Why Send Your Pallet to the Landfill When You Can Just Recycle?

On any given day of any given year, the USDA Forestry Service guesstimates that 1.9 billion wooden pallets circulate freely in the United States.  Despite recent advances in aluminum pallets and the like, wooden pallets still comprise a formidable number of the pallets used to conduct daily commerce in America, and will continue to do so as far as can be predicted. Given the gargantuan number of wooden pallets in daily operation in the U.S.A., it makes good business sense that those who use these pallets shouldn’t just drop them off at the landfill and let them go to waste once they’ve served their purpose and can’t be patched or repaired any further. It makes good, solid, cost-effective sense to recycle your pallets – not only are you aiding the environment and all that good stuff, but you end up saving your outfit a bundle of money to boot!

You don’t have to hug a tree to want to recycle a wooden pallet – it only makes good economic sense. Repairing and retrofitting pallets can prove to be cumulatively expensive after awhile. The cost of repairing a wooden pallet only runs to somewhere around two bucks, but if you’re running an extensive operation, those costs can pile up faster than you might expect. As far as pallet recycling, while the pay-off per pallet is fairly minimal (it depends which pallet recycler you choose to pursue business with), again, when you add up all the pallets recycled in the course of a year, it bulks up into quite a considerable sum.

Without the sustainability of wooden pallet recycling, a huge and unnecessary number of trees would have to be cut down per year just to maintain equilibrium. Thanks to advances in large-scale green technology (and the proven fact that it’s a profitable enterprise), all that may be changing for the better in times to come.

Stamar proudly uses and distributes recycled pallets as part of its inventory. Come see what we can offer you today in our vast inventory of all things pallet and pallet-unitizing!

Falling Is for Leaves on Trees, Not Workers on the Job

Every workplace, no matter if it’s a gritty urban warehouse or a nest of cubicles in the suburbs, has its perils in terms of falling. You don’t have to be weighed down with a 50 lb. bag of cement or window-washing a skyscraper at 35 stories to suffer a serious work-related injury, or worse. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that in 2009 alone, over 212,000 workers were seriously injured by falls, slips, or trips while at their place of work. Sadly, the same report cited a figure of 605 workers who died as a result of injuries sustained by falling during the same time period. That’s a figure that we should all let sink in if we’re ever going to help bring about a change in that.

Stamar has long made it a priority to provide for workers’ safety in every possible way. Our track record more than proves it: in another blog from earlier this year, we talked about the wildly successful blood donation campaign we initiated at our company on behalf of local hospitals. But it’s the products we offer that speak more to the issue: what we provide and distribute to other companies is a way for these companies to promote worker safety – including slips and falls. When it comes to fall prevention, Stamar provides items ranging from wet floor janitorial signs, wet mops, and a specialized oil dry product that absorbs almost any form of spill – including oil, grease, acids, water, and admixtures of soluble oils and water. We’re serious about safety. It’s something we will always practice strongly.

Plastic or Wooden Pallets? The Choice Is Pretty Straightforward

While there is one distinct advantage wooden pallets have over plastic ones – they are biodegradable – there is a whole host of reasons why plastic plastics are, in the long run, preferable to wood when conducting a successful shipping and handling business. One of the chief reasons is durability: to put it simply, plastic pallets can go through a lot more punishment than can wooden ones. Not only is plastic resilient against decomposition, but it’s generally more effective at handling the bumps, bangs, dings, and assorted lacerations that are par for the course in materials handling. Whether you’re running a warehouse operation that provides for a single city, or whether you’re running a long-distance freight truck company that delivers goods to distant States, your best bet for your dollar is going to be in plastic. Generally speaking, plastic pallets have been found to be almost 50 times more durable than their wooden counterparts.

Furthermore, the advantage of a wooden pallet being recyclable gets overwritten by the fact that a plastic pallet can just as easily be recycled. Numerous plastic recycling centers exist in most regions of the United States and southern Canada. These facilities aren’t the type to simply recycle plastic bottles of pop or Poland Spring. They’re fully capable of recycling larger-scale plastic pallets into other, vitally needed products. Not only that, but any company that trades in its plastic waste to one of these recycling centers can make a brisk side-business in terms of cost-savings. And generally speaking, plastic pays higher premiums than does wood or paper.

