This is just a little story of ordinary people bringing on change. We may not move to a new house every day but every little bit counts and moving day without all the waste sounds like a good idea.
For years, Fortune 500 companies have rented reusable plastic crates to relocate from one office to another. Pharmacies and supermarkets regularly use them to ship merchandise.
Now the crates are coming to the residential moving market, thanks to consumers’ desire for options they see as both convenient and environmentally responsible, and to the cost of cardboard boxes (which has remained high in many areas in spite of a recent collapse in the cost of the recycled cardboard from which most are partly made).
The story in today's New York Times starts off about rentgreenbox.com with the slogan "it's cheaper than using cardboard" and continues with the promising fact that this sounds like a growth industry.
Plastic may be widely disliked because of the fact that it is such a oil based product but unlike recycle or remanufacture the only cost of reuse is getting the item from one place to another and some occasional soap and water. Cardboard boxes rented from U-Haul last for about four uses and Spencer Brown, the owner of of Rentagreenbox, claims that some of his plastic bins have been used 400 times.
To compliment the Southern California based rentgreenboxes there is a New York City alternative called Movers, Not Shakers.
In December, Mark Ehrhardt, the company’s owner, started a Web site called GreenmoversUSA.com that he hopes will become a for-profit listing service for eco-friendly movers around the United States. (There is a notice on the Movers Not Shakers Web site that reads, "Hello other moving companies — wanna join in and create a national bin network?")
Not long ago most Americans didn't have a care about a sidewalk or front lawn filled with moving garbage. Green funerals are probably a better example but it is good news that consumer demand is changing an industry that is rarely used by most consumers.
Other moving companies around the country, concerned about their industry’s reputation for waste, are taking other steps to be more green, including converting trucks to biodiesel, setting up free cardboard-box exchanges (in which consumers return boxes for use by others) and offering biodegradable replacements for bubble wrap and foam made from materials like cornstarch and recycled paper sludge.
Patrick Wilkinson, a founder of Movegreen, a year-old two-truck company based in Santa Barbara, said that consumers "want to help this movement grow, and because of that our business has done really well."
Movegreen’s trucks run on biodiesel, and the company says it plants 10 trees for every move through a nonprofit group called Trees for the Future. The business also plans to design and order 200 to 300 of its own plastic bins, which it hopes to have by June.
Another advantage of plastic bins not mentioned in the Times but from my own experience is that these more sturdy boxes can be stacked higher for more efficient use of those gas burning trucks. Workers can also work more efficiently because plastic boxes stack nicely on hand trucks too.
The biggest advantage is that tape is unnecessary. Tape is another challenges eco-friendly movers face. With water-based biodegradable tape costing about 10 times the price of regular tape they are searching for answers in packing tape. I remember back when twine was used to tie boxes up and some companies saved money with reusable venetian blind cord.
The story ends on another positive note. When bins are rented the renters want them back and the deadline help movers to get unpacked quickly instead of procrastinating.