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Proposal: Pallet Wrap Alternative

For use at Amazon Fresh AVA Cap Hill Store's food donation pallets

H. Peter Fink

Date:

5/23/2022

⁠

From: Peter Fink, Free Food For All Seattle

To:

Amazon Fresh store - AVA Capitol Hill⁠

610 E Pike St Seattle, WA

Proposal:

To purchase a

Pallet Wrapz®⁠

4’ Reusable Pallet Wrap Cover to replace plastic shrink wrap used for the transport of pallets by Amazon Fresh AVA Cap Hill up a small incline slope when providing pallets of food for donation.

—Cost: $169.00

Current Situation:

When volunteers with Free Food For All visit the

Amazon Fresh store - AVA Capitol Hill⁠

to pick up donated food items on Saturday mornings, they enter through a loading doc with a slight downwards incline. There, they request the pallets (with donated food stored in yellow bins) to be brought out to the sidewalk for sorting and loading into the Free Food For All truck.

Workers remove the pallet(s) from refrigeration and bring to the loading doc. Because of safety concerns, workers are forced to spend an average of 3-4min wrapping pallets with plastic wrap before using a motorized pallet jack to transport the wrapped pallet less than 20ft up and outside to the sidewalk.

Once there, volunteers or workers must spend 30sec-1min unwrapping and discarding the plastic film used to secure the pallet. There are often two pallets which are wrapped and transported sequentially.

Problems:

A 18”x1000' Hand Stretch Film Roll can wrap on average

8-13⁠

pallets and costs around

$19/roll⁠

. This means, each pallet costs on average $1.50-2.00 to wrap with plastic

Plastic film

isn’t fully recyclable⁠

and its production and destruction is

highly toxic⁠

, producing carcinogenic dioxins in the process

“In the US, $3.0B dollars are spent each year on shrink warp with projected growth of 5% annually. This results in 1.0B pounds of petroleum based resin used in manufacturing,

77M pounds of wasted materials⁠

(95% is expected to end up in landfills), 450M kg of CO2.”

Alternatives:

Numerous tried and tested

alternatives to pallet shrink wrap⁠

exist.

Cargo nets were used to secure cargo for centuries before the the invention of plastic.

⁠

P.C. Net™⁠

is a modern alternative to plastic wrap in the style of the cargo net but updated with modern technology.

⁠

In a similar vain

PalletPAL Reusable Load Straps⁠

can be used for strapping loads. However, they may be less time efficient and require bending and maneuvering.

⁠

Aero Rubber Pallet Bands⁠

can also be used to help secure loads from horizontal shifting. They aren’t ideal for securing high density loads at inclines however.

⁠

“Pallet Wrapz® are an eco-friendly reusable alternative to plastic stretch film made of heavy duty ventilated and breathable mesh or opaque vinyl. These reusable wraps are designed for 2500+ uses which typically averages 3-4 years.”

⁠

They come in a 2’ tall, a 4’ tall and a 6’ft tall size with a $169.00 price tag for a 4’tall

Justification:

I recommend purchasing one 4’ Pallet Wrapz® Reusable Pallet Wrap Cover, as a proof of concept with the potential to purchase more for store use later.

Plastic Saved:

Pallet Wrapz® estimates that “one 4' Pallet Wrapz will save at least 500 lbs of plastic stretch film waste going to American landfills annually.”

Time Saved:

Reusable pallet wraps reduce time needed for wrapping and unwrapping to less than a fourth of conventional plastic wrap

Money Saved:

Using conventional plastic it costs on average

$1.50-$2.00⁠

to wrap a pallet. After a year (~50 weekends) of bringing on average 1.5 pallets up the small incline, the cost of wrapping with plastic is already greater than the cost of a Pallet Wrapz®

Over its lifetime, a Pallet Wrapz® costs 5 cents per pallet: an reduction in price of 30x!

Worker Safety and Comfort Prioritized:

Workers are not required to bend their back to wrap pallets

Conventional plastic wrap can be a tripping hazard

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