RIT Students Design Award-winning Sugar Container

Who would’ve thought it would be a good idea to package sugar in a milk carton?

Rochester Institute of Technology students Allison Bebee and Katie Palermo did.

They were right. And they have a first place finish in the 2006 Paperboard Packaging Alliance Student Design Challenge to prove it.

Except, in the packaging world, it’s not called a milk carton. It’s called a gable top package. But regardless of what you’d like to call the package, the judges called it effective, commenting: “The package was very well designed. Incorporating the logo into the graphics and giving it a functional use was very impressive. We liked the use of a gable top package as a dispenser for sugar.”

The competition challenged students to improve paperboard packaging in the baking goods category. Bebee and Palermo opted to design a new package for sugar.

“A big problem with sugar is that it comes in those flimsy paper packages,” Bebee says. “They are really difficult to pour from and nobody knows what to do with it after it’s opened. Most people end up buying Tupperware containers to store it in.”

Their design eliminates both problems. There are both fine and gross pouring capabilities and, like a milk carton, it is easily resealed and stored.

RIT, home to one of only six packaging science degree programs in the nation, has won the competition in each of its two years of existence. Bebee is a fourth-year packaging science student in the College of Applied Science and Technology. Palermo studies graphic design in the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences.

For more information on the competition, and for a photo of Bebee and Palermo’s design, visit www.paperboardpackaging.org/outreach/index.html.