A sound environmental and ethical choice...
Manufacturing
AC planters are based on fibreglass, a composite of plastic resins and glass fibres. Glass is of course made from silica, the most common mineral on Earth. Typically, an AC planter is only 2-3mm thick, with the plastic element only one third of this. Compare this to an injection moulded plastic product which needs to be double walled and you realise that AC planters contain at most a tenth of the plastic of these.
AC planters are made by hand at room temperature using a chemical process and the only machinery required are hand tools for the finishing process. Compare this to plastics and metals where massive inputs of heat and machinery are required and you quickly see the energy inputs into AC planter production are miserly. Even ceramics require machinery to extract the clay and huge furnaces to power the kilns – so it’s no suprise in Asia to find these placed nearby forests as a plentiful source of wood.
Ethical Production
Our AC planters are manufactured in the UK under European Health and Safety Legislation. Our craftsmen are necessarily well paid and subject to regular health checks. All waste is disposed of under environmental legislation. By contrast, most other planters sold in Europe to professional landscapers have been sourced in Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, India and China. Can we be sure equivalent standards are in place?
Carbon Footprint
Made in the UK and ultra lightweight, AC planters travel far fewer miles and require less energy per mile than much heavier clay and metal imports. As detailed above, the energy used in production is also minimal.
Recycling
Firstly, all our AC planters can be returned to us for repair and refinishing to an as new condition. The only reason to ever throw one of these planters away is if the design has become so obsolete it is unusable.
Should disposal be the only option then full recycling is now possible thanks to processes developed for the automotive industry. Glass fibres can be reclaimed chemically from the waste and reused in insulation products. Also the product can be ground down and is commercially used both as an element of new road construction and in industrial roofing products.
It’s worth pointing out that much of the glass fibre matting used in production of AC planters is itself made from recycled glass!
