Liberty Intercept Blog

Need some new ideas for recycling at home? Here are some of the ways we reuse and recycle materials:

1. Cut the legs and seat of worn out sweatpants into squares or rectangles for washing the car, dusting furniture, wiping the bathroom mirrors, cleaning windows, or whatever other cleaning chore you have. Worn bath or dish towels can serve the same purpose - all can be machine washed until they're no longer useful.

Over the course of several chats with the head of the Intercept Technology Group, Keith Donaldson (video series to be released soon), we learned about the groundbreaking work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer and consultant. Dr. Deming had many skills, including electrical engineering, playing the drums, singing, and writing sacred music. His legacy is impressive, especially his work developing new quality control protocols for manufacturing.

When it comes to packaging, you have a lot to consider. Materials, design, cost, and all kinds of other considerations come into play when deciding which types of packaging would best suit your needs. When you're shipping metal parts and other costly items, or when you're looking for packaging that offers corrosion resistance, resistance to moisture, and/or product and worker-safe solutions, you have even more considerations to make.

Bringing a new product to market requires a great idea that fulfills a need, as well as the perfect packaging to convey your message in succinct and appealing fashion to your target audience. Given the plethora of vendors, materials, design options, legislation, and environmental issues to be considered,  packaging a product can be a daunting and expensive task. The value of experience to achieve success cannot be minimized.

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers is a group that supports manufacturing through the sharing of information, connections via local chapters and technical communities, trade-show style events, publications and more. Boasting a global reach of over half a million and spanning all manufacturing industries, SME is an important player in influencing new technology, particularly in the fields of aerospace and defense, medical, motorized vehicles, and clean energy.

The word “sustainable” means many things to many people. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition provides a common vision and a framework of guidelines toward the improvement of packaging. According to the SPC, their definition has been widely adopted throughout the packaging industry.

We can talk about better packaging, shipping and storage, and decreased carbon footprint any day. It’s summer, and I’d like to share something different, a more personal story:

My wife and I were on one of my favorite beaches recently, Nantasket Beach in Hull, MA.  My fondness is based not only on memories of lifeguarding Nantasket in the mid to late 70s, but also because it’s a public beach where on any given hot day, thousands of sunbathers will visit, so it has a bit of a honky tonk edge.  You can people-watch all day long at Nantasket, observing all sorts of characters and the interplay between fellow sun worshipers.

I had the opportunity to hear the vice president of a major computer company speak about reliability and the tactics they use to achieve increased product reliability.  Because human nature strives to keep things the same and views change as uncomfortable, he emphasized that the change process was long and arduous. This VP was brought in like the new sheriff arriving in Dodge City. It was apparent he had complete executive support to change this company’s operation and design systems; in doing so he would enact a change in its culture. It worked famously. Their return has been extraordinary; they achieved tremendous increases in product reliability which led to lowered cost of goods on every level of the corporation and a stronger reputation amongst their customers.

Manufacturers looking to contain costs often consider outdoor storage for unused items: large machinery and vehicles are often stored outdoors so precious warehouse space can be reserved for other items. With the right packaging, outdoor storage is the perfect cost-saving solution for many companies.

Having worked with Intercept Technology protective plastic packaging for 15 years, one of the many benefits we depict about the Intercept product line is that it does not contain volatiles. Intercept packaging is volatile free. This emphasis is important, in part, to differentiate Intercept from common corrosion protection packaging materials that do use volatiles.  Reading a recent article on the pollution sources of our lakes and streams was a revelation and provided impetus to explain:  what is the significance of the term “volatile free”; what’s the big deal?