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Corrugated is the most recycled material behind glass and aluminum. It gets used over and over. Source: I work at a corrugated plant. If anyone involved with t

Corrugated is the most recycled material behind glass and aluminum. It gets used over and over. Source: I work at a corrugated plant. If anyone involved with the company sees this, we would love to manufacture this for US distribution. We're right in the middle of the country and own or own trucking company.

teh_klev 11y ago
Just curious, as someone in the corrugated industry, do you think they're pushing their luck with the price?
- FuriouslyAdrift 11y ago
  I sent the site over to our lead designer. He wants to crank one out on our prototyping table in the next couple of days to try it out. We may be able to figure pricing pretty easy. It's two medium-ish sheets of double wall so board cost probably is less than $50 even with the laminating. The rest is all the variable costs.. labor, production, transport, and the SGA. They could go lower but at the moment I imagine they don't have the scale to get the costs lower and their market isn't established yet. $250 is definitely cheaper than the standup desks we have - those things are pricey. Really anything marketed as office furniture is over priced. For home or SOHO, I think it's value is for more of a novelty or for making your office stand out. Kind of like those ridiculously over priced Herman Miller chairs...
- cableshaft 11y ago
  At $250, it's basically the same price as a wooden desk (in fact, I bought a tempered glass + wood desk at 40% of this desk's price) so they have to be pushing their luck there. If it really costs that much, then it's not such a great deal after all. If it was around $60...maybe $75... I would have seriously considered getting one, though.
radiorental 11y ago
I get that, I'm just comparing it to something that's manufactured & transported once. Cradle to grave. Just saying that because something is recyclable it is therefore good for the environment is marketing fluff. For example, ~18 uses of a ceramic cup = 1 'recyclable' paper cup. https://www.quora.com/Which-one-is-a-more-environment-friendly-solution-paper-cups-which-wastes-paper-or-washable-mugs-which-wastes-water-when-washing https://www.quora.com/Which-one-is-a-more-environment-friend...
- FuriouslyAdrift 11y ago
  Even the scrap that gets cut off and punched out is sucked into an air return that gets mashed into a big bundle. We ship those back to RockTenn for cash. Corrugated gets used over and over. "Corrugated is the single most recycled packaging material: 91 percent of corrugated produced in 2012 was recovered for recycling, and almost all of that material was recycled into new products." - http://www.corrugated.org/ViewPage.aspx?ContentID=38 http://www.corrugated.org/ViewPage.aspx?ContentID=38
  - andrewflnr 11y ago
    I think the point GP is trying to make is that durable goods can easily trounce recyclables in terms of utility/resources, no matter how efficient your recycling is.
    - FuriouslyAdrift 11y ago
      Like all systems, you have to measure all the inputs and outputs. Assuming a durable good is more efficient and/or safe than a remanufacturable one is exactly that: an assumption. It is frequently wrong. Non-recycled aluminum is horrible but recycled is a nearly perfect resource. Glass is about as good as it gets. That mug in the example might require horrible amounts of highly toxic inputs to be created and not be able to reclaim any of those input debts through recycling. By looking at the totality of the production, you come to realize that durable good is actually a really bad idea (all assumptions here in this specific instance are totally pulled out of my butt... do not take as a claim to accuracy... thanks)

teh_klev 11y ago

Just curious, as someone in the corrugated industry, do you think they're pushing their luck with the price?

FuriouslyAdrift 11y ago
I sent the site over to our lead designer. He wants to crank one out on our prototyping table in the next couple of days to try it out. We may be able to figure pricing pretty easy. It's two medium-ish sheets of double wall so board cost probably is less than $50 even with the laminating. The rest is all the variable costs.. labor, production, transport, and the SGA. They could go lower but at the moment I imagine they don't have the scale to get the costs lower and their market isn't established yet. $250 is definitely cheaper than the standup desks we have - those things are pricey. Really anything marketed as office furniture is over priced. For home or SOHO, I think it's value is for more of a novelty or for making your office stand out. Kind of like those ridiculously over priced Herman Miller chairs...
cableshaft 11y ago
At $250, it's basically the same price as a wooden desk (in fact, I bought a tempered glass + wood desk at 40% of this desk's price) so they have to be pushing their luck there. If it really costs that much, then it's not such a great deal after all. If it was around $60...maybe $75... I would have seriously considered getting one, though.

radiorental 11y ago

I get that, I'm just comparing it to something that's manufactured & transported once. Cradle to grave. Just saying that because something is recyclable it is therefore good for the environment is marketing fluff. For example, ~18 uses of a ceramic cup = 1 'recyclable' paper cup. https://www.quora.com/Which-one-is-a-more-environment-friendly-solution-paper-cups-which-wastes-paper-or-washable-mugs-which-wastes-water-when-washing https://www.quora.com/Which-one-is-a-more-environment-friend...

FuriouslyAdrift 11y ago
Even the scrap that gets cut off and punched out is sucked into an air return that gets mashed into a big bundle. We ship those back to RockTenn for cash. Corrugated gets used over and over. "Corrugated is the single most recycled packaging material: 91 percent of corrugated produced in 2012 was recovered for recycling, and almost all of that material was recycled into new products." - http://www.corrugated.org/ViewPage.aspx?ContentID=38 http://www.corrugated.org/ViewPage.aspx?ContentID=38
- andrewflnr 11y ago
  I think the point GP is trying to make is that durable goods can easily trounce recyclables in terms of utility/resources, no matter how efficient your recycling is.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 11y ago
    Like all systems, you have to measure all the inputs and outputs. Assuming a durable good is more efficient and/or safe than a remanufacturable one is exactly that: an assumption. It is frequently wrong. Non-recycled aluminum is horrible but recycled is a nearly perfect resource. Glass is about as good as it gets. That mug in the example might require horrible amounts of highly toxic inputs to be created and not be able to reclaim any of those input debts through recycling. By looking at the totality of the production, you come to realize that durable good is actually a really bad idea (all assumptions here in this specific instance are totally pulled out of my butt... do not take as a claim to accuracy... thanks)