Stout Packaging Majors' Pizza Box Likely to Become New World Wonder
Once in a great while, there comes an invention so spectacular that it becomes something mankind cannot live without. You know the kind of developments I’m talking about. The telephone. Penicillin. The internet. And now, right here in our own backyard, a team of UW-Stout packaging majors has created a product which will no doubt join these juggernauts of innovation in the annals of history. Their invention?
The recyclable, reusable pizza box.
Alright, I’ll admit, I may have gone a little bit over the top with the build-up on this one, but as an unabashed take-out/delivery pizza lover, this thing has got me pretty excited. The Stout students’ pizza box design, lovingly codenamed Project Saucy, puts forth simple fixes for pretty much every shortcoming possessed by current restaurant pizza boxes.
The first thing the team did was insert a two-ply paper liner into their box, the purpose of which is to absorb all the stray grease and cheese which soaks into the cardboard of current pizza boxes and often makes them unrecyclable. With the Project Saucy box, all you have to do is peel out the liner and you’ve got a box that you can feel good about putting in the recycling bin. The second change they made was to add perforations to the box so that it can be cut in half, making storing those leftover pieces of pizza in your fridge so much less of a space waster than it is now. Finally, they added vents to the sides of the box, which helps to prevent that awful phenomenon known as soggy crust syndrome.
The Project Saucy box has already started its sure-fire run towards national fame by earning its creators first place in the student category of the recent AmeriStar national packaging competition, a prize which came with not only a cash payout of $1,000 but also automatic entry into a worldwide professional packaging competition. If the take-out pizza industry has any sort of common sense, worldwide adoption of the Project Saucy design can only be next.
