Sustainable Replacement for Those Packing Peanuts

Some of you may need to pack up a few unwanted or wrong-sized Christmas gifts and ship them back to wherever they came from. Or maybe you’re mailing out some gifts now because you didn’t quite make it to the post office before the holidays hit. If there’s anything fragile in that box, and you’re like me, you are probably cramming it full of packing peanuts, newspapers, paper bags, and anything else on hand to cushion the contents.

Professional shippers also cram their boxes full of material to protect cargo, and most of that stuff (like bubble wrap and foam peanuts) presents a disposal problem for the receiver, since it’s largely not recyclable. I came across this Wired article that describes a sustainable alternative that relies on cleverly folded cardboard pyramids.

The ExpandOS solution was invented by William Oliver, who in a former life designed machine tools for Ford and Mercedes. After a failed attempt to create molded paper pulp cubes for packaging, he came up with a machine tool that could cut and fold small paper triangles. The complete system includes paperboard sheet material that is fed into an expander, which spits out thousands of the tiny structures per ream of material. They’re serrated on the edge, and lock together when packed around an object. Different thicknesses are available for different applications.

To prove its strength, the company sends potential customers a box containing a brick, a coffee mug, and a light bulb packaged in the material. So far there’s only been one broken cup. Check out the videos below to see how material works.

Source: Wired