Osprey: How rubbish becomes “good”

Osprey: How rubbish becomes “good” - 21 Jul 2007

Osprey just brought out a line of recycled backpacks (called the “Resource Series”) and I really liked their catchy advertising campaign that stood out at the show (see photo). Gareth Martins (Director of Marketing) explained that customers were the one’s that really pressed Osprey for the product.

Osprey Packs was founded in Santa Cruz, California in 1974 and at that time the company was making custom backpacks on a customer-to-customer basis. The story behind the Resource Series Backpacks goes back 2 years when the company challenged itself internally to build a backpack almost entirely of recycled materials. What resulted was a long quest to source environmentally sustainable fabrics, put in place specific quality control systems for these new materials and redesign traditional pieces in order to optimize the usage of recycled base products. Today Osprey produces a 70% recycled product composed of a great deal of items that are individually 100% recycled – such as the PET plastic main body fabric, mesh pockets and binding tape.

Being open about the origin of the fabric that produced this backpack is also pretty new to the consumer world. “Rubbish” is often related to something dirty, stinky and repulsive but here, Osprey makes it sound friendly and cool. This brings me to the importance that manufacturers need to place on marketing these new products. The “social influence” factor is key to bringing environmentally friendly products into the mainstream. This point is especially important in terms of spreading the word. After all, the more people see an object being used, the more they see how easy it is to bring eco-purchases into their daily lives.

A lot of people I talk to in the industry tend to think that “sustainability” is boring. That’s a big mistake. Producing sustainable products is not at all contradictory to growth. It’s just a question of time. Volume (units of sales) will eventually bring down the cost of raw materials, and with continued increase in demand, we’ll start to see more and more environmentally friendly products out on the shelves of our local sports stores.