Talvez nem todos saibam mas a Vitacress, um dos líderes europeus na produção de saladas e vegetais pré-embalados, é propriedade de uma empresa portuguesa, o grupo RAR. Para complementar a linha de saladas presentam agora uma linha de temperos gourmet. Sabores agridoces combinam vinagre de elevada qualidade com gengibre, figos, mel ou manga. Há seis variedades disponíveis: Mel, limão e algas; Figo e canela; Maçã e mel; Gengibre; Frutos vermelhos; e Manga… A provar…
Os últimos meses foram muito à volta de conceitos e por isso tentarei redimir-me agora apresentando alguns produtos que me têm interessado nos últimos tempos.Naturalmente os primeiros vêm ainda no seguimento da época que vivemos. Começo por esta ideia da Gallo que vai de encontro a algumas tendências de consumo (gastronomia gourmet, azeite como produto saudável e natural…) e está bem conseguido na sua simplicidade e na embalagem…
Vocês já sabem o quanto eu prezo a Silvex e a sua capacidade inovadora. E não é só os sacos de gelo picado para caipirinhas. Os produtos deles, apesar da concorrência internacional e de se dirigirem a uma àrea de desenvolvimento não muito fácil, são de uma forma geral muito interessantes. Depois dos sacos de plástico biodegradáveis acabam de lançar uma película aderente também biodegradável e produzida a partir de matérias primas renováveis…
Gostaria de terminar este que foi o Ano Europeu de Luta Contra a Pobreza e a Exclusão Social apresentando um dos projectos desenvolvidos este ano pelos alunos de Desenvolvimento de Produtos Químicos que melhor traduz o que procuramos fazer em relação a este tema, mostrando que o desenvolvimento de novos produtos pode ser uma ferramenta de inclusão social e não apenas uma forma de alimentar a máquina da sociedade do supérfulo e do desperdício. O Ecobertor é um projecto que visou o desenvolvimento de um cobertor/mochila impermeável, feito a partir de PET reciclado, para distribuição por ONGs a sem-abrigo… Não vou entrar em mais detalhes… A ideia é preciosa e mereceria ser levada mais longe… Deixo as imagens falar por si… As últimas mostram a utilização de um protótipo…
Um dos melhores projectos de DPQ deste ano baseava-se no uso de garrafas de PET para a produção de cobertores para distribuição junto de sem-abrigo. Isto levou-me a prestar mais atenção a este material cheio de potencialidades e subexplorado que é o PET e a descobrir o Polli-Brick. Este é um conceito de um novo material de construção desenvolvido pela MINIWIZ (vejam também os outros produtos da MINIWIZ) que recicla garrafas de PET refazendo-as numa nova forma que permite a construcção de paredes e de edifícios com este material. A imagem abaixo permite compreender melhor o conceito. Mais detalhes clicando na imagem ou aqui.
A EcoARK , um pavilhão na 2010 Taipei International Flora Exposition foi construido neste material reciclando 1,5 milhões de garrafas de PET.
Esta é uma boa altura para vos contar a história dos gatos gordos… Parece que, tal como os humanos, outros mamíferos que vivem junto a nós estão também a engordar e a sofrer uma epidemia, apesar de tudo menos severa do que a nossa, de obesidade… O mais interessante é que as razões deste aumento de peso colectivpo continuam a escapar aos investigadores… Vá se lá saber porquê… Se quiserem mais detalhes é só ler a noticia original abaixo…
Nov 25th 2010
IN THEIR attempts to explain the global epidemic of obesity, researchers have often taken to fingering culprits beyond people’s direct control. It is now believed that increased levels of stress, climate change and even artificial light at night may contribute to expanding waistlines. However, if such factors affect humans, they ought, in principle, to have similarly nefarious effects on other creatures. This should hold especially true for species that are physiologically similar to people and live in proximity to them. Pet owners have long fretted that this may, indeed, be happening.
Of course, anecdotal evidence carries little weight, so a group of researchers led by Yann Klimentidis, of the University of Alabama, decided to check whether animal obesity rates do in fact mirror the worrying trend among people. They published their findings this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
Dr Klimentidis and his team set about their task by scouring online repositories of scientific papers, contacting fellow researchers and even petitioning pet-food companies for data on changes in animals’ bodyweights over the decades. They limited their search to mammals, whose bodies work much like humans’ do—and, specifically, to those mammals living with or around people in the rich world.