At Stamar, we not only carry plastic pallets for any variety of application or weight-load, we also are deeply engaged with green recycling. Not only is it cost-effective for our own business, but it’s all part of our strategy to leave less of an industrial footprint from the products we use and supply. To find out more about Stamar’s plastic pallet capabilities, contact us today.

Air Pollution in the Great Indoors

Unless you’re a construction worker or a Park Ranger, chances are that when you work, you work inside either a building or a vehicle. Whether you work in a large commercial office-park or in a century-old (though hopefully updated) assembly plant, you are probably familiar to some extent with the problems and perils presented by indoor air pollution. Air that accumulates and stagnates over the course of a time in one given spot can not only lose some of its breathability, but there’s every chance that hidden pollutants – even trace amounts of them – lurk in various corners of any given workspace or jobsite.

Obvious culprits like oil, gas, kerosene, and coal are only the tip of the iceberg. Think about all the various cleaning products and maintenance procedures that go into upkeep of a facility: all the bathroom cleaners, the spray bottles, the humidifiers, the air conditioners and heaters, and even the dust that gets disturbed by the scuffle of feet or vacuum cleaners – all of it accumulates over time and can generate a lot of problems. In some extreme cases, one might even begin to believe that ongoing maintenance leads to even bigger problems than the short-term solutions it offers, even if a single cleaning by itself is harmless enough. Asthma, pneumonia, and the unseemly phenomenon of humidifier fever can all be contracted through prolonged exposure.

Rip-proof trashcan liners can help
combat contaminant pollution at work.

There are ways, of course, of keeping this all in check. Not only should a building be well-ventilated and consistently updated to conform to current building codes, but managers and workers can take additional steps to prevent indoor air pollution from getting to them. Not only are face-masks a potential source of protecting against the “hazards of the great indoors,” but it’s sometimes good (especially if you work in a factory) to have several large bags of oil dry on hand. Not only that, but certain types of trashcan liners are especially puncture and rip-proof. That way, you’re sure not to get any unnecessary contaminants spoiling your work environment.

Stamar provides many different products in its line-up that let you fight back against air contamination in the interior of a building. Give us a call today; we’re sure to be able to help out.

How to Get the Most Stretch for Your Film

Whoever would have thought that stretch film – that miniscule layer of film that keeps stacked pallets from toppling during warehouse handling and overland transit – would have a total consumption weight of 1 billion pounds per year? Keep in mind that figure accounts for just the United States’ total alone. Given the rising global popularity of stretch film, especially in the newly industrialized nations of Asia, one can only forecast ever more billions of pounds of potential wastage. In sum, all that wafer-thin plastic would require a pretty big wastebasket to fit in.

Part of the reason that so much plastic stretch wrap is used is due to sheer human inefficiency. The typical warehouse day-shift worker will stretch a sheet of film only to 25-50% of its full stretch capacity. Compare this fact to just how far a stretch wrap machine can stretch plastic film around a load of pallets: some machines are in fact capable of stretching well beyond 100% of the theoretical intended amount. If you’re new to buying one of these machines, keep a watchful eye on the web for sales deals at any number of companies, or check out Chicago’s own biannual Pack Expo and meet the manufacturers face-to-face.

The Unseen (But Much Overheard) Problem of Noise Pollution

Deafness isn’t just a problem for aging rock-stars. Every year according to the CDC, 22 million American workers are exposed to hazardous levels of noise when on the job. While musicians form a disproportionately sized slice of the epidemic, other occupations make their numbers seem trite in comparison. Machinists and welders in automotive assembly plants, soldiers overexposed to munitions discharges, miners, steel- and sawmill workers, meat processing plant personnel, and construction workers are just some of the larger demographics who regularly experience hearing impairment on account of their work conditions.



3M Ear Muffs with a
Noise Reduction
Rating of 24dB



But before you scramble to run an online search for hearing aids, consider that hearing-loss prevention might actually be the goal you’re seeking. Hearing loss – particularly in obvious, heavy industrial settings – is a problem that can be anticipated – for the most part – years in advance. It shouldn’t just be that you don earplugs at night when you’re trying to get to sleep to the tune of the neighbor’s dog yapping away. Nor should earplugs serve a specialty purpose and only that, like when you’re on a firing range. The modern world, specifically the modern-urban-industrial daytime world, is rife with noise pollution. To that end, Stamar provides hearing protection devices such as high-grade 3M ear muffs and ear plugs.

