We gadget freaks obsess over gear, big and small: cameras, phones, notebooks, desktops, home theater speakers, HDTVs, and plenty more. But how often will we be aware of the technology surrounding our gear, the packing material that keeps it safe?

Whether organic or man-made, squishy or rigid, there’s a deliberate strategy to all types of packing material madness. Why use cardboard inserts other than polyurethane cushions? Why use those newfangled air pouches as opposed to traditional bubble wrap ? Which packing peanuts are fit for human consumption, and why are some colored green or pink? All of these questions and more shall be answered on here pages. Behold! We submit 36 stuff you (probably) didn’t find out about packing material.

Styrofoam

Since its humble beginnings as a lab experiment inside the late 1830s, polystyrene-you’re more knowledgeable about its ” foamed” format, aka Styrofoam-has emerged to become probably the most world’s most effective man-made materials. And because of its form-fitting moldability, it’s a stunning good packaging medium to boot. Styrofoam isn’t great for our surroundings, nevertheless it will protect your gear on its journey during the currents and eddies of the global shipping infrastructure.

If you’re thinking that these molded Styrofoam pieces appear to be modern art, then you definitely haven’t seen the superb Styrofoam sculpture on michaelasalter.com .

Humble German Origins

According to legend, Styrofoam’s path to greatness began in 1839. That year a German apothecary named Eduard Simon accidentally discovered polystyrene when he distilled an oily muck from storax, the resin of the sweetgum tree. The substance thickened, and a primordial version of Styrofoam’s base material had formed.

Early Military Applications

Spearheaded by Hermann Staudinger’s Nobel Prize-winning research on the pliability of polymers, scientists at BASF were in a position to begin commercial manufacturing of polystyrene in 1930. By 1937, Dow Chemical jumped on board, and introduced this new material to the usa market under the emblem name Styrofoam. We will thank a Dow scientist named Ray McIntire for combining polystyrene with isobutylene, a highly flammable gas, with the intention to create the foamy version of polystyrene that we know and love today. McIntire’s goal was to create a flexible insulation material, but by 1942 the united states military began studying Styrofoam-which resists moisture and is very buoyant-for use in life rafts.

How Modern Styrofoam Is Created

You ever notice that Styrofoam has a ” grain” to it? That’s because molded Styrofoam is admittedly the aggregation of multiple small, foamed polystyrene beads. The beads commence relatively miniscule, but include a hydrocarbon expanding agent. When the beads are hit with steam, the agent grows the beads to about 40 times their original size. Then the beads are tossed in a mold, where they’re steam-heated again. Here they expand some more-and likewise fuse together to create the shape of the mildew’s negative space. Voila! You’ve got your Styrofoam cup. Or egg carton. Or the precision-molded packaging for whatever gadget you simply purchased.

Why Styrofoam Is a great Packing Material

As a packaging medium, Styrofoam can create strong, coddling, form-fitting shapes of wonderful lightness. In truth, that piece of Styrofoam that forms a sandwich around your LCD display or photo printer is ready 98 percent air. On the earth of shipping, extra weight means extra charges, so Styrofoam’s merger of strength and lightness has its attractions.

Styrofoam also does extremely well as a hand-me-down material. Large blocks of Styrofoam is also cut and reshaped to fit around different sized objects, and Styrofoam packing peanuts, which never really ” age” (have you ever heard anyone complain about receiving ” second-hand” peanuts?), can also be re-stuffed into any box with an item wanting protection. Styrofoam and its polystyrene stablemates won’t represent the cutting-edge of packing material science, but they get the job done. And they won’t cause any injury while you drop a palette of the stuff in your foot (though the wooden palette itself might hurt like a mother).

Styrofoam Drawbacks

Unfortunately, Styrofoam isn’t great for our surroundings. The substance could be recycled, but you might want to bring it to a particular variety of collection site. The most important downside, however, is that Styrofoam isn’t bio-degradable-you may’t just toss it into landfill and expect it to quickly decay. Even worse, as a result of its lightness, Styrofoam pieces can blow away when they reach the dump. All it takes is a lightweight wind.

