Plastic (normally polypropylene) box sealing tape is amongst the most favored materials for sealing corrugated boxes. It is pretty cheap, easy to apply, durable, and strengthens within a massive amount environmental conditions. For anyone reasons, plastic tape usage is continuing to grow steadily over the past 30 years, replacing alternate carton closure materials such as paper tape, staples, cold melt glues, and hot melt glues. Today, however, concern about environmentally friendly impact of plastic materials produces packers to reevaluate their options. Listed below are essentially the most promising avenues packers can explore to lessen or eliminate their plastic tape consumption.

Reduce
Automate. When pp sheet sealing tape is used manually, it will always be over-applied. Packers perceive tape being flimsy, in order that they tend to apply several long strips every time a single, shorter one will do. Actually, most grades of plastic tape have outstanding holding and cross directional strength. Running boxes using an automatic case sealer means that an even period of tape is applied to the box each and every time, and that forget about tape than necessary can be used. Case sealers can be purchased in random and adjustable modes to match multiple box size or single size package flows.
Downsize. Again taking into consideration the strength of the quality pp plastic box tape, packers may reduce the thickness and width of these tape without package integrity. The typical plastic tape offered is 2.0 mil thick, 48 mm wide. I’ve come across lots of applications which were successfully downsized to just 1.6 mil thick, 36mm wide. A 20% lowering of thickness along with a 25% lowering of width come up with a factor in the quantity of tape mass being introduced into the box recycling stream. Since about 50% of corrugated boxes are recycled in america market, downsizing has enormous impact.
New Box Design. A brand new box design can drastically reduce plastic tape usage. A common example is switching from an RSC style to a end loading box. Create a box employed to package a DVD player. Typically, the lamp lays flat and opens at the very top with two substantial exterior flaps. It is deemed an RSC style box. Imagine this area still laying flat, but opening on one side. This is an end-loading box. We no more have two large flaps to seal in the top and bottom in the box. Instead, we seal the final loader with a few small L-clips on either end from the box. Using this type of simple design change, we eliminate almost 100% of the tape mass put on the therapy lamp. Moreover, the finish loader design contains less corrugated material than the RSC, increasing sustainability all the way around.
Eliminate
Paper Tape. From an eco standpoint, paper tapes tend to be attractive than plastic, although comparative impact of the two with regards to recyclability and disposal can be a hotly debated issue in the packaging industry. From your performance standpoint, paper tape offers a minumum of one undeniable benefit – speed. Used in addition to a mechanical length dispenser, paper tape allows manual packers to seal boxes much more quickly than with manually applied plastic tape (and in many cases, even automatically applied plastic tape).
Hot Melt Glue. Traditionally used within the food industry, hot melt glue remain popular for carton closure, since of the extremely affordable per application. While many hot melt formulations contaminate the corrugated recycling process, hot melt is surely an option worth pursuing for high volume packing operations.
Mailing Bags. Padded or unpadded paper mailing bags are best for small and/or non-fragile or semi-fragile products. Besides eliminating tape and corrugated, bags be cheaper, more affordable to ship, and much easier for customers to handle and recycle.
Self Closing Boxes. Various corrugated box designs require no sealing method in any way, file storage boxes as a familiar example. Other kinds suitable for primary and secondary presentation include boxes with tuck folds, self-locking bottoms, lids, and a couple piece telescoping construction. These options are particularly attractive for storage, intra-plant or inter-company transport, and palletized lots of uniform box sizes.
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