Green Box: Pizza with a Conscience

More than 3 billion pizzas are sold in the US each year, with the majority coming from takeout and delivery. Unfortunately, most pizza boxes are made from standard cardboard. Add to that the disposable serving plates that often accompany a pizza party, and the whole ordeal becomes a rather unsustainable pastime. Design and licensing firm ECO Incorporated offers a solution with their Green Box prototype – a deconstrucable pizza box made out of 100% recycled material that breaks down into four serving plates and a leftovers storage container.

Two things about the concept are particularly interesting. One, it was designed nearly two years ago and we’re yet to see mass (or any, really) implementation – perhaps bespeaking the complex systems and economies involved in innovation adoption spanning well beyond product innovation. Two, the comments on the video raise some interesting questions about the relationship between pro-social innovation and profit. Should designers have to choose between doing good and doing well?

Maria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings, a curated inventory of miscellaneous interestingness. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Magazine, Design Observer and Huffington Post, and spends a shameful amount of time on Twitter.