Sustainable packaging

From plastic to carton

Protecting tomorrow today

A greener choice

When you come into a hardware store or wholesaler for a window lock or door hardware, you probably don’t think about it: developing the packaging. Yet at AXA Home Security, a lot is involved during the packaging development process. The challenge becomes greater when this packaging is also allowed to go green.

AXA Home Security has taken up the challenge and started working on changing the packaging. We would like to show why we are doing this and how the process went. Then it is immediately clear what the clover in our new logo stands for.

A long process

Protecting tomorrow today is AXA Home Security’s slogan around sustainability. With high-quality products, we ensure the security of the planet and its inhabitants. In doing so, we also take a critical look at our own contribution. After all, safe and clean are closely linked. But how does AXA Home Security contribute to a greener world?

Sustainability is a long process that requires clear, greener choices. Eliminating plastic from the world, for example. The extraction and transport of fossil raw materials for plastics already pose a threat to nature, but plastic products themselves pollute nature the most: they enter our seas and oceans as plastic soup, disrupt our flora and fauna, and enter our food chain in the form of harmful microplastics. Even recycling will not get us there: recycling plastic is difficult and expensive because species are difficult to separate.

Replacing our blister packs with cardboard is an important step for AXA Home Security to reduce our plastic consumption. It also became an intensive, but extremely educational experience.

“There is a lot of thinking involved in such a development process.”

Protecting tomorrow today

Aiming high

The idea of packaging products in a more sustainable way has been on AXA Home Security’s mind for some time. For example, sustainability is a requirement from the government, requests come from the customer and sustainability is an important strategic pillar within AXA Home Security.

The challenge is in picking up such a large project. For AXA Home Security, it started with desk research and close consultation with suppliers. With our high sustainability bar and the wishes and requirements from the government, trade and consumers firmly in sight, choices had to be made. Because in addition to the wishes of these parties, a production issue also had to be resolved internally. This proved no easy challenge, but one that made AXA happy.

To learn, we looked at our sister companies and at other manufacturers inside and outside the industry. And after careful consideration of several options (including bio-based plastics), we chose the greenest: packaging made of unlaminated cardboard with single-sided printing.

AXA enlisted the help of the external design team. Thanks to the fresh perspective and tireless efforts of this partner Die Jongens, we soon had promising pure cardboard prototypes on our desk for the five most challenging products.

With responsible material:

  • The cardboard we use is made from FSC or PEFC certified recycled cardboard, making it 100% recyclable and biodegradable
  • The ink we use is solvent-free and the glue made from residue; both are fully recyclable
  • The fastening material comes in paper bags
  • The products are attached with paper mounting strips that can be disposed of with paper waste including their thin metal core
  • The brown cardboard looks natural

The challenge: designing for both the user and the shelf

Anyone who wants to buy security fittings at a hardware store or wholesaler needs overview and information: products, no matter how varied in shape and weight, will be clearly identifiable by brand, well sorted and hanging nice and straight on the rack.
Hardware stores and specialty stores have additional requirements. The products must remain recognizable and take up comparable space, or less. In addition, selling parties find it more important than ever that products are difficult for malicious parties to remove from the packaging, can be easily returned and resold, and the packaging itself is, of course, as plastic-free as possible.

When switching from blister to cardboard packaging, all these aspects had to be taken into account. Not an easy task for the drawing board.

How to pick the new materials: a challenging road

Different types of cardboard were considered, and at each step in the design phase we examined how we could achieve the same result with less and lighter material. Sometimes we had to reverse these steps or be even more clever with the available space in and on the packaging, without making the folding too complex or disturbing the balance of the box and its contents. By being clever with the available space and looking for inventive solutions, we arrived, with a lot of scraping and testing, at a clear series of universal outer boxes with cut-outs that make the products visible. The slide-in interiors/inner boxes keep the products securely in place and provide an additional barrier to thieves.

The tension between size, weight and balance also concerned us a great deal in the design phase. Hinges, for example, we prefer to show open, but without enlarging the packaging or affecting its sturdiness. Not easy, because how do you provide packaging that meets our design principles when you have to accommodate, for example, five hinges, which weigh 700 g together, in one cardboard package. That didn’t work out in one go: the first package collapsed under the weight. Fortunately, we found a good solution, with four hinges arranged zigzagged against the back wall and one opened in front.

Packaging

Printing and punching

Smart design choices allowed us to replace our 200 different blister packs with 100 cartons: with only 30 die-cut models and changing inner boxes left, we can now use the same outer box for different products of a similar size, as is the case with our tele-setters and letter plates, for example.

Text and explanation: where do you put your product information?

A particular challenge was the amount of information that we wanted to include even on the smallest models of exterior boxes: from product type, name, version and included fasteners to dimensions, color, application, bar code and labels. Add to that our company data, the diversity and technical nature of our assortment, and you have a seven-star puzzle. A puzzle, which naturally led to intensive collaboration between our design team and our product data expert.

We carefully chose how each piece of information would be displayed. To make the right formatting choices, we always put ourselves in the user’s shoes: do the most important product features stand out? Is it clear how much space you need on your frame or window style? Completeness is important, but so is consistency and clarity. Moreover, every piece of information must be accessible to both professional and consumer. A nice addition in this context is the QR code on the label, which provides direct access to the appropriate product information and installation instructions.

New packaging

Practice makes perfect

The new packaging had to be able to be assembled quickly, well and securely, and the packaging itself as efficiently as possible. For this, we work together with, among others, an excellent team at social work company IW4. Most of the heroes on this team have been assembling, testing and packaging AXA Home Security products such as hinges and tele-extension devices for years. They are an indispensable link in the process. For them, we therefore looked for the best concept with the shortest possible assembly time. A matter of constantly simplifying, streamlining and, of course, testing extensively ourselves with the stopwatch at hand.

More about IW4

Anti-theft and returnable

To prevent theft as much as possible, we have made several interventions: the whole is so ingeniously designed that it would take a possible thief a very long time to open the packaging. Also, the accessories are packed invisibly.
Another advantage of this design is that the packages, even after being opened, can be resold when returned to the store.

The high-quality durable AXA Home Security packaging

  • The dimensions of the new packaging are the same or smaller in all cases
  • All new packaging is equipped with euro slot
  • The packages are not easy to open (lock)
  • All packages are sufficiently strong and provide sufficient protection
  • All packaging has a space for invisible addition of fasteners, manuals and security strips
  • All products in the new packaging are easily identifiable on the shelf
  • The new packaging contains no plastic and is fully recyclable
  • The packaging is easily separable, recyclable and bears the recycle symbol

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