The trawl threw up information on more than 20,000 animals from 24 distinct populations covering eight species. These included cats, dogs, mice, rats and several types of monkey. Some were bred in highly controlled research environments. Others lived in people’s homes or in the wild. None had their food intake artificially limited or, as with livestock, ramped up.
For each population, Dr Klimentidis looked at the animals’ weight at an age corresponding to 35 human years. Middle adulthood was chosen to ensure the data were not fudged by the effects of either early development or old-age withering. Any animals that died within a year of this mid-life physical were also excluded.
He then proceeded to calculate each population’s average weight, as well as its obesity rate, for every decade of available data. The obesity rates were based on a bespoke indicator akin to the body-mass index that is used to gauge (roughly) whether a person is too rotund. This ploy permitted comparison between species in which weights have different meanings. (Nutritionists employ similar tricks to establish what is a healthy body-mass index for children in different age groups.)
Subsequent number-crunching revealed a statistically significant increase in bodyweight in 11 of the 24 populations. The weights of the other 13 rose too, though not to an extent that was significant for any of the individual groups. Nevertheless, the fact that all of these insignificant changes were upward was, itself, statistically significant. Moreover, the obesity-rate indices followed a similar pattern. Dr Klimentidis reckons the odds of his data having come about by chance are about one in 10m for the weight gain and three in 1m for the rise in obesity.
Most intriguingly, perhaps, the laboratory animals showed more pronounced gains than those living outside a lab. This is strange because the sorts of lab animals the researchers looked at tend to be given lots of food and left to nibble at leisure. This practice has not changed for decades. That the animals put on weight nonetheless suggests the phenomenon cannot be caused solely by pet owners appeasing their Garfields, or feral rats rummaging through refuse composed of ever larger quantities of calorie-rich processed food. Dr Klimentidis is unable to pinpoint any single mechanism that could account for his results. But this does not stop his data from lending exculpatory explanations for fat tummies more credence.
Se a ética é uma tendência com cada vez maior peso não poderia deixar de se estender a um produto que é na sua essência uma materialização desse conceito, mesmo quando apenas virtual. Partilho convosco o cartão de boas festas da UNICER que podem encontrar aqui (enquanto funcionar…).
Ainda sobre tendências e a forma como a crise está a afectar os hábitos dos consumidores… Há dias o Philip Kotler dizia em Aveiro que podemos estar a viver uma bolha das marcas (brand bubble). O conceito é interessante e preocupante quando passamos tanto tempo a insistir no valor das marcas… Estaremos a chegar à era das marcas brancas?… Talvez não, mas que elas vão aumentar de importãncia não creio que haja dúvidas… Com consequências que os produtors não devem ignorar… Fica o artigo da Economist que me motivou este post…
Basket cases
Oct 13th 2010, 20:38 by The Economist online
“WE WON’T let up,” insisted Bob McDonald, the boss of Procter & Gamble (P&G) at the annual shareholder meeting of the world’s biggest consumer-goods company on October 12th. He promised that P&G was still on track to have 5 billion customers by 2015. But it is a struggle for the maker of Pampers nappies and Fairy washing-up liquid. “Many of the economies in which we operate are still recovering from recession,” Mr McDonald admits.
P&G and its archrival Unilever, another global consumer-goods firm, had a grim time last year: profits plummeted. This year has been only slightly better. Economies are still ailing, and the cost of raw materials is climbing.
But there is something else happening. Basic consumer goods were long assumed to be more or less recession-proof. Shoppers may not be able to afford Dior dresses or Cartier watches, went the argument, but they still need loo paper and detergent. Yet people are finding ways to save money even on daily necessities.
They are shopping less and with more purpose. Some people deliberately pick up a basket rather than collect a trolley in supermarkets, to prevent themselves from buying too much. Some buy smaller packets, which are cheaper, or huge ones, which are better value. Many make do without air fresheners, hair conditioner and other fripperies once deemed essential. Many scour the internet for special deals. According to a report by PwC, a consultancy, 93% of shoppers say they have changed their behaviour as a result of the economic downturn.
Many have traded down from name-brand to store-brand products. Alarmingly for, say, Kellogg’s or Heinz, many have discovered that Tesco’s cornflakes and Wal-Mart’s baked beans taste no worse. A survey of 2,500 American households by Consumer Edge Research found that supermarkets’ own labels have become increasingly popular, especially for staples such as milk, peanut butter, bottled water and cooking oil. Trading down is most common among households with an income of more than $100,000 a year. (Poorer people bought fewer posh brands in the first place.) Store-brand goods are especially popular in Spain, the Netherlands and Germany.
