Coca-Cola is often held up as an example of how powerful the association of colour can be in branding. The Coke red is so recognisable that if you see a sliver of it you can still identify the brand. In other words, it's hard to imagine Coke without the colour red.
But designer Ryan Harc has done just that with his Eco-friendly Package, 2009 Proposal. Harc suggests embossing the coke logo on the can to avoid the use of toxic paint and thus reduce the energy needed to seperate it from the aluminium when recycling.
I'm not sure of the total carbon impact of this (i.e. does it take extra energy to emboss a convex logo on aluminium etc?) but given that 75,380,201,500 (over 75 billion) cans of all kinds of Coke are sold every year (that's nearly 1.5 million cans sold every ten second - godamn, that's a lot of sugared water), you'd think this could add up to something significant.
Regardless - and without getting into the wider issue of the role and and environmental impact of products like Coke in the 21c - this is ingenious design thinking and shows how brands might reinvent their products and their identities in beautiful and sustainable ways.
[Spotted on Gizmondo]
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