Can you save 15% on car insurance… Is green washing at Nashville Wraps hard to believe? You betcha!
Recently a comment came to my attention that posed an interesting question, basically the comment was “how is it that Nashville Wraps is the “Leader in Eco-Friendly Packaging” but you mail catalogs in a plastic bag?
I just love questions like this because the answer may not be exactly what you would expect.
Not everyone gets a Nashville Wraps catalog.
Nashville Wraps is a mailer of catalogs. While we may not boast about it, there are lots of behind the scenes measures we have to insure that we are not in the junk mail business and that we remain very green way beyond the call…
To start with we do not mail a catalog to everyone. We only mail them to recent customers and to those who ask. For others, like customers we haven’t heard from in a while, we send email with a mailing opt-in request. If a person doesn’t opt-in they don’t get a catalog mailed. Only mailing catalogs to people who want them saves a tremendous amount of resources keeping everyone greener.
But to the crux of the issue… that damn plastic bag.
When anything “plastic” is associated with a green company it automatically sets off an alarm. But putting a catalog into a poly bag is much greener than mailing it alone (gets torn up) or especially putting it into a mailing envelope. A typical 9 x 12 manila envelope alone weighs 0.70 oz. but a 9×12 poly bag only weighs 0.14 ounce or about 1/5 of the paper. We mail about 1,500 catalogs a week and using the poly bags saves 53 pounds of envelopes, the fuel to carry them and an extra ounce of postage on each one. But whether we use paper or plastic, they are both 100% recyclable.
If that still isn’t green enough just because the bags we use are “plastic”, then I’d say you haven’t been reading our mail to begin with. Not only does the plastic (poly) bag have the lowest carbon footprint to recycle, ours are (1) made in the USA, (2) are not made from oil, (3) are made from a by-product of natural gas, and (4) are the easiest packaging product to recycle no matter what. Plus we will gladly take them back if you do not have a recycling facility in your community.
We use 144,000 pounds of paper a year to print catalogs.
The Nashville Wraps® catalog is printed on a minimum of 10% recycled paper. That doesn’t sound like a lot but it amounts to 15,000 pounds of paper that got recycled and reused…but what about the other 90%? It is derived from well managed North America forests and is in fact FSC certified. Managed forests are a renewable green resource, where new trees are always replaced for every one harvested. Trees used in our catalog have never been a part of a large scale clear cutting which adversely affects the soil, water basin and wildlife.
We only produce 2 to 3 catalogs per year. Other businesses send you a different one every month, if not more often, plus they share your address with other companies, so you get more catalogs than you ever asked for. We respect your privacy and don’t do that.
The only green washing you’ll get at Nashville Wraps is if you do our laundry.
Nashville Wraps® and Green Way – Packaging with Purpose® brands take a no-nonsense approach to both the product lines and living our lives, doing our work in a environmentally conscience manner. We talk about recycling because we recycle. We promote plastic bags because we have physically recycled them ourselves (at the recycler). And just like country music…we were green before green was cool.
Robby Meadows
Nashville Wraps
Related Posts:
Recycled Plastic Bags from Trash
Reusable Shopping Bags – The Green Truth
The Ultimate Reusable Bag
You raise some great points.
I just found this blog via your corporate site – I was looking for recycled paper bags made in the USA for my upcoming craft fair.
There is also the argument that paper actually takes more resources to produce than plastic. For example, it takes a gallon of water to produce a typical paper bag. So with that in mind, paper envelopes are not necessarily less destructive.
This is amazing. So many companies now like to say they’re green but when it comes down to it, they can’t tell you how like this. Thank you for taking the time to do it right!!
I appreciate your response to the comment about your catalogues and the plastic bag they are wrapped in. It amazes me how common it is these days for people to take such strident and unilateral positions on complex subjects they really don’t understand. It’s unfortunate today that people associate anything plastic with global destruction. If this continual bashing of the plastic industry continues it will lead to an economic and societal regression that will affect us in many ways than we can understand. One example of the negative effects of ridding the planet of plastic packaging is how that has improved the food chain and led to the health of millions of people around the world. Today food is grown and transported all over the world and is packaged in plastic to prevent waste and damage which occurs during shipping. This is but one example of how the world is better off because of the use of plastic packaging. There are many, many, more examples that can be sited. When people apply a myopic view of plastic and scream “get rid of all plastic” they have no idea what they are talking about. I appreciate your commitment to educate and not push an agenda. We need more level headed commentary on ways to improve the way we do business without throwing the baby out with the bath water. Keep up the good work.
I work here and I didn’t know a lot of this. Made me proud to be associated with a company that tries this hard to be responsible.