Designer / Out of the Blue Design
Chocolate is one of our most favourite foods, and Bloomsberry & Co. makes use of this to spread environmental awareness. The chocolate bars come in neatly-designed packaging, and the wrappers come with tips to inform consumers on how one’s impact on the environment can be lessened. Bloomsberry & Co. also take a novel approach to incorporating eco-friendliness into their production processes by buying carbon credits. Carbon credits are sold by companies, such as Terrapass (Terrapass, n.d.), that funds carbon reduction projects. Hence, buying a carbon credit helps to “offset” a certain amount of carbon emissions made by the company.
The main criticism is that such products that use “climate change” as a gimmick are in fact trivializing the severity of Earth’s problems. This is evident from the fact that Bloomsberry & Co. produces a wide range of chocolates, but they only purchase carbon credits for “Climate Change Chocolates”. Also, the purchase of carbon credits is not equivalent ro having minimal carbon footprint. To be more sustainable, the product should be redesigned such that it uses environmentally-friendly materials for packaging and renewable resources for it’s chocolate.
The packaging also tries to inform consumers by providing tips on sustainable behavior on its wrappers. However, the wrappers are often torn and thrown away, hence it does little in getting the message across. The tips should in fact be printed on the outer packaging itself, as iti s often kept for a longer time after purchased, will less likely to be destroyed, and serves to engage consumers even before they actually purchase the product.