CAN CORRUGATED BOARD IMPROVE THE SUSTAINABILITY OF MUSIC FESTIVALS?

Corrugated tents are making waves at music festivals around the globe.

Can corrugated board improve the sustainability of music festivals? As the sustainability movement picks up steam, consumers, organizations, and corporations are looking into new ways to improve their environmental impact. A variety of new materials have come forth, but a long-lived, reliable resource is making a comeback. Packaging experts and innovative startups alike turn to corrugated fiberboard for sustainable solutions.

Music festivals

Music festivals are the newest concern, attracting 32 million eco-conscious individuals in the US every year to descend upon an area and then abandon it a few days later. The environmental damage of all the litter and plastic packaging is largely forgotten and unacknowledged. The byproduct of an awesome spectacle of music and entertainment. The significant factor of the ecological footprint of music festivals are the short-use tents that get left behind to rot.

The Dutch startup, Kartent, has a solution that involves an old friend: corrugated board. Studies show that 25% of tents used at festivals are discarded afterwards, all of which pose a threat to the environment. So they have created a tent for festival-goers made of corrugated board and designed for ease-of-use and maximum sustainability. Their tents are 100% recyclable into other corrugated material products at their warehouses in Amsterdam, creating a sustainable system and eradicating the waste of canvas, metal, and plastic tents.

Corrugated fiberboard’s environmental advantages

The environmental benefits of corrugated material are widely documented. It’s no surprise that startups are looking to utilize the resource for other purposes. Packaging Digest broke down 5 primary advantages corrugated board has over other packaging materials. It’s recyclable, made with a high percentage of recycled content via an efficient and sustainable process. Any given corrugated packaging can consist of between 70-100% recycled content.

It’s renewable, predominantly coming from sustainably sourced forests and created from wood chips to ensure an efficient manufacturing chain. It’s reusable, depending on the product, much of corrugated packaging can be repurposed thanks to its durability. Additionally, corrugated board is efficiently produced, requiring less energy to manufacture. Packaging Digest points to optimized packaging designs that utilize corrugated to reduce the overall amount of material required for protection. Eliminating waste from the supply chain.

Our designs

Corrugated board is central to EPE USA’s innovative and sustainable packaging designs. We create packaging solutions that significantly reduce material waste and replace unsustainable polystyrene (EPS) with sustainable and 100% recyclable materials, such as corrugated fiberboard. By combining corrugated board with 100% curbside recyclable class four (4) or class five (5) polyethylene or polypropylene cushioning materials, we are able to utilize the exact amount and density of materials needed to provide optimized protection for your product in any transit mode. By designing adhesive-free solutions, we are able to create product packaging that is 100% curbside recyclable.

Our EP3 designs are uniquely optimized for each product to ensure minimum material usage, highest possible protection, maximum cost efficiency, and lowest environmental impact. By using predominantly corrugated board and placing cushioning material we cut back on volumetric size. This dramatically reduces the footprint of each package. Like Kartent, we are taking a traditional way of packaging and reinventing it for the future.

Talk to one of our professionals today about how you can replace polystyrene packaging with other solutions that are 100% recyclable, sustainable, and optimized for your supply chain.