Sustainability Stories: Packaging

Packaging: Saying no to Styrofoam since 2016 … and that was just the first step!

Are you ever getting frustrated by too much plastic in packaging material?

We nowadays are more conscious about what we consume and what we throw away. But as the American proponent of sustainability, Annie Leonard, said: “There is no such thing as ‘away’. When we throw anything away it must go somewhere.”

Let’s imagine this: You ordered something and now you can’t wait until that thing finally arrives at your doorstep. Now you open the non-recycled carton box. You find a Styrofoam pulp tray or plastic packaging peanuts that are filling up the box. In all of that plastic you finally find your product, which is yet again wrapped in a thin plastic bag.

How does this make you feel?

At Dataflex we work hard at decreasing our negative impact on the environment in a holistic way. That also includes the measurements we take in terms of packaging. Since 2016 we don’t use any Styrofoam in our packaging and use carton boxes made from recycled paper for as long as we can remember.

For part of our products, we rely on pulp trays that are made from recycled paper to hold our products into place during transport. For the rest of our products, we use recycled paper as filling material instead of Styrofoam or plastic packaging peanuts. Thereby decreasing the amount of plastic and waste.

But this is not good enough yet!

We want to go further and decrease the amount of plastic to an absolute minimum. Therefore, we started using tissue paper instead of plastic bags to make sure that our products don’t get any scratches during shipment. We started packaging our Viewprime series and all new stock coming in from our Viewlite series in this new way. Next, we also use almost no plastic in the packaging of our cable guide that is made from 100% recycled PP.

We plan to expand this way of packaging throughout our product ranges. At the same time, we want to guarantee that the products don’t obtain any damages during transport. Decreasing the impact of the packaging is important but guaranteeing that the product arrives at our customers in a good state is more important. Because the impact on the environment of a damaged product would be far higher.

It is important to us that you, our customers, can still count on the great quality of all Dataflex products so you can enjoy them for years to come.