Loudness is an essential part of 9 to 5, a necessary evil of the workaday world. But there’s no reason that either you or your company need to grow deafened or defeated by the jobs you have to do.

Plastic Truck Seals Keep Your Supply Chain Safe

It is a staggering amount of money that is lost per annum to cargo theft. Every year, you can count on somewhere between $10 - $30 billion to be stolen from overland big rigs, cargo ships, railroad depots, and highway gas-stations. It’s a sum that dwarfs the GDPs of more than one country on Earth, and it’s a shame that such hard work can be snatched away with such little effort. Oftentimes, all it takes for many thousands of dollars of merchandise to be lost to the wind is one trucker leaving his rig unguarded for a few minutes at an overland truck stop. One unsuspecting bathroom break, or a quick stop for a coffee at the cashier, and suddenly one’s credibility as a trucker lies in jeopardy.

In these trying economic times, we’re sensitive to our customers’ needs when it comes to protecting their goods, as well as their good names. By using the plastic truck seals we provide at Stamar, you can ensure that if theft occurs, that theft will be made instantly apparent. If the seal has been disturbed or broken, more than likely someone has been trying to help themselves to the merchandise in question. Available in yellow, white, blue, red, or green in quantities of one hundred per case, truck seals are an easy way of keeping your overland deliveries safe, on-time, as well as ensuring that those companies whose goods you’re delivering place that much further trust in you.

Keep your eyes on the road, and let Stamar do the rest.

Stamar: Working Towards an Injury-Free Workplace

According to the Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association (ISSA), the number of work-related injuries per year in the United States runs into the many thousands. Of these injuries, a disproportionate number happen at warehouses and materials handling facilities. Whether that figure is due more to the negligence of workers or of management is a moot point. The essential thing is that these sorts of statistics – year after year – are simply unacceptable since they are mostly preventable; or if not entirely preventable, then at least are able to be mitigated. To that effort, ISSA and OSHA combined to release a comprehensive series of guidelines on how best to implement – and follow through with – warehouse safety. Every major warehouse-related activity that involves significant risk – forklift safety, manual lifting and materials handling, loading docks, conveyors, and workplace trips and falls – is covered clearly and effectively.

Let’s face it, accidents can and will happen. But in an accident-prone workplace, if you see where the problems are occurring, you can use these guidelines to begin making changes. Some of those changes necessarily involve getting the right gear. Safety glasses, hard hats, first aid kits, ear plug dispensers, lifting gloves, and fall protection harnesses are all essential items in any warehouse operation that keep the bad from becoming worse. All these things are items we stock here at Stamar. Since is safe workplace is always a more productive one, it makes strategic sense to place a long-term importance on building an inventory of safety protection equipment. We’re glad to help spread the word, and glad to do our part in keeping our nation’s workers healthy and well-protected.

Our Document Management System Just Got Leaner and Greener

Have you ever been to a restaurant where the waiter accidentally misheard your order, or the chef accidentally didn’t hear the waiter said and as a result cooked the wrong dish? Would you ever want to go back to a restaurant like that? That’s the experience many people have when it comes to dealing with many types of business: somewhere along the chain of communication, something gets lost in translation, and chaos asserts itself. 

At Stamar we believe that orderliness of service is a customer right, not a privilege. In an effort to streamline our turnkey interactions with online customers – keeping them informed of the status of a particular order from the time they make it until the moment they receive the final shipment – we’ve begun implementing Zetadocs.

Zetadocs is a useful tool for any company that prides itself on having greater orderliness, not to mention having less of a carbon footprint. When a customer’s order request finds its way to our inbox, Zetadocs allows us automatically to transcribe the order’s specifics into one standardized format. From purchase order, to warehouse pick ticket, to shipment order, to delivery number – Zetadocs is a convenient (some might nearly say flawless) way for customer and manufacturer “to be on the same page” throughout the course of a particular order. 

Furthermore, in keeping with our ethos of being a greener company, our use of Zetadocs eliminates a huge amount of paper. For example, fax orders via Zetadocs get transcribed onto a computer screen – there’s no printing involved. Wastage and redundancy are things of the past, as are any possibilities for error.

