Leading luxury fashion brand Gucci goes green

07
Jun '10

Gucci is pleased to announce the launch of a worldwide eco-friendly program designed to progressively reduce the company's impact on the environment. The centrepiece of this new initiative is packaging newly designed to reduce materials, exclusively use FSC Certified paper and to be 100% recyclable.

The initiative will be introduced in all of its 284 directly operated stores around the world from June 2010. The new packaging concept not only represents an important action towards environmental responsibility, but also reinforces Gucci's heritage as the company approaches its 90th anniversary in 2011. It is within this dual context that Gucci's new packaging has been conceived by Gucci Creative Director Frida Giannini pairing past with present and luxury with responsibility.

Frida Giannini said, “This project proves that you sacrifice nothing creatively when working with environmentally friendly materials. The new packaging is very beautiful and evokes perfectly the combination of Gucci's values and the traditions for which it has become renowned since Guccio Gucci founded the company in Florence nearly 90 years ago. I believe we have a collective responsibility towards future generations to minimise our impact on the environment."

Employing a sophisticated beater-dyed paper in chocolate brown, the new shopping bags and gift boxes feature a de-bossed GG logo, which was first used in the 1960s and emulates the present day iconic Guccissima leather. The surface of the packaging has a subtle luminosity and underscores the experience of luxury as well as the warm tones of Frida Giannini's Gucci retail store concept. The brown pantone is complemented by the GUCCI logo in gold as well as “Firenze 1921”, as an acknowledgement of the company's birthplace, its Made in Italy tradition and its near 90-year history. The gucci.com website address is also newly added to the side of the shopping bags in recognition of the way in which Gucci's online store and direct store network complement each other. The inside of the shopping bag features the sentence: This shopping bag is FSC certified and made of 100% recyclable material. All plastic laminated surfaces (a common feature in fashion brand packaging that is not recyclable) have been removed from shopping bags and boxes. Tissue paper is no longer coated and both ribbon and garment bags have been switched from polyester to cotton.

The FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification verifies that all trees used to create the paper of bags and boxes come from well managed forests and that every stage in the production chain meets the FSC standards. Gucci is a leader in having complied with every requirement stipulated and all the company's suppliers involved in the launch of the new packaging are FSC certified. Gucci has committed that by the end of 2010 all of its purchases of non-recycled forest products will be Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified productsto ensure that no paper is being sourced from endangered forests including the rainforests of Indonesia, one of world's hotspots of deforestation and climate change. Furthermore, it will continue to seek alternative fibre options to use in its packaging products, include biodegradable bags made of corn, bamboo and cotton.

More Gucci Group News... More Fashion News - Italy...