On the eve of Earth Day, we wanted to share a few updates on our progress at Cruz Foam.
Since our inception in 2017, we’ve been on a mission to revolutionize the packaging industry by introducing circular materials that replace non-sustainable, single-use plastic products in the global supply chain. We follow nature to find solutions in the natural world with the properties necessary to solve modern problems while returning to the earth for a net positive impact.
As our customers evaluate their sustainability goals along with their requirements for protective and insulative product packaging, we aim to offer a new level of thoughtfulness and thoroughness in our solutions. Our approach involves tackling the most formidable challenges first, product by product.
“Finding earth-compatible materials that are performance *and* price-competitive opens a new frontier in the effort to finally end plastic pollution of all types. Cruz Foam is demonstrating how this is possible by finding new ways to process chitin (one of the most common biopolymers in nature) through a wide variety of new commercial expressions.” – Tom Chi, Founding Partner, At One Ventures
According to a report published in 2020 by the World Economic Forum, plastic foam
waste is one of the biggest environmental challenges we face today, with a significant portion of this waste coming from packaging materials used in e-commerce and “last mile” delivery. By focusing our efforts on these areas, we can work towards mitigating the harmful effects of foam waste and promoting a more sustainable future.
To achieve this, we’re focused on developing tailored solutions that replace plastic foams individually. By prioritizing the most challenging problems, we can make significant strides towards a more sustainable future, starting with the materials that have the most significant negative impact, such as plastic foams and bubble wrap used for protection and insulation in packaging.
As a part of our goal to produce highly sustainable products, we have just completed our first peer-reviewed LCA (life cycle assessment) and published an Environmental White Paper that includes the results of the LCA along with several other tests and data regarding our products. Please visit the new Impact page on the website to download the white paper.
If you are unfamiliar, an LCA is a universally recognized science and data-based tool used to evaluate the environmental impact of a product or process throughout its entire life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials to its disposal.
The goal of an LCA is to identify and quantify the environmental impacts of a product or process comprehensively and objectively, taking into account all relevant stages of its life cycle, including:
● Raw material extraction and processing
● Manufacturing and assembly
● Packaging and distribution
● Use and maintenance
● End-of-life disposal
By analyzing these life cycle stages, an LCA helps identify the environmental “hotspots” of a product or process where the most significant environmental impacts occur. This information can inform stakeholder decision-making and point to opportunities for improving the sustainability of a product or process.
Each test we perform on our foam is meant to ensure that our environmental footprint is no more than that of average food waste and considerably less than current benchmarks in the packaging industry. For example, our LCA allowed us to not only identify areas for further mitigation within our supply chain but also prove Cruz Foam has a substantially lower footprint than many packaging items in the market today.
Calculating the environmental footprint of Cruz Foam through LCA is a vital part of our sustainability program, but it is only one part of the story. We must test our product in real-world scenarios like composting, recycling, and anaerobic digestion to ensure that our products minimize impacts on the environment and contribute to the circular economy through use in secondary markets for soil, paper, and energy.
We strive every day to exceed the environmental gold standard by creating a better product and a better world and to help our customers meet their sustainability goals while supporting the high performance and brand satisfaction requirements of Cruz Foam.
For more information or to download the white paper, visit cruzfoam.com/impact.
