The Green Room

Tracking success with blank CD packaging

By Tim Clark on October 19, 2012 Leave a comment

It may be hard to believe, but October 1 marked the 30^th anniversary of the release of the first CD player – Sony’s CDP101. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Billy Joel has the distinction of being the first musician to release a commercial album, 52^nd Street, on CD.

Though music CDs certainly aren’t as popular as they once were due to the ubiquity of MP3 players, blank CDs and DVDs are frequently used for data storage at home and at work and both have packaging that exceeds the size of the actual product. That excess packaging can add up to extra costs that are then passed on to customers.

It’s something we wanted to tackle, so we decided to work with Memorex to revamp their packaging. By eliminating the exterior case, we not only created a more environmentally friendly packaging design, but we were also able to neutralize a price increase that could have resulted from rising costs of blank CD/DVD media.

This simple packaging reduction resulted in serious savings for us in many ways. We saved nearly 1,000 tons of plastic, which is equal to nearly 100 concert tour buses! We also achieved seven percent, or more than $1.6 million, in cost savings from package reductions, as well as decreased shipping space and weight. And we were able to pass that savings on to our customers. It’s just another example of how with sustainability, a little change can go a long way. And that sounds good.