Here's where innovation hangs its hat

摘要

Last December I trekked to a part of Ontario where a common road sign is the kind that says, "If this light is flashing and you're not driving a snowmobile, you're in big trouble." (Okay, that's a loose translation, but you get the idea.)Bringing me to the Ontario town of Feversham—where, thankfully, it wasn't snowing—was Ice River Springs, a bottled water company that had recently completed its own closed-loop, bottle-to-bottle PET recycling system. By the time I left Ice River's plant, I knew I'd just seen not only one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in the sustainable packaging arena but in packaging overall (for the story and video, see packworld.com/video-31156). So I marched straight into the office of Anne Marie Mohan, editor of Greener Package, and told her that Ice River Springs would most assuredly win a 2011 Greener Package award. I'm happy to say the judges of that competition were equally impressed by what Ice River Springs has accomplished, and so they have indeed honored the environmentally conscious bottled water company with an Environmental Impact award and named it the Innovator of the Year in the FDA-regulated category. Be sure to look at the other nine winners in Mohan's report, which begins on page 52