” We flat out do not sell Styrofoam, and never will,” says Dennis Salazar, President and Co-Founder of Salazar Packaging.  ” We might if they can come out with a variation that was eco-friendly, but I actually don’t see that taking place.”

Styrofoam By Any Other Name

If for some reason you’re not into brand name products, you’ll be able to call Styrofoam by its generic trade name: expanded polystyrene plastic, or EPS. Also do not forget that Styrofoam is simply what Dow Chemical calls this material. Owens Corning has its own version of EPS. It’s trademarked as PINK, and is marketed for construction insulation by none aside from the Pink Panther.

Protective Foam

Protective foam-you possibly can understand it better as polyurethane or polyethylene. Don’t feel bad once you’ve ever confused these two substances for each other, or perhaps gotten them mixed up with Styrofoam. All three materials can look, feel and even smell a dead ringer for one another. Nonetheless, whenever you really know your polys, you’ll know that urethane, ethylene and styrene are quite different animals on both an overtly physical and molecular level.

Left: Polyurethane is soft and squishy. Right: Polyethylene is rigid and difficult.

Birth Story: Those Industrious Germans Are Back At It!

The story of protective foam begins with polyurethane in 1937, nearly a hundred years after Eduard Simon discovered the base material to make Styrofoam. This time around, another German scientist, Otto Bayer, was trying to create a really flexible polymer. Bayer mixed liquid polyether with polyester diols, and-boom!-polyurethane was born. Unfortunately, World War II disrupted further research, and polyurethane foam wouldn’t become commercially available at reasonable prices until the late 1950s.

Why Polyurethane Excels as a Packing Material

Polyurethane foam is a reasonable, flexible material that may be molded and trimmed into innumerable sizes and styles to house a variety of packing tasks. It’s thinly sliced for use as a wrap, and molded or cut into form-fitting inserts like the gray ones you notice above. Far softer than polyethylene (which we’ll get to soon), polyurethane may also be laminated onto other materials like pressure-sensitive adhesives. And let’s not limit ourselves to the arena of packing and product protection. Likelihood is good that you just’ve got polyurethane panels lining your walls for insulation, or stuffed to your car seats for padding. And, obviously, we wouldn’t have modern Nerf warfare if Parker Brothers didn’t find success with the polyurethane Nerf ball in 1970.

Polyurethane Drawbacks

While polyurethane excels in flexibility and squishiness, it stands to suffer in protective power, especially when put next to polyethylene. Both materials are foams, but polyurethane is simply too spongy for some packing situations. Whether you bend it, ball it up, and or maybe use it to soak up water, polyurethane shifts back to its original shape. Polyethylene, nonetheless, feels and performs rather more like Styrofoam. It’s quite rigid and may’t be bent or shaped without snapping into pieces. The softer, spongier protection of polyurethane could theoretically absorb more impact, but the stiff, armored shell of polyethylene could potentially help some products survive a longer drop.

Why Polyethylene Sometimes Trumps Polyurethane

Polyethylene differs from polyurethane on a molecular level-it’s a plastic-based foam that achieves extreme rigidity due to a fancy, impenetrable cellular structure. It’s impossible for even water vapor to pass during the hardened material (in total contrast to polyurethane, which will actually absorb liquid). As such, polyethylene boasts a hardy resistance to wreck from chemicals, solvents, and-most importantly, at the very least on the planet of shipping-friction and collision.

Polyethylene Problemos

Polyethylene seriously is not without its faults. First, it isn’t impervious to ultraviolet light, so exposure to sunlight may cause warping and degradation. Second, thanks to polyethylene’s rigidity, extremely fragile, brittle items are better left to the softer polyurethane foams. Indeed, while polyethylene offers a thicker, harder coat of armor, as a way to speak, the impact of a fragile item against a hardened polyethylene shell can create enough force to shatter delicate pieces. For that reason, on the earth of packaging, polyethylene is synonymous with protecting larger, bulkier items, while soft polyurethane is best fitted to smaller, more fragile items.