Consumers are also trading down from one name-brand to another: for example, from Lindt chocolates to Cadbury’s. Some 18% of packaged-goods buyers switched from a premium brand to a cheaper one during the recession, according to McKinsey, another consultancy. Most said they found that the pricier brand “was not worth the money”.
Ebbing tide
Terrified consumer-goods firms have cut costs and slashed prices. P&G launched a less expensive “basic” version of its Tide brand of washing powder, but then withdrew it because it was too popular. Many firms are pushing “three for the price of two” deals and the like. Some see opportunities amid the gloom. As people eat out less, Kraft Foods, an American firm, sells more Macaroni & Cheese and other ready-made meals. As hedonists cut back on spas and beauty salons, P&G sells more beauty products that can be applied at home.
Companies with a strong presence in emerging economies have the rosiest prospects. Shoppers in China and Brazil are trading up to foreign brands, making up for some of the new frugality in the West. Mr McDonald tries to sound cheery. In 173 years, P&G has survived many recessions. No doubt, but what if this one teaches consumers that supermarket brands are just as good and, when the economy recovers, they spend their extra cash on holidays or college fees instead?”
Mais um artigo da Economist de 16/10 muito interessante. A crise não criou este mercado mas ele está a florescer com ela. Boa parte dos consumidores estão a valorizar cada vez menos a posse de um bem em deterimento do usufruto que podem ter desse mesmo bem que podem conseguir de formas alternativas. Falar da desmaterizalização das nossas videotecas, discotecas e, por este caminho, bibliotecas é já um cliché… A questão agora é ate onde podemos ir com carros, roupas, brinquedos etc etc etc… Deixo abaixo o artigo mas antes disso uma informação sobre uma empresa portuguesa, a Renting Point, que descobri este fim de semana e que está já a rentabilizar esta tendência entre nós…
Oct 14th 2010
WHY buy when you can rent? This simple question is the foundation stone of a growing number of businesses. Why buy a car (and pay for parking) when you can rent one whenever you need to load up at IKEA? Why buy a bike (and risk having it stolen) when you can pick one up at a bike rack near your home and drop it off at another rack near your office? Why buy a DVD when you can watch it and return it in a convenient envelope?
Renting is not a new business, of course. Hotel chains and car-hire firms have been around for ages, and the world’s oldest profession, one might argue, involves renting. But for most of the past 50 years renters have been conceding ground to owners. Laundromats have been closing down as people buy their own washing machines. Home ownership was, until the financial crisis, rising nearly everywhere. Rental markets grew ossified: hotels and car-hire firms barely changed their business models for decades. All this is now changing dramatically, however, thanks to technology, austerity and greenery.
The internet makes it easy to compare prices, which makes rental cars and hotel rooms cheaper. It also allows new ways of renting and sharing to thrive. For example, car-sharing is booming even as car sales languish. Zipcar, an American firm, has 400,000 members who pay an annual fee and can then rent cars by the hour. They log on to find out where the nearest Zipcar is parked, and return it to one of many scattered parking bays rather than a central location. Netflix, a film-rental firm, made $116m last year by making it easy to hire movies by mail. Governments are joining in: London is one of several cities that rent bikes to citizens who take the trouble to fill out a few forms.
Trendy folk are applauding. “Sharing is clean, crisp, urbane, postmodern,” says Mark Levine of the New York Times. “Owning is dull, selfish, timid, backward.” (“Crisp”? Never mind.) The sharing craze has spawned two new books: “What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption”, by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, and “The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing”, by Lisa Gansky. The first book is much the better of the two. But the second, written by an internet entrepreneur, contains some valuable practical advice.
People are renting things they never used to rent, such as clothes and toys. Bag Borrow or Steal, for example, applies the Netflix principle to posh handbags. The firm boasts that it allows women to avoid “the emotional and financial sacrifices” of “the endless search for the ‘right’ accessory.” Rent-That-Toy does the same for trikes for tikes. TechShop, in Menlo Park, California, rents tinkering space and equipment to amateur inventors.
