Sustainability Perks of Pre-Portioned Chemicals

As more businesses focus on reducing their carbon footprint, manufacturers recommend that distributors promote the sustainability advantages of switching to pre-measured pouches.   

“Sustainability is improved by reduced transportation costs, storage and handling advantages, less waste and recyclable packaging,” notes Chambers, whose company’s pouches completely dissolve in water and use 100 percent recyclable secondary packaging.  

By adopting pre-measured concentrates, customers can shed the size and weight of traditional chemical containers and begin to tackle the environmental impacts and costs of transportation.  

“You’re not shipping water, so that supports sustainability and allows you to move large volumes of product from one place to another with less shipping costs — which is really meaningful today,” adds Gilliam. “You can fit 132 quarts of product into the size of a shoebox.” 

Bill Bestmann, vice president, sales and marketing for Stearns Packaging, works with customers to calculate the reduction in shipments and related costs. For instance, a shipment of pre-portioned window cleaner makes 48 quarts of product and has a total weight of less than 8 pounds, while a shipment of window cleaner in 48-quart bottles weighs 120 pounds. 

“With RTU products, not only do you have the extra weight of the bottles and the water, but you have the wasted bottles that go into the environment,” says Bestmann. “With our products, we advocate refilling the trigger-spray quart bottle with the concentrate, adding your own water at the point of use and then reusing the bottle.” 

Eliminating RTU plastic bottles means less waste going into the landfill. While some concentrates are packaged in 100 percent dissolvable pods that do not contain any micro plastics, others are sealed in recyclable tear-open pouches. 

“Our product packaging is low-density polyethylene, but it has only 1.5 to 2.5 grams of plastic per pouch,” says Bestmann. “Conventional high-density polyethylene jugs and buckets and even the modules plugged into dispenser systems are dubiously recyclable.” 

Despite some obvious advantages to these pre-portioned chemicals, not all customers are instantly sold. To ease into the transition, manufacturers share that they are open to working with distributors and customers to test drive the feasibility of switching to pre-portioned chemicals. This can include distributing samples and monitoring a complete process shift for a week or longer.  

Chambers acknowledges the vital role distributors play when it comes to assessing cleaning outcomes, as well as the economic viability of implementing pre-portioned chemicals. 

“Distributors are an important component to analyze all the steps — from ordering and delivering to using and disposing of empty containers — that highlight the cost-saving potential for the customer,” he says. 

Kassandra Kania is a freelance writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is a frequent contributor to Sanitary Maintenance. 

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Bottom-Line Benefits of Pre-portioned Chemicals