The Two Polys: Not Earth Friendly

Like Styrofoam, neither of our foamy friends are biodegradable, so leaving them to dissolve au natural at the dump won’t work. And while polyethylene can actually be recycled (if entrusted to the best hands), polyurethane, sadly, cannot. While you’d want to safely recycle your polyethylene refuse, bring it to an area recycler that has the capacity to address the substance. Your polyethylene can be fed into a big, heated barrel that melts the fabric into a soft, pliable foam that may be reshaped via a new mold cavity. Once a new shape has been cast, it needs only to calm down to garner its rigid, hardened shell again. Obviously, this can be not something so that you can do yourself at home. So put down that butane torch, Chester.

Polythene Pam

Folks within the United Kingdom shorten the word polyethylene to ” polythene.” So when John Lennon sang about an obnoxious fan named ” Polythene Pam,” dressed in her ” polythene bag,” he was really commenting on her inappropriate choice of packing material.

Packing Peanuts

Nearly 30 years after introducing Styrofoam, the Dow Chemical Company threw the dice on a daring innovation. What if, someone posited, we took our beloved miracle substance, and split it into a plethora of tiny pieces for the unique protection and damage-absorption properties that ” loose fill” particles provide? It might be like a tremendous hunk of Styrofoam gave birth to millions of intelligent, self-adjusting babies! That fateful year was 1965. Someone greenlit this bold escapade, and packing peanuts were born.

Why Peanuts Form an impressive Filling

Whether they’re produced from polystyrene or probably the most biodegradable, more eco-friendly materials trendy today, packing peanuts have the uncanny ability to ” loose fill pack” when added to an enclosed box. In effect, when peanuts are used in bulk, they act as a self-correcting packing material that may shift and tumble to fill air gaps. That’s quite an advantage in case your hardware item has a group of corners or easily damaged edges. While Styrofoam panels can’t shift or move throughout the confines of a shipping container, peanuts be capable to alter their aggregate arrangement and density that allows you to take on the numerous shapes needed to fill loose spaces.

” They’re meant to fill your entire nooks and crannies,” said Jason Archambault of Fastpack, a Florida-based packaging company. ” In case you really pack them tight enough, they ought to don’t have any problem holding your product in place, though I’d still wrap the product in a few sheets of bubble wrap to be safe.”

When Good Peanuts Go Bad

The ” adjust as needed” quality of peanuts garners mixed reactions among packaging aficionados. Dissenters point out that while peanuts can conveniently alter their arrangement throughout the confines of a box, simply not having enough peanuts could cause a product to migrate to 1 side of a container-resulting in a damaged piece of substances should, heaven forbid, the inevitable occur.

This could be true, but running into a shortage of packing peanuts shouldn’t be much of an issue. Peanuts don’t age, so which you can re-use accumulated peanuts, stuffing them into any sufficiently sized box, with your gadget that’s short of protection. Also take into accout that when you are with simply way too many peanuts after unpacking your recently purchased display, espresso machine, Tesla coil or what have you, the fakey legumes may be taken to any local packaging company (Fed EX, UPS, MailBoxes Etc etc) for re-use in other shipping endeavors.

Yes, These Peanuts Are Edible

Polystyrene isn’t good for our surroundings, and Polystyrene peanuts aren’t any different. Luckily, many modern packing peanuts are made up of cornstarch, that is biodegradable and eco-friendly. Additionally, packing peanuts produced from corn starch don’t have any electrostatic charge, making them an amazing alternative for safe-guarding electronics in transit. The cornstarch peanuts are also non-toxic, addressing many pet owners’ fears of poisoning their beloved pooches. Nonetheless, these types of benefits aside, dissenters point out that public knowledge of recyclable peanuts is restricted.

” Everyone is always talking about cornstarch peanuts and biodegradable peanuts,” said Salazar. ” Peanuts are like the holiday fruitcake of the packaging world-you get them and immediately try and be able to do away with them. The indisputable fact that they’re green doesn’t change the indisputable fact that they’re incredibly messy and inconvenient. I don’t know anyone who opens a box and says, ‘Hey, it’s packed with peanuts! Great!’.”

