PET – The Eco-Friendly Choice: Advantages for Curbside Insulated Shipping

In the age of ecommerce shipping, preserving our planet has become increasingly challenging. As we continue to consume more, we inevitably continue to waste more. With this reality, finding ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle in novel ways takes on a new level of importance. Nearly 40% of all plastic waste comes from packaging, and we believe it’s time the industry puts a greater emphasis on incorporating sustainable design elements into product development.

When we set out to develop Renewliner, our curbside insulated packaging solution, we knew we wanted to give our customers something that would enable them to reduce carbon emissions and contribute to a circular economy without sacrificing affordability, scalability, or aesthetics.

First, we began consulting with some of the nation’s top environmental experts from the EPA, APR, and SPC to understand how different materials we see in the packaging landscape impact our planet. One way we this can be done best is to see how each stack up when evaluating life cycle assessments.

Early on, we learned that there are some common misconceptions about how materials affect our environment. We don’t often discuss the impact a material has during the extraction and production stages, but in many cases these are the stages where the majority of pollution is being created.

In light of these facts, we ensured that the entire lifecycle of our material for Renewliner was considered when developing our PET-based solution. PET is a common packaging and insulation material that’s used in everything from water bottles to carpeting. One of the most unique things about PET is the level of recycling innovation being made year after year. PET is one of the only materials in existence with the technology to be infinitely recycled. These aspects are what quickly qualified the material as a top contender for our sustainable packaging project.

What we found particularly exciting about it was its incredibly low carbon footprint when compared to alternative packaging materials like cotton, denim, and paper. Along with the fact that it’s a readily available feedstock, PET enabled us to provide our customers with a solution primed for both scalability and sustainability. We found that by utilizing recycled PET, Renewliner reduces the environmental impact twofold by tackling the current pollution issues (removing material from the waste streams and giving them a second life), while also creating a product that will then be recycled again and again.

Stay tuned for part 2, where we will explore how we implemented PET to create a sustainable solution that can be used in a variety of applications.