This is extremely cool. It almost makes me want to buy a pair of Pumas. I certainly will once this becomes commercially available.

After spending 21 months studying box fabrication and shipping, Fuseproject realized that any improvement to that already lean system would merely be incremental. So instead, the “clever little bag” combines the two packaging components of any shoe sale–the bag and the box–with high-tech ingenuity.

The bag tightly wraps an interior cardboard scaffolding–giving it shape and reducing cardboard use by 65%. Moreover, without that shiny box exterior, there’s no laminated cardboard (which interferes with recycling). There’s no tissue paper inside. And there’s no throw-away plastic bag. The bag itself is made of recycled PET, and it’s non-woven–woven fibers increase density and materials use–and stitched with heat, so that it’s less manufacturing intensive.

The impact: Puma estimates that the bag will slash water, energy, and fuel consumption during manufacturing alone by 60%–in one year, that comes to a savings of 8,500 tons of paper, 20 million mega joules of electricity, 264,000 gallons of fuel, and 264 gallons of water. Ditching the plastic bags will save 275 tons of plastic, and the lighter shipping weight will save another 132,000 gallons of diesel.

Full Story: Reboot: Puma and Yves Béhar Spend Three Years Designing Super-Green Shoebox