Peanut Disposal-Just Add Water (Sometimes)

Starch-based packing peanuts will likely be dissolved with somewhat bit of water-so you should literally ” hose away” any excess peanuts to your own backyard. However, attempting to dissolve Polystyrene peanuts (or Polystyrene of any kind) could prove hazardous in your health. The fabric is just soluble in acetone (the active ingredient in nail polish) and the resulting fumes emitted from performing this sort of task might possibly be toxic. Even fatal.

The Packing Peanut Cubicle Prank

Imagine you’re the unsuspecting dude inside the photo below. It’s your last day at work, and your send-off encompasses a cubicle stuffed to the brim with packing peanuts. ” It’s not an affordable prank, but it surely’s a fair one,” says Jason Archambault of Fastpack. ” I’ve had people call me to deliver ten bags of peanuts, simply to pull this prank.”

Photo credit: Noah Jacobs

While the cubicle stunt is impressive, the packing peanut office prank is much tougher to tug off, though the pay-off-seeing some poor schmuck open his office door only to be buried in an avalanche of peanuts-is easily well worth the trouble. It’s also a pricey prank, but Archambault relays a secret: Most of the people build false walls out of cardboard to scale back the cubic-feet of airspace in the office to be filled.

Oh, and don’t worry about calling your local peanut vendor and sharing exactly why you would like the peanuts. ” Customers tell us they’re doing this at all times,” says Archambault. ” And we sell them the peanuts.”

Air Protection

You can’t discuss the origin of Bubble Wrap-or any air-based protection, for that matter-without first mentioning Sealed Air, perhaps the biggest player within the rough-and-tumble, hard-knock world of product packaging.

How Bubble Wrap Was Invented: The IBM Connection

The Sealed Air story arch begins in 1951 when two engineers, Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes, bonded together two plastic shower curtains in a zany try to develop a new kind of wallpaper. Air became trapped in pockets between the sheets, and thus begat wacky idea number two: greenhouse insulation. Is smart, right? The sealed air pockets could theoretically be used as heat traps.

But, alas, no person was interested.

By 1960, messers Fielding and Chavannes had officially launched Sealed Air Corporation, however it wasn’t until a number of years later that they found a willing evangelist for the madness they’d concocted. The guy’s name was Frederick Bowers. IBM was launching the IBM 1401, the realm’s first commercially manufactured business computer, and needed the way to protect all those delicate computer components whilst the machines were in transit. IBM knew Bowers; Bowers knew Sealed Air.

Suddenly, the engineers’ previously fruitless endeavor had a purpose. Suddenly, the bubble wrap that fascinates us today was born.

How Modern Bubble Wrap Is Made

Modern bubble wrap manufacturing involves complex machinery, a relatively small amount of polyethylene, and plenty and many plastic sheets. Pea-sized polyethylene pellets are fed into an extruder-a protracted, rotating cylinder that’s heated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The resin made out of this process is then melted into a liquid, and formed into flat sheets of plastic. One layer of plastic sheeting is wrapped around a rotating drum whose surface is stuffed with holes. Via a nifty suction process, the sheet is sucked into the holes-creating air pockets-and then another sheet of plastic is laid on top. The two polyethylene surfaces bond to each other, trapping air within the pockets.

And then, some many months later, some dude in an office park annoys his co-workers by popping the air bubbles at one of the most annoying moment possible.

Why Use Bubble Wrap Within the First Place?

Bubble wrap offers some distinct advantages over other materials used to safeguard our precious commodities. ” I’d say that 99.5 percent of folks would favor to opt for bubble wrap,” says Jason Archambault of FastPack. ” It’s cheaper than foam, and straightforward to work with. Air bubbles can absorb shock better than a solid piece of anything. Any board-Styrofoam, cardboard-will generally transfer vibrations and shocks.

” Does Bubble Size Matter?

