Lighter by Design: Why Smaller Awards Can Make a Bigger Impact
Updated in 2025. This post highlights how smaller, lighter award designs can help reduce material use, cut shipping emissions, and keep your recognition program planet-friendly.
In a world of individual fulfillment and global shipping, award packaging and delivery are no small consideration. Over the past few years, we’ve drop shipped thousands of awards directly to honorees’ homes and offices — and with that shift came an opportunity to rethink our products from the inside out.
One of the simplest — and most effective — ways to reduce environmental impact is through source reduction: designing products to use less material, create less waste, and weigh less. While our awards have always been designed to minimize environmental impact, we’ve taken this further by creating smaller, lighter versions of customer favorites — making them more affordable to ship, easier to handle, and gentler on the planet.
What We've Lightened (So Far)
- Mini Bud Vase: Working with our glass artist Neil Duman, we introduced a smaller version of our classic Bud Vase — about two-thirds the size and weight of the original.
- Mini Plaques: We created 6×8 inch versions of our popular Bamboo and Recycled Plaques — roughly 60% the size (and weight) of our standard 8×10 plaques.
- Flexible Sizing Categories: On our website, you can now browse awards by size — making it easy to find smaller, lighter options across categories.
Less Can Still Be Meaningful
If you’re looking to reduce your environmental footprint or work within a tighter budget, you don’t have to sacrifice design. We’re always happy to scale down or adapt your existing artwork at no additional charge. A smaller award can still make a strong statement — and in many cases, it makes a better one.
We’ll continue looking for opportunities to reduce weight, volume, and material use across our product lines. If you’re looking for ways to “lighten up,” we’re here to help.
Check out our awards that are lighter by design.