Gift Set Helps Reduce the Amount of "Tết Trash"

The Lunar New Year is the most important celebration in Vietnamese culture. Tết, short for Tết Nguyên Đán, is a holiday when people celebrate the arrival of spring based on the Vietnamese calendar. Amongst the traditions that people practice during these festivities are family reunions, visiting friends, or cooking special dishes. However, there’s one more practice that people use to express their sincerity and best wishes to the loved ones: gift-giving.

Sadly, when they are not collected properly, these gifts are a potential cause for fueling environmental pollution. This made the team at ECH Creative Company implement “Tết Lòng Vòng,” giving the presents people give to each other during this time of the year an eco-friendly meaning.

The inspiration from this packaging stands in some words Vietnamese people say often: “Lòng vòng lại tới Tết,” which translates to “In the bustle of daily life, Tết comes in the blink of an eye.” Yet, the meaning of “Lòng vòng” can also be interpreted as “in circles” and is used to express the action of making a circuit of something. Being part of the Quà Tết Việt project series, the Tết Lòng Vòng gift set is built on the Lòng Vòng concept, meaning that the resulted boxes are designed to keep the gifts inside safe and also be friendly with nature, as they can be recycled.

The content of the big red box hides eight carefully-selected treats, each meticulously packed in their own jar, through which the creatives hope to spread happiness and peace to every home. Yet, this box here piques one’s curiosity as the surprise stands not only in the snacks but also in the small details “planted” along the joyful process of opening a present.

To enhance the user experience and interaction, the red boxes work as a canvas for the ones who offer the products as gifts, allowing them to customize the packaging as they wish, thanks to the stickers implemented by the agency. Inside the big box, four blue packaging blocks with cut-out symbols on their surface can be found.

Each protects two jars but that’s not their only “job.” When empty, these blocks can be reused as one wishes, the agency’s suggestions being as plant pots or as lanterns. But feel free to use your imagination and find another purpose for them.

The gift boxes are a solution to an environmental issue as they can be kept for a longer period of time. To bring the packaging to life, the creatives used 100% recycled carton papers and Fedrigoni imaginative papers certified by FSC-C121289 as main materials for the boxes.

“Tết Lòng Vòng was born as a 2021 Spring project. We hope that we can join forces with the community with the immediate aim of reducing the amount of ‘Tết Trash’ each time Spring arrives,” say the people behind the idea.

Tết Lòng Vòng expresses a familiar feeling. Yet, it is “also strangely different at the same time,” continues the agency. While the gift set features the classic colors of the Lunar New Year, the difference is described by the fact that it doesn’t reveal a typical New Year spirit. “We have used the correlation between the darkness and light, to express doubt together with the hope of a new cycle of growth in 2021,” concludes ECH Creative, as these were some of the emotions that influenced us throughout 2020.