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Believe it or not, the official holiday season is only a matter of weeks away. But, with all the discussion of how or relatively disappointing last year's "black Friday" kick off for holiday shopping was, and how many sales retailers will rack up this year before it's all over, there's only one thing we know for certain -- for every gift bought and received, there's packaging to go with it.

On December 25th, millions upon million of U.S. and European homes will be strewn with enough sheer mass of stuff to build...well, something really big and probably really ugly. Some of this refuse will be recycled, of course, but not nearly enough. A lot of it will end it will still end up in landfills and generally contributing to any number of serious environmental woes, and that's just one very big day out of 365.

And that goes to the issue of sustainable packaging. What was once mostly an ethical question for designers and manufacturers has become a financial one as the public becomes increasingly concerned with green issues like global warming. This became a fiscally urgent matter for many companies when Wal-Mart, increasingly controversial for its labor and competitive practices, sought to soften its image among more environmentally conscious and/or progressive-leaning consumers by advancing green initiatives.

In 2005, the retail mega-giant introduced a sustainable packaging program in partnership with the environmentally oriented NatureWorks that they promised would reduce fuel consumption and cut greenhouse gas emissions by some 11 million pounds. Another initiative built around Wal-Mart's in-house toy line was said to have saved 5,190 trees along with significants amounts of materials and fuel.

By the fall of last year, Wal-Mart was introducing its new "packaging scorecard" touting not only the plan's environmental benefits, but a fiscal one as well -- the plan was projected to save an amount just shy of $11 billion, which would be enough to pay for a really nice Christmas party for all of American industry, including the cocktail weiners. However, Environmental Leader noted a couple of months back that while these efforts might be saving and making money for Wal-Mart, it's costing manufacturers more:

"Wal-Mart's packaging initiative pressures marketers to invest substantially upfront to reduce packaging and energy use - estimated at $100 million for Procter & Gamble in the case of laundry-detergent compaction. The savings in shipping costs and packaging materials that could offset that appear to be going toward giving better prices to Wal-Mart and its customers, rather than to the marketer."

So, while not all companies will face that large a bill for redesigning their products, once again designers and manufacturers are left on the horns of a marketing/production/ethical dilemma. Ideally, the best way to solve this problem is to somehow find solutions that are attractive, sustainable, and inexpensive -- but that golden trio of attributes is usually more dream than reality. There are always trade-offs.

One solution is to charge more. Some consumers, in some markets, don't mind paying a little more for a product they are sure is less harmful to the environment -- but others won't. Another solution in some instances is to use bare bones, no-frills packaging. In theory, customers may say they don't really care how nice the packaging looks on a given product; but we also know that consumers tend to ignore "ugly" products, regardless of their feelings about the environment. Other packaging problems, like the hated clam shells, are determined by retailer concerns that can't be ignored.

This is another issue where there are few easy answers, and one that's not going away, either. We're intrigued by the work of the corporate backed Sustainable Packaging Coalition. Their vision statement is worth reading and strikes us as a sensible first step. And, of course, Nectar is working on it. We're located in a California office just a couple miles from the coast. It's sort of required.

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