CASE STUDY No. 9608
KEY WORDS PACKING MATERIALS, CORRUGATED, REUSE
Corru-Fill/Corru-Shredder
2731 NE 14th Street
Pompano Beach, FL 33062
Contact: Norman Levine, owner. Tel: 954-942-7873
Summary
Incoming corrugated boxes (OCC) are converted into packaging filler for outgoing freight, saving the company $12,000 a year in polystyrene peanuts and OCC disposal costs--and creating a new profit center for the business.
Action
Norman Levine founded NDL Products, Inc., in 1974. The company (which Levine has since sold) manufactures and distributes products for the sports and fitness industries. Raw materials and components arrive from suppliers in corrugated boxes; finished products are shipped to customers in new boxes--some 250 to 400 cartons a day.
Before 1992, incoming corrugated boxes were disposed of, and polystyrene packing peanuts were used to fill voids in outbound boxes of products. "I was tired of all this corrugated going to the dumpster," Levine told an interviewer at the time. "I also wanted to stop using the polysty-rene peanut packing that was making a mess of our warehouse." The initial solution was to purchase a commercial cardboard shredder and chop the OCC boxes into pieces small enough to serve as packing material, replacing the polystyrene peanuts. But the pieces were too large, had a ragged look, and were full of small particles and paper dust. Customers complained. Levine and his associates then designed and built a new prototype which they called a Corru-Shredder, specifically to chop OCC pieces into uniform strips. The machine is 3 ft. wide, 8 ft. long, weighs about 400 pounds, and is mounted on wheels. It operates on 110 volts AC.
The operator prepares the OCC feedstock by flattening the cartons. Then, whole boxes are slit into strips, generally 4 to 6 inches wide, using a table saw. The width of this first cut determines the length of a finished piece of packing material. Next, the wide strips of OCC are fed into the Corru-Shredder for slicing into uniform, 1/8-inch-wide strips. The finished material, called Corru-Fill, passes through a strong air current to remove dust, and it falls into a bulk container. As the container fills, the contents are sprayed with a biodegradable insecticide in an alcohol-based carrier. Machine maintenance includes daily oiling and occasional sharpening of the four shear blades contained within. On an 8-hour shift with two operators, the machine can produce about 1,500 lbs. (1,000 cubic feet) of Corru-Fill, according to Levine.
Payback
By avoiding disposal of OCC and the purchase of polystyrene peanuts, the company recovered its cost to build the prototype Corru-Shredder in about 10 months. And since the machine was able to produce more Corru-Fill than needed for company shipping needs, there was a surplus to sell in the local market. Assuming a free supply of OCC, Corru-Fill is very competitive with polystyrene peanuts and is a superior packing material, Levine says, because it prevents the product from shifting during shipment.
Additional Waste Prevented
For equal volumes, chopped OCC is significantly heavier than foam polystyrene.
However, when Corru-Fill is dumped loose around products in cartons, the exposed
corrugations on the thin strips of OCC cause adjacent pieces to catch on one another,
forming a sort of lattice, Levine says. The many air spaces thus created tend to negate
weight differences between OCC and polystyrene, as well as reduce the required volume of
packing material.