the mainstream trend, and many luxury goods and FMCG brands have adopted measures such as a comprehensive ban on animal furs in a high-profile manner, and even give up some consumers for this purpose. But in the consumer electronics industry, such decisions are relatively rare.
"It's time to take another step forward. The world is changing, and so are consumers. The Tmall Genie design team revealed that the first batch of consumers to get the new packaging may feel that the Tmall Genie has become smaller, but in fact, by optimizing the box structure, the amount of paper fiber used is reduced by about 20%, further reducing the burden on the environment.
Since its establishment in 2017, Tmall Genie has been trying to explore more environmental protection standards in intelligent inclusive products such as In Sugar and Sugar Cube. Relevant patent information shows that on the terminal hardware, it has a number of patents to control the temperature rise and radiation value of the equipment in the small speaker, which can make the relevant values significantly lower than the national standard; through the self-developed front-end framework protocol Waft, it can make the operation of the program more efficient in the cloud and the terminal; by the end of 2021, in the intelligent control instructions of Tmall Genie and IoT devices, the amount of smart energy-saving instructions has been growing significantly, and its IoT ecological daily active users have increased by more than 100%.
The environmentally friendly packaging materials that have been updated this time have also undergone more than a month of careful selection. Since smart products need to take into account the metal mesh on the appearance of smart products, bumps and bumps in the logistics process of internal precision components, pulp needs to ensure better cushioning and protection, while being thin and light. Finally, after multiple rounds of physical proofing and testing, after comparing multiple indicators such as material strength, appearance color, printing effect, test performance, mass production type, economy, etc., the design team selected the paper type that meets the requirements.
Tmall Genie said that the packaging renewal plan is part of the company's sustainable development plan, and it will also consider designing and co-creating with IP partners and consumers in the future.
(Pictured: Environmentally friendly packaging samples are reused and transformed into napkin boxes)
According to the report of global market research firm Euromonitor International, "Top 10 Global Consumer Trends 2022", the pursuit of environmental protection is one of the future consumer trends. In 2021, about 65% of global consumers are concerned about "climate change" and are aware of the impact of individual consumption behavior on environmental protection, so they are paying more attention to environmental actions and purchasing decisions.
Among them, millennials and generation Z, as the most important consumer groups in the future, are more inclined to pay for products and services that conform to environmentalism.
It is reported that from April 18 to 24, the Publicity and Education Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Alibaba Public Welfare jointly held a nature education week activity, and Tmall Genie also joined with the above new packaging program. It is expected that in May, consumers will receive the first batch of Tmall Genie products in new eco-friendly packaging.