As basically anyone who’s ever opened a box already knows, bubble wrap comes in various sizes. So which size bubble gauge is acceptable in your packing project? Luckily, the formula that can assist you pick a bubble size (and in addition a bubble count) is relatively simple: The more air in any given bubble, the more protection it offers. Respecting this straightforward rule brings us to a staggeringly simple conclusion: The larger the thing-and thus the greater potential collision impact in the event that your item is dropped from the back of a truck-the larger the bubble you’ll ought to protect it. Wrist watches? They get wrapped in 6/16th-inch baby bubbles. Audio speakers? Those deserve the glory of massive-daddy bubbles, say, 1 and 1/4-inch wide.

Air Pillows: a trendy Innovation

If a bubble gauge larger than that’s available, it certainly wasn’t manifest inside the Maximum Tech Lab at the time of this writing. But air pillows, which might be found protecting among the larger components shipped all over the world, are yet another story. Appears like the bigger your air chamber, the fancier it needs to be named. You’ve got your AirPouch. You’ve got your AirSpeed. And Sealed Air makes a variety of pillows-you’ve probably already seen its FillTeck and Fill-Air bags in action.

Air pillows are inflated ” on demand,” saving warehouse space because of this. The EarthAware green pillows in this photo are fully bio-degradable.

These larger air receptacles (some of them up to eight inches long) provide a better damage-absorption rate. And because the pillows are full of air ” on demand,” right on the warehouse floor, their raw material take in less warehouse space (because what’s the opposite-setting aside hundreds of square feet of floor space for pre-filled bubble wrap?).

Why Bubble Wrap is an ” Uncontrolled Packaging Approach”

On the drawback, filled air pillows and bubble wrap take in a number of room inside a box, especially compared to form-fitting Styrofoam and cardboard. From a manufacturing standpoint, this translates into larger packaging dimensions-in addition as higher costs because fewer units might be delivered in a single shipment. Oliver Campbell, Dell’s Senior Manager of world Packaging, says, ” We attempt to circumvent bubble wrap, because once we optimize a package for a notebook, we’d like it to be as small as possible. Bubble wrap is a far more uncontrolled packaging approach. When the packaging box is far too large, that drives up shipping costs, and in addition creates problems for patrons because they’ve more packaging to do away with.”

Bubble Wrap: Could It Save Your Life?

If you were buried alive with a diminishing air supply, but had a bounteous supply of bubble wrap with you, could you pop the air bubbles for more oxygen? The answer, technically, is yes. The oxygen inside the pouches might be used as breathable air. Not for long, though. You spot, every healthy breath you’re taking ends up in the exhalation of CO2, a poisonous gas. So however you had the entire bubble wrap on earth, you wouldn’t die from a scarcity of oxygen, you’d die from an overabundance of CO2 to your enclosed space. Our advice? Just try not to be buried alive.

Foam in Place

” Foam in place” : It’s a term that minces no words. You’ve got your foam, and it goes in a place. Simple. Nevertheless it’s also a devilishly effective strategy for taking a time-tested packing material-polyurethane foam-and guaranteeing it fills every nook and cranny between your delicate product and the cardboard box within which it’s packed.

Why Use Foam? Why Put it in a Place?

The key players within the foam in place game are IntelliPack and Instapak, the latter being the progeny of the ever-innovating Sealed Air Corporation. Both companies’ products can create a wonderfully form-fitting foam sandwich around the contours and edges of whatever gadget (or glass vase or Roman antiquity) you should ship. Bearing the eerie imprints of recognizable objects, foam in place pieces can look variety of creepy. But you know what? Take care of it. Foam in place provides excellent protection by completely filling void spaces with a known, effective cushioning agent. And because foam in place starts in a liquid form, its base materials soak up much less warehouse space than, say, packing peanuts. Instapak foam, to illustrate, can expand up to 280 times its liquid volume, drastically cutting storage and handling costs.

