Designing enhanced sustainable packaging

In 2019 Woolcool Australia invited QUT Industrial Design Third Year students to investigate and develop potential solutions for their PLANET PROTECTOR brand utilising their ©Woolcool material. The 2018 ABC’s program War on Waste revealed that Australia is one of the most wasteful countries in the developed world. Packaging that contains expanded polystyrene (EPS) is very challenging to recycle, and is frequently discarded and sent to landfill. In response, several organisations have attempted to design ‘sustainable packaging’ by following sets of principles guiding the packaging development decision-making process. Concerned about the environmental impact of unsustainable insulated packaging, Planet Protector is an innovative company that has developed ©Woolcool, a packaging insulation material made of sheep wool. They have won numerous awards on the basis of their innovation and contributions to our planet’s sustainability. This project aimed to further enhance the impact of their products by looking at various other aspects and needs in the current supply chain. For our students this project provided a design task that challenged them to think within a different context and to take into account the requirements of different stakeholders to develop the most valuable design.