An Innovative Pizza Box

Cardboard pizza boxes don't fit easily in trash and recycle bins, and many recyclers don't accept them because of the food residue or awkward size. They aren't necessarily easy to break down, and they can leak grease unto your floors or on your clothes.

Earlier this year, a New York City-based green design firm --Environmentally Conscious Organization, inc. (eco for short) -- has a so-simple-it's-genius solution: the Green Box! The concept looks like a standard cardboard pizza box that comes pre-perforated.

When your pizza arrives, you can easily tear the top of the box into four makeshift disposable plates. The bottom of the box is also perforated on the edges and down the middle, so you can easily fold that part into a small container that fits a few slices --giving you a convenient place to store leftovers in your fridge, without having to juggle around everything else. In fact, the leftover box is a pinch less than half the size of a full pizza box.

And perhaps the best part of this patented invention is that fact that the Green Box is made from 100% recycled cardboard. There is also the option for a vegetable-based coating.

Here's a video of the product:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQBjJjpkjl0

"Our goal is to increase the functionality of packaging and to eliminate or reduce follow-on waste [additional materials like tin foil, plastic bags or plastic wrap]," eco inc.'s Jennifer Wright recently explained about the Green Box, her company's first product. Since consumers have a built-in storage device for any leftovers, they won't need to fool with extra materials. And since the box can become handy serving plates, that will cut down on water and energy needed for dish washing.

Whether or not the pizza box, aka the "green box," is actually green seems to be a point of debate as of late. You can learn more about that here (be sure to read the comments). In my opinion (IMO for the new O.M.G. generation), for a box that hasn't seen any change in decades, this innovative approach is very inspirational.

See Wright present the pizza box here at what appears to be a trade show of sorts, and listen for the crowd when the demonstrator (Ned?) shows the storage & bottom part of the box:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMDmp-cR4I0

Wright (one of three partners at eco inc.) explains that since the Green Box is made out of standard pizza box material, there is no need for retooling factories or changing the way pizza shops do business. In fact, she says that the boxes can be purchased for the same price as -- or possibly less than --conventional boxes, since according to Wright the recycled pulp costs less than the virgin pulp.

The Green Box can also be used as marketing for pizza shops, who can tout the greener footprint, as well as innovative packaging and (at least for a while) novelty.

"Three billion pizza boxes are used in the U.S. every year," said Wright. "If you stacked them on top of each other, in two years you'd reach the moon…We feel like we're doing our part for the environment, one pizza box at a time."  ▣

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