A Dynamic Chemical Duo

So how do get the liquid to expand into foam? It all involves a chemical reaction between two chemical agents: polymeric isocyanate and polyurethane resin. As soon as the two substances are mixed together, they change into a foam that continues to expand until the chemical sources are spent, or the expansion is stymied by opposing pressure. While researching this newsletter, we mostly considering Instapak (sorry, Intellipack), and we will be able to inform you that Sealed Air Corporation has various contraptions that will help you mix up your foamy mojo.

How Foam In Place Is, Umm, ” Made”

So how exactly do you pack your precious cargo in a foam-in-place sandwich? We’ll describe the process inside the context of using the Instapak 900 system. First you grab your box or carton, and line the bottom with a generous sheet of Instamate film-the piece you employ needs to be about double the dimensions of your box’s bottom. Now grab your foam dispenser gun, and press the trigger over the Instamate. The dispenser sucks the major chemical agents from two separate drums (coyly labeled Component A and Component B), mixes them in real time, and shoots the goop on to the film.

The liquid wastes no time expanding into a puffy piece of foam, so take your excess film and fold it over the foam to keep it all enclosed. Now nestle your product into the rapidly expanding cushion. It is going to sink into the Instapak as the foam creates a super form-fitting nest. To finish your packing escapade, repeat an analogous process with a chunk of Instamate sitting on top of your product. Now close and seal the head of your cardboard box. Congrats! Your cargo is now entombed in the course of a polyurethane ravioli.

Variations of a Foamy Concept

Sealed Air makes a daunting style of other Instapak equipment, and all rely upon catalyzing various formulations of Component A and Component B to create the expandable foam. As an illustration, Instapak FlowRite in the event that your formulation choice in case you’re trying to find ” extended rise, flowable foam-in-bag foam,” whereas GFlex QS is perfect for ” high-performance, high load-bearing foam with rapid de-mold capability.” Instapak machinery can cost up to $6,500, that’s some huge cash, even accounting for the undeniable fact that Instapak cuts down on warehouse space, and can be one of the most cost-efficient packing method for some companies ultimately.

Mixing Foam By Hand

Even regular folk can now work with Instapak within the variety of the short Room Temperature Quick Start Kit-essentially a box filled with pre-goopified Instamate bags that require no machinery whatsoever for inflation and use. To inflate your bag with foam, you press two ” buttons” at its base (and, yes, the buttons are labeled A and B). As you alternate between the two buttons, you could feel Instapak’s famous liquid agents begin to mix below your fingertips, then drastically increase in temperature. After a final ” pop” emanates from the base, the bag begins inflating with hot, quick-drying foam. Stuff the bag in a box, and then quickly put your product on top of the bag. That’s the first step in creating your custom-fit Instapak sandwich. Now place another expanding bag on top, and close the box. The system is duly protective, if not almost air tight.

Foam in Place: Another Environmental Challenge

Whether their source materials are labeled A, B or Z, Instapak packaging is stuffed with polyurethane chemicals, which isn’t easy to cast off. One of the best ways, consistent with Sealed Air’s website, is to take your used material to the nearest waste-to-energy combustion facility (your grandpappy might need called this place ” the incinerator” ). You too can return the foam to at least one of the 20 ” foam return locations” world wide. Twenty locations? Really? We expect there are more Burger Kings within a 5-mile radius of our office.

Instapaking Prehistory On a Ginormous Scale

On July 27, 2000, a startling find was made in Malta, Montana. It was essentially the mostsome of the most complete, reticulated dinosaur fossil ever unearthed, and it needed to be transported 2,000 miles across the country to Houston, Texas. Enter Bill Armstrong, Sealed Air’s Technical Development Manager. He led a team of experts in developing strategies to securely transport the ancient fossil. The team assembled a base for the artifact to ride on, and shrink-wrapped the fossil in CorTuff film, a fabric typically used for industrial applications. The fossil was then braced on the base using Instapak foam, and reinforced with Stratocell H polyethylene foam, a high-density foam for additonal resistance to shock and transport vibrations.

