Introducing 100% Recyclable Boxes: Our Effort to Reduce Plastic Waste

We know that plastic pollution is a serious matter. Millions of tons of plastic enter the ocean every year, terribly damaging the marine environment. We want to do our part to keep our California coast and the oceans at-large free of pollution, and that is why we are taking steps to reduce single-use plastics in our product packaging and operations.

We are pleased to announce that we are rolling out new boxes, which are now 100% recyclable and made from 100% recycled materials. This is part of our ongoing effort to limit plastic waste in our production and operations processes.

The sleek design of our previous boxes was created by adhering a plastic-laminated sheet printed with our graphics to a piece of cardboard. Plastic laminates and films can easily jam up recycling machinery, resulting in costly stand-stills at the facility. As a result, most laminated cardboard is not recycled. The graphics on our new boxes are printed directly onto the corrugated cardboard. With no adhesive or plastic, this is a much more commonly recycled item.

While some customers like to save their pedal boxes, keeping them out of the trash, there was still a lot of waste on the production side. Our boxes are cut from a larger piece of cardboard, so there is some scrap cardboard surrounding the box. On our old boxes, the laminated sheet was adhered to the cardboard before the boxes were cut out. This meant that all of that scrap material was going into our waste bins. Now, we're happy to be filling our blue bins with recyclable cardboard.

The SKU and serial number labels on our new boxes are recyclable, too. The label and its liner are 100% recycled from post-consumer waste, and both can be recycled with paper. Most thermal labels are not recyclable and their peel-away liners are laminated with plastic. Since we could not find an off-the-shelf recyclable label and liner, we had to custom source these.

We have made other changes over the past few years in an effort to create less waste — particularly in the way of packaging.

• We stopped wrapping pedals in bubble wrap, and designed a box that safely cradles the pedal during transport.
• We stopped shrink-wrapping our boxes.
• We now package small accessories in Kraft paper bags which we can stamp with our info, rather than using plastic bags and laminated cards.
• We have replaced printed User Guides with smaller Quick Start Guides (the full User Guide is still available online). 
• For select shipments, we are able to use recyclable bubble mailers. These are also re-sealable, so you can re-use the mailer (in case you need to make a return).
• For orders that include multiple pedals, we reuse shipping boxes from our vendors when we can.

We must be mindful of our company's impact on the world. Though we don't have the big bucks and resources of a large corporation to research and precisely evaluate that impact, we will continue to educate ourselves so that we can make more responsible and sustainable choices — both big and small.

Do you have any suggestions on how we can further reduce waste? Please let us know at support@neunaber.net!