ARMOR CARES ABOUT BEING
GREEN
THE SUSTAINABILITY
PARADOX At ARMOR, we don’t claim to have it all figured out when it comes to truly green rust prevention or rust removal methods or products. What we do know is that we’re a company dedicated to developing and selling only those products that meet our clean, safe, easy-to-use & green standards. There are few clear-cut, across-the-board answers, but in our pursuit to proudly fly the green flag, we found occasions when we might actually be doing more harm than good. This is what we call “The Sustainability Paradox.” If we dig a little deeper we often find that the sustainable choice, isn’t always the obvious choice. Take a look at a couple surprising examples.
THE COFFEE CUP CONUNDRUM The good news is reusable cups save over 1 million disposable cups every day from the landfill. The bad news is over 2.5 billion disposable cups are still discarded globally each year. Anything that brings that number down is a good thing, but first we need to know the whole story to make sure we actually are doing the “green” thing.
THE HIDDEN COSTS OF “GREEN” REUSABLE CUPS First, production costs are not comparable – single-serve disposables are cheaper to make than their reusable counterparts. Reusable cups made of plastic, stainless steel, glass and ceramic, use an enormous amount of natural resources over the course of their life-cycle – both in their production and upkeep. In the end, a reusable cup’s “green status” hinges on how many you own (less is more) and its frequent, repeated, long-term use.
WHICH GROCERY BAG IS GREEN? When reusable grocery “totes for life” arrived they were meant to replace disposable plastic bags, but after closer investigation the results were surprising. Upon comparison, the carbon footprint when producing disposable plastic bags; paper bags; thicker plastic totes and what many consider the most “eco-friendly” of them all, the cotton tote, were eye-poppingly different! Any effort to reduce the 100 billion disposable bags that Americans use each year is a smart “green” choice, right? Not always. Reusable options aren’t all rainbows and unicorns. To officially reach “green status,” you must follow a couple golden rules: limit the amount you own and use them consistently -over and over again.
THE HIDDEN COSTS OF “GREEN” REUSABLE BAGS Production costs are not comparable. The production of single-use plastic grocery bags is dirt cheap when compared to the expense of cotton totes. When you look at the life-cycle of a cotton tote it’s easy to understand the disparity by the vast expenditure of natural resources to produce and maintain it. You must plant, water, fumigate, harvest and convert the cotton into material to construct the tote. Lastly, we can’t forget all of the resources needed to maintain the tote over its life-cycle – with 7,100 uses it will need to be washed and dried. Whew, it all adds up!
WHAT IS THE SUSTAINABILITY BOTTOM LINE?
Sometimes the so-called “sustainable choice” isn’t so sustainable after all. It gets harder and harder to navigate these new “green” roads. The path isn’t always easy to see, but at ARMOR we try to make the best decisions we can for our customers, our families and our environment.
#1REDUCE
USE LESS WASTE LE
The #1 recommendation of the United States EPA in Management Hierarchy is source reduction or wast In 2005, ARMOR was the first rust prevention VCI m innovative engineering to bring multi-layer (co-extr market. ARMOR debuted the DEFENDER™, a three-l tegically places VCI on the inside layer, closest to the unique barriers, allowing the film to be down-gauge 30% savings of materials that are never used or intr Less CO2. Less storage. Less transportation. Less wa
2REMOVE
3RECYCLED
4RECYC
Hundreds of thousands of pounds of metal have been saved by using ARMOR’s Metal Rescue® to remove rust. Metal Rescue® Rust Remover BATH is a water-based rust remover designed to remove rust from iron and steel. It doesn’t use harsh chemicals or acids; just safe, water-based rust removal.
ARMOR utilizes recycled content whenever possible, without sacrificing performance. As recycled resin technology continues to improve, recycling gains more ground each year. Using recycled content makes sense from both an environmental and business mindset.
It’s the most effective, environmentally friendly, biodegradable, nonflammable, fume free rust remover on the market.
ARMOR has a minimum of 30% post-industrial recycled content in all of its ARMOR POLY® VCI Films including the DEFENDER™.
Recycling is a go positively impac ment. It reduces caused by waste the use of virgin Vast amounts of needed to make from raw materi recycling require energy and pres natural resource
Nearly all ARMO recyclable includ WRAP® Papers an POLY® Films.
S. ESS.
n their Waste te prevention. manufacturer to use ruded) films to the layer film that strae metal part, and added ged by 25-30%. That’s 25 roduced into the environment. aste.
CLABLE
5RENEWABLE
ood way to ct the environs pollution e and negates n raw materials. f energy are e products ials, while es way less serves our es.
ARMOR WRAP® Papers are made from wood, which is a renewable and recyclable natural resource. Due to increased use of sustainable resources, the demand for paper in the USA is growing year-after-year.
OR products are ding ARMOR nd ARMOR
• 65% of paper used in the USA was recovered for recycling
• 2.5 billion trees are planted in the USA alone each year (millions more grow naturally)
• Over 67% of U.S. pulp and paper mills’ energy needs are a result of renewable biomass and fuels.
