Blank Canvas

On my soap box (bottle)…
I love Trader Joe’s Markets for so many reasons.
This reason stands out today. As I finished one bottle of dishwasher liquid and prepared to use the next, I was happily surprised that I could peel away the label to reveal a blank space- what I always see as a blank canvas (a plain container or box with no images or words).
It goes deeper than that though. It was because of the things the bottle was not- I could peel away the label to reuse the soap bottle as something entirely new because the label was a sticker to peel and not a permanent label, heavily shrink wrapped or gooped with heavy adhesive. It was not packaging that has a more negative impact on our planet in the manufacturing that go into the containers for the things we buy.
In fact, I appreciate that many of the Trader Joes goods I buy are reuse friendly, either with their easy label removal or have the funnest graphics that just invite inspiration for reuse in lots of ways like gift tag making or collaging. In fact, I notice that a lot of their dry goods boxes don’t have waxy coatings which are recycling taboo as I understand it.
This all matters to me because we live in a high consumer shopping era with lots of packaging that has a short life planned, the temporarily purpose of getting the contents from A to B with no agenda after that transport so I really appreciate these TJ packaging factors.
At CReATE in my deepening care of the impact we have on our planet, I hope that after spending time with us, creators start to look at post consumer packaging (like that which we have on hand for creative reuse) in new ways that spark ideas and inspirations they can carry into the bigger world around them, around all of us more thoughtfully and, with a higher regard for the value of what we already have. As one of my favorite quotes says, “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they make the best with everything they have.”
I have a super sleek looking dishwasher detergent bottle that can be anything I imagine and that is just the coolest thing!