Retail Sleeve offers plastic-free alternative to pots

As a sustainable alternative to the plastic pot at retail, Blackmore Company has developed the Air Tray Technologies Retail system. Working with partners Ellepot, Schur, and Van Schaik Rack Solutions, they focused on four key areas to create a sustainable solution.

Creator Lars Jensen of Blackmore states the industry cannot have a sustainable solution by only focusing on the green aspect. "We have to look at the four key areas: improving labor efficiency, improving costs, reducing carbon emissions, and reducing plastic waste."

"When we look at efficiency and reduction, we also create cost reduction - meaning we do more with less. This is what we have learned over the past seven years developing this system: we can, in fact, do more with less."

Grower in the driver's seat
"With our Retail System, we have developed a system that not only puts the grower in the driver's seat, where the grower belongs, we created a system that ensures better success rate for the consumer, helping drive the consumer back to the store buying more plants as we have not in the past with the flat experience leaving the consumer with the burden of disposing of the inefficient, expensive plastic."

"We must remember that we are selling an experience … our industry needs to put more focus on the consumer that does not buy plants. Today the focus is on the people who care deeply about plants … the market potential of the ones that don't purchase is much greater, and focusing on delivering a positive and lasting experience to this large group will drive them to buy and come back to buy more" says Lars Jensen "it's all about making it easy to be successful and making the last experience a positive one."

Educated consumers
According to Lars, the industry has to remember that our consumers are educated. "Researchers estimate the world has produced more than 8.3 billion tons of virgin plastics, and only 9% of this has been recycled, with 79% ending up in landfills or the natural environment, and the rest incinerated. Pots, flats, and cell packs produced for the nursery and greenhouse industries use an estimated 320 to 408m pounds of plastic annually."

"The plastic system is broken, and as members of the original green industry, we owe it to ourselves to be a part of the solution to minimize our contribution to this problem."

This is the opportunity that Blackmore is taking together with their Retail Sleeve, developed with Schur packaging group utilizing the Ellepot paper pot.

Eliminating plastics
"At Blackmore Company, we have adopted a mindset that is focused on eliminating the plastics we don't need, innovating to ensure that the plastics we do need are reusable, recyclable, or compostable, and circulating the plastics we do use to keep them in the economy and out of the environment," says Lars. 

Today, they are proud to launch the RootZone Sleeve, a sustainable alternative to the plastic pot at retail. "Eliminating the plastic pot at retail, a delivery vehicle that is nonessential for most after purchase and is thrown away, will significantly reduce millions of pounds of plastic entering the waste stream annually while lowering the overall cost for the grower," Lars says.

Fully customizable
The RootZone sleeve expands the space available to communicate and differentiate a plant offering. It is a fully customizable system, offering up to 8 color printing on demand that seamlessly connects to automation tailored to each grower operation's marketing and design requirements. The RootZone Sleeve shows customers that growers care about the planet by reducing plastic at retail by 95%.

See the RootZone Sleeve at: MANTS Jan 11-13 booth 1119, TPIE Jan 18-20 booth 1925, IPM Essen Jan 24-27 Stand GA-2