Then, a shaking machine mimics the bumps on a delivery truck.
They're testing to see if the paper can match the protective power of plastic.įirst, a mechanical arm drops the laptop 3 feet.
Future success may depend on how its products perform.Īt the company's lab in Portland, designers slide a laptop with their paper end caps into a box. In the past few years, BillerudKorsnäs has seen 25 percent revenue growth year after year. "I think the sense that it's become pervasive is what can turn the tide, and come up with perhaps radical solutions that were not thinkable three, four, five years ago," MacKerron says. It's choking fish, filling the bellies of seabirds and turtles, and even showing up in our drinking water. Scientists say the world is dumping 8 million tons of plastic into the oceans every year, and it never really goes away. "That tune has changed because people are so appalled and offended at how bits of plastic are now just everywhere."
"I think most companies were hoping this concern about plastic pollution would blow over," he says. Still, MacKerron is heartened to see many big companies finally take this problem seriously. So they reject the cups, and they go to landfills." "We think of them as recyclable," he says, "but because of the thin plastic lining a lot of paper mills cannot process them. So BillerudKorsnäs tests out products they hope to sell in the budding market for plastic replacements. The growing number of campaigns to ban plastic waste are putting pressure on companies to find alternatives – not just for straws, but for all kinds of plastic packaging. "Paper packaging is a much more renewable resource. "I think now people are more concerned about the impact plastics are having on the environment," he says. Gaither says inventions like this are helping the company build a growing customer list. When it's done, he folds the resulting cut-out into a three-dimensional shape that's designed to replace the plastic foam end caps companies use to ship laptop computers. "This lets us know if we're on the right track or on a fool's errand." "Basically anything we create, any design we're looking to validate, we cut out with this machine," he says. He flips the switch on a machine that zips around the cardboard, stabbing and cutting it like a robotic exact-o knife. Packaging designer Ryan Gaither believes in the power of cardboard.Īt the Swedish-owned BillerudKorsnäs design lab in Portland, Oregon, he's laid down a massive sheet of it, as big as a king-size bed. One of the BillerudKorsnäs packaging redesign projects replaced the plastic casing around camping gear with cardboard.
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