Here at The HC Companies, we believe sustainability is essential to ensure that our customers and our business improve the world as collective stewards of the earth, its citizens, and the products we develop and promote. In addition, designing more environmentally conscious products and making them accessible and affordable to more people benefits our shared economy by normalizing those products and creating demand in the market.
Our Sustainability VisionThe HC Companies’ latest sustainable alternative to help advance our industry is called OceanChoice™ – a responsible, reliable resin material comprised entirely of ocean-bound plastic. OceanChoice™ achieves the same results as post-consumer recycled materials. The differentiator is the location where they are being collected, dramatically decreasing the risk of dangerous plastics entering our oceans.
Plastic waste identified as having the potential to be swept into our oceans is considered ocean-bound plastic, unlike recycled plastics, typically collected at the curb by waste management companies. They reside approximately 31 miles (or 50 km) from high-risk coastlines, whose communities cannot create and maintain recycling programs or regulate landfills. It’s important to note that ocean-bound plastics are not pulled directly from the ocean.
They are often manually recovered, sorted, cleaned, and eventually restored to raw resin material ready for reuse. Ocean-bound plastic is usually composed of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), considered the strongest of all plastics. It preserves the ability to be recycled multiple times and reduces the increasing demand to produce more virgin resin material, which only adds to society’s existing plastic waste problem.
The advantages for growers and the environment of using HC’s OceanChoice™ plastic in the manufacturing of horticulture containers include the following:
OceanChoice™ plastic is currently available – off-the-shelf – in two popular nursery container sizes: TFR001G0 and TFR002G1. Other greenhouse and nursery containers (thermoformed or injection molded only) are available in OceanChoice™ plastic and can be used as-is up to 100%. For more information, please contact our customer service team.
HC’s OceanChoice™ plastic functions like traditional resin. Therefore, there is no impact regarding the available colors or printing capabilities of the horticulture containers currently produced by HC’s thermoformed and injection molded manufacturing. NOTE – branded container programs can be manufactured using HC’s OceanChoice™ plastics.
OceanChoice™ plastic is manufactured by certified suppliers directly at the source to professionalize the collection stream and manufacture it into usable products. Certified suppliers must satisfy several criteria before they can be considered a supplier, with a recertification process based on a proprietary scorecard required annually. Additionally, certified suppliers must guarantee that materials are collected and handled appropriately, that employees and contractors are compensated and treated fairly, and that no child labor is involved in the handling process. Credible 3rd party audits certify our supplier partner meets these standards.
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