Excess Disguised as Less

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Enoch Palmer, vice president of design at Aveda, agrees with the notion that over-consumption often comes from a desire to do the efficient and economic thing. "If my wife and I see something at Old Navy that looks like it's really great for our child, then we consider buying it in three sizes. But then you also have to consider having a closet full of stuff you end up not needing." Bulk shopping, Palmer suggests, is two-sided: While it obviously makes more sense in terms of packaging to buy one large package than eight small ones over the course of a year, if you're buying lots of stuff you don't need and are just going to throw it all out, it defeats the original purpose.

In his job, Palmer and his team at Aveda review a list of questions before making design decisions: Do we need it? Can we live without it? Can we borrow, rent, or get it used? Is the project designed to minimize waste? Is it designed to be durable or multifunctional? Such questions apply not only to Aveda's new projects but to the decisions made in the company's office planning. When the New York headquarters was refurbished three years ago, for example, the company bought used filing cabinets and office furniture. Aveda's questions can easily be applied to our individual habits of consumption.

Other companies have started to do their own soul-searching when it comes to paring down, and their choice to do so can derive as much from market forces as from the will to do good. Corporate sustainability consultant Marc Alt, who has been working with Wal-Mart, says that the nation's largest retailer gives its buyers a bonus when they bring in products with reduced packaging. Sylvania's CFL bulbs, for example, were once packaged in bulky, oversized blister packs; today, they come in small cardboard boxes. As a result, they are awarded better placement on shelves, which leads to greater sales.

That Wal-Mart—whose very existence is predicated on urging consumers to buy more—is paying closer attention to sustainable packaging brings us, of course, back to the divided self, and mirrors the paradox most of us just tend to live with, if more and more uneasily. But rather than merely chalking it up to one more irony of modern life, perhaps this is one paradox we'll have to work harder to resolve.

Make less, buy less, use less, throw away less. As Russell Davies, a branding expert (and former global consumer planning director for Nike) writes on his blog, "Once upon a time, packaging wasn't disposable, it was useful. We didn't think about recycling biscuit tins, because we kept them, they were useful. And now they're even more valuable than they were. So I'm wondering if there's a way of thinking about packaging sustainability that makes it more valuable, not more recyclable. Does that make sense?"

It does. Davies questions whether his own thinking is "horribly simplistic." It may be. But what is also horribly simplistic is the banal human malady of wanting too much. Which brings us back to Wendell Berry, who once wrote that the greatest obstacle is "the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent upon what is wrong. But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do."

Provided by Print—America's Graphic Design Magazine