6REJECT ARMOR products prevent and reject rust in a clean, safe and easy-to-use way. Our prevention technology preserves and protects expensive metal parts from rust while preventing the use of millions of gallons of messy oil and hazardous RP sprays that are extremely harmful to our environment. Consider this: 6,950 watt-hours of energy are needed to produce 1 kilogram of iron from iron ore and 13,900 watt-hours to produce steel. ARMOR products inhibit rust from taking hold of your metal parts and prevent the waste of natural resources from beginning to end.
REDUCE
USE lESS. #1EPA WASTE LESS. usa
recommenda
ARMOR DEFENDERTM VCI FILM Tough-As-Nails Protection that Doesn’t Break the Bank or Mother Nature The absolute, very best thing we can do for the environment to prevent waste is not using materials in the first place. Less is truly more! Prevent rust with the ARMOR DEFENDER™ VCI Film, a film designed for strength, longer-term protection, cost effectiveness; a major win for the environment. Who says you can’t get more for less? We do. Let’s explain how. The ARMOR DEFENDER™ is made of three layers of film – one to prevent corrosion, one to provide additional barrier protection and one to increase durability and puncture resistance. The three layers are co- extruded (or in layman’s terms “sandwiched together”) into one rust-preventing powerhouse film. This strategic placement allows DEFENDER film to be down-gauged by 25-30% without compromising performance. When you use less film you waste less film.
LIGHT BULB ANALOGY
In a SPAN OF
4 yearS
BMW SAVED
OVER 415,324
POUNDS of plastic from producTION BY USING
DEFENDER
We like to use the incandescent bulb vs. the LED bulb analogy to explain the source reduction concept when comparing mono film vs. DEFENDER™ FILM.
tion
RETHINK
IS GREEN REALLY GREEN?
THE BIODEGRADABLE FABLE Some polymer-based films claim they are biodegradable green solutions. But, most of these plastics require continuous sunlight and high temperatures to “biodegrade.” Given today’s waste and composting systems, these circumstances are not realistic. • The term biodegradable plastic is misleading -- it implies that these films actually degrade, and it supports a false ‘single use’ mentality. • Most are made from a mixture of petrochemicals and additives that cause the plastic to breakdown, not degrade, into smaller pieces called microplastics, that some argue are even more harmful to the environment. • Often sold using a questionable marketing technique called “green washing,” which falsely claims to be environmentally-friendly.
MICROPLASTICS 101 Small-sized toxic microplastics in an aquatic terrain can be ingested by the smallest wildlife and work their way up the food chain including larger and larger consumers, until eventually reaching human consumption.
WHY AREN’T BIO-BASED AND COMPOSTABLE PLASTICS THE ANSWER? Bio-based plastics are made from renewable resources...but, that is only half the story.
Compostable plastics are mainly PLA (Polylactic Acid) based materials. They require special conditions to break down.
• Made from corn & sugar cane • Only 20% needed to be called bioplastic • Same trash impact as oil-based films • Bio-based films are renewable, but: - Require a ton of energy and are expensive to produce - Not biodegradable or compostable - Lasts centuries/release methane
• High temperatures • Proper mixture of oxygen and moisture • Specific organisms • Difficult to compost • Cannot be recycled by typical methods • No infrastructure for compostable plastics • Contaminate traditional recycle streams
FINAL GREEN THOUGHTS SHADES OF GREEN
Biodegradable materials are good, recycling is great and using recycled materials is even better, but the best method to “go green” is, without question, source reduction. To be clear, ARMOR is not claiming to have the “silver bullet” to save the environment, there is a long way to go for that, for all of us. What we are saying is that we want to be part of the solution and encourage everyone to carefully consider the many factors that contribute to what is considered “green.” Many companies are quick to highlight the percentage of recycled content in their product, but completely ignore the biggest winner – source reduction. If we can actually eliminate a resource from use in the first place, that is a savings far beyond any other. Simply put, to use less is to waste less.
Transportation
WRAP IT, DON’T SCRAP IT
Preventing rust not only protects metal, it protects the investment of natural resources that were used to manufacture it as well. ARMOR products are clean, safe, easy and Mother Nature-approved. You’ve mined the earth’s resources to create a metal part or product, the worst thing you can do is let it go to waste via the scrap bin due to rust! Using nasty oils, greases and hazardous RPs to prevent that rust only exacerbates the sustainability paradox. VCI (vapor corrosion inhibitor) packaging not only eliminates the hazards of applying these rust preventatives on the front end, it eliminates exposure to the equally-as-nasty chemicals needed to remove those same RPs at the receiving end. While nothing is perfect, ARMOR’s VCI packaging goes to great lengths to prevent rust in a clean, safe and easy-to-use way.
Transportation
ARMOR EXPERTISE FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS, ARMOR HAS OFFERED A FULL LINE OF RUST PREVENTION & RUST REMOVAL PRODUCTS THAT are CLEAN, SAFE, & EASY-TO-USE.
TAKING THE WORK OUT OF YOUR WORKDAY
C O N TA C T 8 0 0 . 3 6 5 .1 1 1 7 i n f o @ a r m o r v c i . c o m
