Linenless Tables – Environmentally Friendly Part 2
Green Packaging Trial – Part 2
Palmer Snyder is exploring new ways of packaging their products for shipment in the interest of keeping the environmental impact of product purchases to a minimum. Recently the company shipped a full truckload using foam block packaging. The foam block packaging did a superb job protecting over 400 tables on a cross country trip. They arrived damage- free. Let’s investigate the decision around foam packaging and why we think it is a good environmental choice vs. traditional shipping methods.
For many years, the furniture industry has shipped table products using corrugated cartons placed on reusable wood pallets, with one or at most two tables per disposable carton.
Palmer Snyder is now testing a new lower waste table packaging method which replaces individual table boxing with a cardboard perimeter and 4 reusable foam blocks in between each table. With these changes we have achieved little over 80% reduction in waste. Where we used to package Revolution® tables 13’ high, each boxed, we now only have half a box on the bottom, half on top, and “half a box” encasing each outer half of the pallet. We have reduced our waste from formerly shipping 13 boxes and now shipping two.
The foam blocks are 100% reusable and Palmer Snyder pays and arranges the freight to return these to our factory. By eliminating individual table cartons, the amount of packaging waste per table is reduced by approximately 80% and labor required to unpack tables – and discard waste – while unloading is drastically reduced.
This change is good for our customer, good for Palmer Snyder and good for our environment.