For a long time, environmental activists and organizations have talked about the impact of plastic products on the environment. It is high time to start changing our behavior and Reval Stone is also contributing to a better future. Previously we have discussed the environmental impact of producing natural stone products in our blog post titled “5 reasons to prefer natural stone“.
Small steps for the benefit of nature
We also keep nature’s well-being in mind when packaging the samples available in our online shop – with the aim of reducing the burden on nature small steps at a time. Below we will describe several small nuances which jointly give a bigger step towards avoiding the situation’s worsening.
However, if you wish to get to know more about our samples in general, we recommend reading our blog post “Samples give a good overview of the products“.
Packaging of delicate natural stone
We won’t get tired of pointing out to our customers the surprising fact that natural stone is a delicate material that must be handled with care (whether it’s limestone or dolomite). This is the reason why we put a lot of emphasis on good packaging and why we consider packaging and sending out samples like preparing a present for a dear friend. This means that we carefully think through all the steps and we strive to get a very nice result!
This image shows the cardboard box we designed especially for packaging samples (this box fits three samples). But if you wish to order samples of all our materials, we will put the samples in two boxes. Our product range includes limestone Reval (Reval antique with brushed surface and Reval honed with the honed surface) and three Estonian dolomites (Kaarma, Orgita, and Selgase). To the back of all samples, we will fix a durable sticker with information both about our company and about that specific material (name of the stone and the finishing).
Sheep wool instead of plastic film
To prevent the samples in one box from touching each other, we separate them with a sheet of cardboard. Probably out of convenience and habit many online shops still use bubble wrap to package their products. While it should be impossible not to notice the news describing the excessive use of film and plastic and its impact on nature. In order to reduce such problems we have replaced plastic wrap with bubble wool.
Every year 200 000 tonnes of waste sheep wool gets burned or buried in Europe (that is 90% of wool). Estonian company Woola has taken to heart to improve this situation – in addition to using up the waste wool, it also reduces the use of bubble wrap. This innovative product by Woola suits perfectly also for the packaging of our natural stone samples. The wool reduces the movement of samples in the package and softens possible blows. With the help of Woola’s modern product, Reval Stone too can contribute to reducing plastic waste and give value to waste wool (a resource that would otherwise be left unused).
One more way to avoid plastic film
The next step, for which people often out of habit still use plastic film, is putting the boxes into envelopes. However, this too has had several alternatives for a while. Reval Stone puts the boxes with samples in envelopes lined with paper pulp – another easy way to replace materials produced from non-renewable natural resources.
Only in the very last stage of packaging do we use film – in the interest of safer delivery of our products. We use tape to fix the set of boxes firmly together. This enables us to avoid the movement of packages and guarantee as compact and safe packaging as possible.
The package is on its way
After all these steps we will finalize the delivery – we will add the recipient’s information and fragile goods labels to the package. Thanks to this your package will not be sorted on the sorting line. This significantly reduces the risk of the samples breaking during delivery.
We hope that opening the package is as exciting for you as it was for us to put it together. When packaging the samples we will give everything to make sure that the goods are intact when they reach you and that everything in the package is exactly what you ordered from our online shop. We will give everything to make sure that when you get the goods your weekday will at least for a moment be more like the holidays – that opening the package will feel like opening a gift.
Happy holidays
This is the last blog post of the year and we wish all our readers happy holidays!
