Being Green When Everything Around Us Is Tan
Our facility in Peachtree Corners, GA is ultra clean and also pretty darn green. 60,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space can hold a literal TON of tan colored wood and cardboard. How do we keep the facility green?
Well, first there’s the lumber. To make our wooden crates, we stock a considerable amount of southern yellow pine. That is a sustainable wood, grown on tree plantations specifically for harvesting and replanting. This managed crop grows rapidly and is replanted regularly. All the while, southern yellow pine provides shelter to birds and forest animals.
Durability Pays Green Dividends
We build our wood crates to be extremely durable so they’ll withstand repeated shipping and handling. The goal here is reuse – one of the three R’s in environmental stewardship: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
When our crates are used for trade shows, we are careful to configure them so they can ship the same contents to multiple, sequential destinations on the exhibitor’s route. This results in costs savings and makes the crates essentially reusable, thus keeping discarded wood out of the landfills.
Often, we can achieve the same re-usability from our heavy-duty corrugated boxes.
And the corrugated materials we use are both recycled and recyclable.
Waste Not . . . and Less is More
We do a lot of on site work, where we will bag and crate at our customer’s site. This way there’s no double shipping of product. When you’re talking something as large as aircraft or cars, or complete factory moves – you can bet that saves a lot of fuel and wood!
Our craftsmanship is true to the motto: Measure Twice; Cut Once! We are very careful not to waste materials. Even though wood is sustainable, it’s still precious and costly. And it adds to the landfill every time it’s disposed. So we do things right the first time.
The Little Things Matter Too – and They All Add Up
We really focus on the details to be green– even using Klimp® fasteners which open and close quickly for inspection or unloading. This means they do not tear at the wood and splinter or gouge it. Without opening damage, crates are ready for reloading and onward shipping and don’t need to be replaced or repaired. Even our nails and staples used to assemble crates are biodegradable.
Then there’s corrugated packaging. It’s a huge component of our inventory. The content of the corrugated product we use most is 79% recycled paper. And the corrugated industry is being proactive: in 2013, the recovery rate for old corrugated containers (OCC) was 88.5%, up from 54.5% in 1993.
