“Reduce, reuse and recycle” has become an environmental mantra, because humanity must scale back the impact of consumption on the planet.
Crates – sometimes referred to as “returnable transit packaging” – help businesses go way beyond recycling.
By reusing crates for transporting goods, they are doing their bit for the planet, and benefitting the bottom line.
How crate use helps the planet
Ditching single-use plastics and easily damaged materials, such as cardboard or wood, will slash waste and reduce the impact of your logistics.
This is where robust, long-life, plastic crates come into their own. All our products – for hire or sale – are designed to be used repeatedly.
Using stackable plastic crates means you can also use all your storage and transport space as efficiently as possible - so there’s no money or energy wasted on journeys. When they aren’t being used, they fit together to save space.
Plastic crate hire
Renting rather than buying is good for the planet, because it means fewer crates need to be made in the first place. It also gives customers flexibility in any situation where your needs fluctuate, such as classroom or shop storage across a school year. That keeps your costs down too.
An alternative to moving boxes
Whatever your good intentions about passing on a clutch of cardboard moving boxes, they often end up in the rubbish and recycling. We hire out removal crates, so you can avoid this. The plastic crates are easy to assemble – forget reams of brown tape – and when you don’t need them anymore, they stack neatly before you return them to us.
Office removal crates
We also tailor crates for office equipment and files. That means you can be super-efficient with how you use your transport space. The protection your equipment gets from robust plastic crates will prevent wasteful damage and reduces the need for single-use plastic bubble wrap.
Food transport crates
Our crates reduce waste by replacing single-use packaging, and by protecting the food they are carrying.
For example, our PB2 rigid pallet box is a robust, re-usable and hygienic container, designed for carrying large loads of produce. This pallet box also provides a lower cost-per-trip than single-use packaging. Online shoppers now are well used to receiving their online shopping crates, not plastic bags, contributing to a culture change.
There is an obvious issue with reusing crates, particularly for food – hygiene.
Washing and cleaning crates uses water and energy. Our washing equipment is highly efficient and tailored to each type of crate, reducing the power needed. Plastic crates are more hygienic than wood pallets, so are easier to clean and less likely to get damaged. All our cleaning products and processes are environmentally friendly, so we’re not putting harmful pollutants down the drain.
Efficient delivery
At phs we work hard to reduce our own carbon emissions. We work out the most efficient route possible for deliveries of clean crates back to customers to keep our own emissions to a minimum. This efficiency also means we consistently meet our next-day delivery promise.
Helping the planet will require radical culture change in society. It may seem like small thing overall, but with pallets and crates you can vastly reduce your plastic use.