The Uses of Custom Corrugated Boxing and Packaging

If one-size-fits-all boxes were the order of the day for global packaging, then UPS and FedEx executives would doubtlessly be running for Congress. But sometimes, the product one wishes to ship isn’t of a standard size, or even of a generic dimension. Sometimes the product is simply too big for any normal warehouse to have the necessary corrugated packaging at-the-ready to provide a solution. At other times, the product is oddly-shaped, with parts that wildly jut out or spring up from the main body of the item. In cases such as these, it is most likely that your best bet is for a customized corrugated solution.

The fact that there are specific CAM/CAD packaging design programs that can help manufacturers plan and execute customized corrugated designs is of no small benefit. Here at Stamar, we make ample use of both CAD and CAM to determine what the optimal custom-fit for your product is. With our ISTA testing qualifications, as well as our command of vibration and drop testing, we insure that your product will come to no harm on the long journey from warehouse to merchant aisle. We can also work around your own specs and needs, from beginning until finish, to build the best corrugated packaging that money can buy. That’s our final word on the subject, and that, as they say, is a wrap.

Just-in-Time Warehousing Services at Stamar

Just-in-time warehousing was a concept developed in the 80s by big box retailers like Wal-Mart and K-mart, who realized they could save considerable money and manpower by warehousing their retail products and retail packaging at off-site locations. Not only would they save on time-consuming warehousing procedures, but they’d be able to free up more space on their show-floors to sell more items. Then, once they started running low on a particular item in their retail location, they could send notice to their constituent companies to send more of the same products, thus replenishing their stock conveniently and effectively.

At Stamar Packaging, we’re glad to offer JIT warehousing services to all of our clients. With three new distribution centers in addition to our original facility in Addison, IL, we’re able to meet the storage needs (both packaging and otherwise) of any number of customers throughout the United States. Our vendor managed inventory system of management lets you decide how many storage items you need and when precisely you need them delivered by. All you have to do is notify us, and we’ll handle all the heavy-duty lifting and scheduling.

The Differences between Stretch and Shrink Wrap

There are a lot of people out there who should know better, but either don’t know, or have only a hazy appreciation of the differences between stretch and shrink wrap. Yes, both are synthetic plastics derived from petrochemicals. Both are durable materials with monumentally slow decomposition rates, and both will soften and/or melt when exposed to temperatures of around 210 degrees F. Nevertheless, the means by which stretch wrap and shrink wrap are produced, as well as their practical industry applications, are completely different. 

Blown Hand Stretch Film

Stretch wrap is made from low-density polyethylene (“polyethylene” coming from the Greek root-words “poly,” meaning “many”; and “ethyl,” meaning “purer air”), a common variety of plastic that gets its famous elasticity from the chemical synthesis of ethylene with alpha-olefins. Once these two different types of molecules are blended together through copolymerization, they are either left to cool in the open air, or are passed over with cooling rollers. The end result is a plastic with a surface that can be stretched up to 500% of its original area before breakage. The fact that stretch wrap is both pliable and sturdy make it the perfect plastic wrap for industrial palletizing. Large, bulky shipments are much less likely to spill when covered in stretch wrap.

LTG ShrinkFilm

Unlike stretch wrap, shrink wrap is a polymer plastic intended for packaging individual items and products. A randomly arranged set of plastic molecules gets heated with either a heat gun or a heat tunnel, causing the molecules to expand into a neater, more uniform arrangement. Once this new arrangement of plastics cools off, the wrap then “shrinks” back down to its original, rough dimensions. The plastic can be shrunk to fit around a packaged item very tightly (as in a CD case), though it can also be shrunk to fit more loosely around a particular item if a certain amount of flexible capacity is required. A new automobile would be an example of a larger item where shrink wrap gets applied more loosely, allowing for easier shipping and handling.

At Stamar, we specialize in both types of plastics. We carry many different varieties of stretch film: blown machine stretch film (stretch film that’s been naturally air-cooled), cast machine stretch film (stretch film that’s been machine-cooled), and our patented Goodwrapper ®stretch film, which allows for reduced friction on the hands when being wrapped or unwrapped. As far as shrink films, we offer LTG shrink film (ideal for individual food packaging), polyolefin shrink film (good for containing industrial equipment), and PVC shrink film, which is designed to shrink faster around its product when time is of the essence.

And that’s a wrap on plastic for now. Either way, we’ve got you covered.