Given the current battle against the rapidly accelerating pace of climate change, it is important that Sustainability is cognized as a significant pillar in all business models. Consumerism has attained a new broad definitional understanding in this evolved market space. While the fulfillment of the individual’s needs and demands is still paramount, communitarian and planetary concerns have also attained seminal significance.

Companies that are currently operating in this changed landscape have adopted several policy changes to meet the demands of this new age consumerist perspective. From ethical trade practices, fair wage norms to waste reduction and recycling, they have had to remold their approach in order to remain abreast with the changing times. AR tech tools have served an important purpose in this area. Companies are using AR tools to educate, engage, and connect with their audiences for not just sales augmentation but also for meeting the new demands of sustainability.

Sustainability as the Need of the Hour

Today, consumers are vocalizing their demand for sustainable practices more than ever before. Their strong approval for the more environmentally and socially conscious brands is clearly evident within the contemporary market space. In such a scenario, augmented reality tools offer a variegated list of solutions to help boost the sustainability ratio of a brand. Some of these essential ways have been listed below:

• Live AR Events

With solutions like Live AR Events, companies can avoid wasteful expenses that expend our reserves of the already scarce resources. Unnecessary transportation costs, excess printing material, and the miscellaneous waste production associated with any in-person event can be effectively avoided when brands opt for such live AR-enabled events.

• Connected Packaging

One of the most salient boons of using AR tech is with regard to its contribution in the field of connected Packaging. Connected packing is a double edged weapon as it allows brands to create immersive and engaging experiences for customers wherein they can simply scan QR codes on their packages to enter encapsulating journeys. It also contributes towards making product packaging designs more sustainable by adhering to the three ‘R’s of sustainability:

• Reduce-

AR-enabled packaging helps a brand envision its packaging design beforehand in high-quality, 3D resolutions, thereby removing the need to physically print or produce packaging samples. Real-time photorealistic rendering capabilities of AR have helped enable this feat of reducing the need for numerous physical prototypes of a design idea.

• Reuse-

Reusability is an important component of reducing waste production. If true sustainability is to be achieved, products and designs must be ideated with this principle in mind. For instance, in the arena of connected packaging, AR-enabled trigger images or QR codes can be used to deliver a novel experience to consumers. Brands can simply update or holistically change the information delivered by the AR tools. This approach provides a virtually waste-free way of providing customers with unlimited experiences with a single tool.

• Recycle-

Although recycling as an important brand strategy has been in-vogue for a while, sometimes consumers can be confused about how to exactly recycle a product. AR tools help guide customers visually as to the entire process of recycling. They can help customers access a large warehouse of information about how to adequately recycle the product or its packaging. Moreover, to boost recycling further, brands can offer customers AR treats or rewards- like a fun face filter or an AR mini game- for successfully recycling their packaging.

• A Step Towards Social Sustainability

It is important to understand that sustainability is not solely connected to the environment. This implies that consumers are equally conscious about social sustainability parameters of the brands they follow. AR tech helps make the ‘behind the scenes’ of an enterprise visible to customers. It helps connect the consumers and workers of a brand. For instance, Chiquita (one of the most well-known producers of banana in the world) used AR tech to connect their customers to their farmers, they showed their clients how their product travels from farm to table, recognizing the hard work of its workers.

Such steps help build social sustainability as they show that companies are not solely chasing profit margins but are equally concerned about the well-being of their contributing workers. By focusing on the quality of life of its workers, brands show how consumers affect hundreds by virtue of their single purchase, not to mention that this also contributes towards the simultaneous development of the community.

AR-tech can also be used by most geographically dispersed teams, thereby reducing the need for travel. This contributes to the sustainability index of a brand by reducing the carbon footprint of the venture by minimizing its travel needs. The beauty and ingenuity of AR tools lies in their ability to minimize a brand’s waste generation ratio. By trans-locating most operations on the virtual platforms, such tech tools help boost both the environmental and social sustainability of firms. When companies embrace such novel tech tools they contribute towards safeguarding the scarce resources of our planet earth while simultaneously helping the development of communities across the world.

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