After unpacking the crate in a NASA hangar, scientists scanned the fossil to make certain nothing was displaced or damaged in the course of the long journey across the country. It had arrived completely unscathed, leaving scientists with Leonardo one of only four existing brachylophosaurus (duck-billed dinosaur) specimens on the earth.

Fiberboard

When’s the last time you received something in a wooden box? Yeah, that’s right: Wooden packaging has gone the best way of steam-powered automobiles and handlebar mustaches. Today, everything comes in cardboard packages and for good reason: cardboard is cheaper, lighter and doesn’t cause splinters. But cardboard and other pulp products aren’t just container materials, friends. They’re actually a packaging medium in and of itself, and the most environmentally friendly ones to boot.

How Cardboard Is Made

Cardboard isn’t a contemporary development-it’s been manufactured since the early 20th century using machines called corrugators, which separate hardwood and sapwood into individual fibers. These fibers are than treated with a heavy dose of high-pressure steam, and compressed by weights to form a straight, flattened panel that’s able to join linerboards coated in starch-based adhesives. When the process is done, you’ve got yourself a thick sheet of cardboard able to be re-shaped and die-cut into a corrugated insert, or simply adhered to other pieces for a solid box that’ll don’t forget to cart home your 52-inch HDTV in complete safety.

Big Bamboo: The very best Packing Material?

The ancient alchemy of cardboard production hasn’t changed much over time, but an industry-wide concentrate on green technology is making cardboard among the more innovative packaging materials on the earth of shipping today. Whether being used as custom-built inserts, fill packaging, or just good ol’ fashioned boxes, almost the entire materials used to make these protective pieces are created with environmental sustainability in mind.

Take computer giants Dell and HP, which mass-produce their cardboard pieces using bamboo, which offers some clever benefits. As panda food, bamboo is nutritious-that is create news for all those pandas. But as a packing medium, it may be molded into any shape that typical cardboard should be would becould very well be, and is usually more cost-effective for manufacturers. More importantly, bamboo is a rapidly renewable resource that grows in heavy abundance and at a far hastier speed than tree bark.

The Dell Streak we reviewed here came in fancy bamboo packaging – with a bamboo motifs pressed into each insert.

Why Big-Box Manufacturers Love Them Some Cardboard

Recyclability is a prime good thing about cardboard. Virtually any ” used” cardboard packaging material may well be combined with other random cardboard piece to create a moldable pulp. The pulp may be reshaped into new cardboard-based flights of fancy, and because it’s manufactured from trees and bamboo, it’s biodegradable.

” Cardboard is among the most perfect sustainable packaging product, ” Salazar says. ” People within the green community don’t agree very often, but we will be able to all agree on that. It’s made with a high amount of recycled content. It’s compostable, re-pulp able, and is derived from a renewable resource.”

Can Cardboard Really Offer Good Protection? Yes!

So cardboard takes the crown for environmental sustainability, but what about protective qualities? Oliver Campbell, Dell’s packaging guru, says, ” If engineered correctly, a folded corrugated cushion grants an analogous protective properties as Styrofoam or bubble wrap. The $64000 question is whether it usually is performed inside the same amount of space, which translates more into a logistical cost.”

Unlike expansive foam or packing peanuts-which could either expand or fill to cushion empty spaces-the protective capabilities of cardboard are dependent on the volume of cuts or folds necessary to create the cushion. And the more folds necessary, the higher the manufacturing cost. It’s an enormous consideration given the quantity of folds found inside the average corrugated insert, nevertheless it’s a smaller issue when using a cardboard mold, which generally uses form fitting dips and curves for cover as opposed to multiple folds.

And, Finally, It Often Comes Right down to Saving Money

Lest you watched cardboard is often chosen for its low environmental impact or maybe its protective capabilities, reassess. Sometimes it’s used when shipping products to certain countries that heavily tax less sustainable packaging materials. That’s right: Even on this planet of packaging, it’s not always about doing the suitable thing, whether which means helping our surroundings or guaranteeing someone’s media streamer or notebook arrives safely. It often just comes right down to which packaging solution costs less.

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