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Aug 6, 2008

Get Trucking * USA - Is Plastic the Future After All?

Truckers, like everybody else that has to fill the gas tank, have been poleaxed by high oil and gas prices. One company thinks they could take a cue from backpackers facing uphill slogs: lighten your load

New York,NY,USA -The Wall Street Jpurnal, by Keith Johnson -August 4, 2008: -- That’s the pitch from iGPS, an Orlando, Fla.-based company that says plastic shipping pallets could do for the trucking industry what Congress so far hasn’t: provide relief from high gas prices. It’s the latest sign that high gas prices have even plastics companies jumping on the green bandwagon... The logic is straightforward. Most tractor trailers carry lots of heavy, wooden pallets, whether fully-loaded or not. That adds weight to every trip, lowers fuel economy, and means extra emissions of greenhouse gases. Replacing the wooden pallets with longer-lasting plastic shipping pallets could bring savings across the board, iGPS says... Now, the battlefield is heading inside the semis. Plastic pallets have several advantages over their wooden cousins, according to an independent study carried out by Environmental Resource Management. They last longer, they weigh less, and they don’t need paint or chemical treatments. Since a plastic pallet can easily handle 100 trips—versus two trips for a single-use wooden pallet—the difference in greenhouse-gas emissions is stark: 45,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide for the plastic pallets, compared with 300,000 kilograms for the wooden pallets. Most importantly, says iGPS, you don’t have to chop down trees to get plastic pallets: A Virginia Tech study found that 40% of the U.S. hardwood harvest goes to wooden pallet production... But plastic pallets are a petrochemical creation—all plastic. The top-of-the-line pallets use virgin plastic, which isn’t the most environmentally-friendly. The bulk of the emissions from the plastic pallets comes during production, rather than daily use. To get around that, pallet makers have launched a couple of greener blends, from 15% recycled to 100% recycled plastic...

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