If you placed an online order for a KOR hydration vessel recently, you might notice a new look with our shipper box. We finally ditched our 2008 box for a fresh look — and a new perspective.

Previously, our shipper boxes merely contained our logos and contact information. Once given the opportunity to redesign it, we wondered, “How can we make this better?” Packaging is as much branding as it is an experience and a vessel of communication. As a company that encourages sustainable lifestyles, our usage of trees was especially an important consideration. So we researched initiatives and practices with shipper boxes by other companies and came across A Box Life.

A Box Life is a program sponsored by Columbia Sportswear that is “designed to keep cardboard boxes in use longer, reduce the impacts of shipping products, and encourage people to engage around the concept of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in a personal way.” Each shipper box sent out from the warehouse bears a sticker with a QR code so you could track its life as it goes from one person to another (kind of like Where’s George?, the dollar bill tracking site).

Noting that our boxes were labeled with, “Please recycle me!” we realized that we could do more to prevent waste from ending up in landfills. Now on our new boxes, they say, “Reuse me first, then recycle.” When you use a box multiple times, it helps slow the production of new boxes, reduce consumption of water (used in the production process) and of course, save trees. We hope you will help extend your box’s life by reusing it — to make it more fun, just scan the QR code and see where it goes. It may be a small step in saving trees, but there’s always something more you can do. It only matters that you’re on your way.