Other pioneers of “collaborative consumption” have dispensed with inventories and act purely as brokers. Some help people sell their spare capacity in everything from parking spaces to energy. CouchSurfing connects people who have a spare sofa with travellers who wish to sleep on it, on the tacit understanding that the travellers will do the same for someone else in the network some day. There are 2.3m registered couchsurfers in 79,000 cities worldwide. Other groups have created barter economies. thredUP specialises in exchanging children’s clothes, but also has exchanges for everything from make-up to video games. Freecycle helps people give things away so that they do not end up in landfills: its website has 7.6m members.
The moguls who run Zipcar may have different motives from the greens who run Freecycle, but they share the same faith: that access often matters more than ownership, and that technology will make sharing more and more efficient. The internet has always been good at connecting buyers and sellers; GPS devices and social networks are enhancing its power. GPS devices can connect you to people around the corner who want to share rides. Social networks are helping to lower one of the biggest barriers to “collaborative consumption”—trust. Couchsurfers, for example, can see at a keystroke what others in the network think of the stranger who wants to borrow their couch. If he is dirty or creepy, they need not let him in.
People are growing impatient with “idle capacity” (ie, waste). The average American spends 18% of his income on running a car that is usually stationary. Half of American homes own an electric drill, but most people use it once and then forget it. If you are green or broke, as many people are these days, this seems wasteful. Besides, “consumer philandering” sounds fun. “Today’s a BMW day,” purrs Zipcar, “Or is it a Volvo day?”
Attitudes to conspicuous consumption are changing. Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term, argued that people like to display their status by owning lots of stuff. But many of today’s conspicuous consumers—particularly the young—achieve the same effect by virtual means. They boast about what they are doing (on Twitter), what they are reading (Shelfari), what they are interested in (Digg) and whom they know (Facebook). Collaborative consumption is an ideal signalling device for an economy based on electronic brands and ever-changing fashions.
There are obvious limitations to this new model. Few people, besides tramps and journalists, will want to wear recycled underpants. Returning Zipcars on time can be a hassle. But the sharing stampede is nevertheless gathering pace. Zipcar has imitators in more than a thousand cities. Every week sees the birth of a business describing itself as the Netflix of this or that. Collective consumption is also disrupting established business models based on built-in obsolescence. The internet may be synonymous with novelty, but by encouraging people to reuse the same objects rather than buy new ones, it may revive the old virtue of building products that last.”
PS Hoje de manhã descobri que a Rolls Royce aluga os motores dos aviões a algumas companhias de aviação… Creio que este exemplo mostra que não há limites (nem sequer no céu) para esta tendência…
Why swallow your vitamins when you can huff them? That’s the general thinking behind the world’s first breathable vitamin, called LeWhif Vitamin, which launched in the UK earlier this month and is expected to hit the US market this week.
The creation of Harvard biomedical engineer David Edwards, inventor of inhalable insulin, inhalable chocolate and inhalable coffee, LeWhif Vitamin is a lipstick-like delivery device that works a lot like a miniature pipe, only instead of inhaling smoke with each toke, you inhale a fine powder of healing supplements (a sort of anti-smoke) that dissolves in your mouth. By skipping the digestive system, which breaks down pills and diverts many of their active ingredients to the liver, LeWhif Vitamins claims to deliver more concentrated doses of nutrients into the bloodstream. Eight hits supplies 100 percent of the daily recommended amount of A, B1, B2, B3 and B5.
Whiffing takes practice, however. When I tried my first hit of inhalable chocolate a few weeks ago with Edwards, I nearly choked to death. Edwards quickly corrected my technique. “It’s just a gentle breath, like this,” he said, as he took a quick hit off his coffee pipe. Inhale too hard and the particles can fly into the back of your throat. Once I got the technique down, the experience was surprisingly pleasant, and almost delicious, although my illicit-seeming huffs drew suspicious glances from strangers. I’ve yet to sample the vitamins, but they work the same way, and come in three tea flavors—Antioxidant Green Tea, Age Smart Wine Tea (with resveratrol) and Hibiscus Tea.
Inhalable vitamins are an innovative alternative to those one-a-day horse pills that leave your urine neon, but huffing supplements is insanely pricey: In England, a 3-day supply costs £4.99 (or about $8; no word yet on US pricing). That said, the money goes to a worthy cause, as it funds Edwards’ novel idea laboratory, called ArtScience Labs, which helps student inventors bring daring innovations, a la huffable supplements, to market.
