Stay Warm with Cardboard Insulation

(photo from the Boston Globe)

As summer ends and fall begins, it’s time to start thinking about making sure that your home is properly winterized and ready for cooler weather. As always, packaging products can play a role. And, no, we don’t mean by starting a bonfire with cardboard in your living room. (That falls firmly into the “Do not try this at home … or anywhere else” category.)

A company out of Newton, Mass. is turning old cardboard into insulation. This is less expensive to produce than traditional insulation, and it also finds a creative way to recycle old corrugated paper! What’s more, cardboard insulation is more energy efficient than traditional cellulose. It’s a win-win-win!

UltraCell Insulation uses a technology that was developed at the University of Maine that turns old boxes into fluffy cellulose insulation. The biggest challenge with using cardboard for this is that it usually contains glue and other contaminants that need to be removed first. By pulping the cardboard into a wet goo — everything about that sounds gross — they’re able to strip off the old contaminants and add new fire-retardant chemicals.

Paper-based insulation isn’t anything new, but using corrugated paper is. Traditionally, newspapers were used to make cellulose. As more people have traded their newspapers for tablets and iPhones, the supply of paper has become too low in recent years. (And melting down old first generation iPads for insulation just doesn’t seem practical, does it?)

However, ecommerce sales continues to boom, which means that more and more cardboard is needed for those shipments. That means that corrugated paper is the logical choice to take over for newspapers in the insulation game. Problem solved.

Yet again, we find that there’s little that can’t be done with corrugated paper. Next week, we’re going to show you something incredible that we’ve done with it when we launch our new Ernest Cardboard Chaos video series!

Have you looked at your packaging’s performance lately? Is it time to try something new? Contact us today to discuss our creative solutions using corrugated paper, bubble wrap, wood pallets and more.