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Landscaping businesses have to deal with a lot of materials in bulk — topsoil, mulch, wood chips, etc. Hauling and storing all of that can be a hassle, especially because the packaging most of it comes in — plastic bags — is notoriously unreliable.
Landscapers can lose a lot of their precious materials because of rips and tears. Simply dumping dirt or mulch onto a customer’s driveway means wind or rain can carry it away. Landscapers may not know about it, but FIBC bulk bags can provide them with the perfect solution for their bulk storage and transportation needs.
When you deploy these sturdy and re-usable containers as landscape bags, you get great performance for a number of reasons. Here are a few of the reasons why transporting or storing mulch or soil in a bulk bag makes a lot of sense:
• They’re durable: Made of woven polypropylene fibers, FIBC bulk bags are extremely resistant to tearing and punctures. This makes them perfect for hauling wood chips or other materials that might poke through a plastic bag. Plus, because they’re so strong, you can load them without worrying about whether or not they’ll burst.
• They keep you organized: Ordinarily, delivering multiple materials to a customer’s property means delivering in separate trucks or using dividers to separate them in the bed of the truck. With bulk bags, however, you can simply fill one with gravel, one with topsoil, one with mulch, etc., and you’ll have an easy-to-unload delivery where everything is kept in its own place.
• They protect your investment: Bulk bags also help keep materials where they’re supposed to be instead of being blown or washed away by the elements. When materials such as mulch and dirt are kept on-site in bulk bags, landscapers have the opportunity to cover their materials to protect them from bugs and vermin, as well. They also make cleanup a lot easier when the job’s done — so landscapers won’t have to worry about leaving a lot of debris behind once they use their materials.
Bulk bags are extremely durable, which makes them perfect for landscaping applications. Take a look at the bulk bags Procon Pacific has to offer and learn more about how they can help landscapers get their work done easier.
Static electricity is a minor annoyance when you walk across a carpet and touch a doorknob. However, static electricity can be fatal when working with flammable or explosive materials. The slightest spark of static electricity can trigger a dangerous or even deadly explosion. That’s why industries working with flammable and explosive materials must take care to use static hazard controlling packaging when transporting or handling those materials. Although most people working in these industries know how important it is to use an static hazard controlling packaging, they may not understand the science behind them. Here’s a quick overview of what makes Type C FIBCs essential.
How Static Electricity Works
Everything is made of atoms, which are themselves made of protons, which have a positive electrical charge; electrons, which have a negative electrical charge; and neutrons, which are neutral. When two objects rub against each other, they may pass electrons back and forth — resulting in an imbalance of electrons that won’t be released until the electrons find something else to which they can jump. That’s why you feel a shock when touching a doorknob after shuffling your feet on a carpet — the extra electrons you picked up from the carpet are being passed onto the doorknob to balance your body’s electrical charge.
What Type C Bulk Bags Do
Because bulk bags are filled rapidly with large volumes of materials, there is a high risk of building a static charge that could trigger an explosion in volatile materials. That’s why Type C FIBCs are constructed of fabric that is woven with conductive threads. The threads are spaced no more than a certain distance apart — creating what is known as a Faraday cage that draws all static charges that may be generated into the conductive threads. These carbon, steel or silver core threads are connected to grounding cables through a grounding tab. This allows static electricity to be conducted safely through the cables into the earth — preventing static electricity from being discharged, which could create a potentially dangerous situation in areas where the environment may contain flammable or combustible materials.
The presence of flammable materials in many industrial locations makes static electricity a legitimate concern. Through the use of Type C FIBCs, however, these facilities are made much safer.
When most people think of food storage bags, they imagine zip-top baggies used to keep sandwiches fresh in a lunch bag or to hold leftovers in your freezer at home. However, there’s another level to food storage bags, and they make a great choice for commercial food companies. Flexible intermediate bulk containers (FIBCs) are used by food companies for storage and transport of bulk food products and ingredients in a number of applications, and for good reason. Not only do these commercial food storage bags offer a lot of storage, but they also provide other advantages.
Here just a few reasons why FIBCs make sense for commercial food companies:
Commercial food companies work with food on a much bigger scale than the average kitchen, and they need food storage containers to match. Commercial food bulk bags offer them a convenient and cost-effective solution to their storage and transportation needs.
The question of whether or not bulk bags or FIBCs can be stored outside may not have ever occurred to you. It might seem obvious that the answer is yes, because FIBCs are constructed to hold large amounts of materials. It might seem like a no-brainer that something made to hold so much material would be strong enough to withstand a little weather. However, that’s not considering the whole picture. In fact, storing bulk bags outside can have seriously negative effects on the integrity of your bulk bags, leaving them vulnerable to failure at the worst possible times.
If you’re concerned about bulk bag storage and whether or not it’s a good idea to store your FIBCs outside, consider the following points:
• UV radiation: Most bulk bags are made with polypropylene fabric, which is strong enough to hold big, heavy loads but vulnerable to UV radiation, including sunlight. When exposed to sunlight for any length of time, the chemical bonds inside the polypropylene fabric begin to break down. At best, this means the color of the fabric fades. At worst, the structural integrity of the fabric begins to break down. The fabric can crack and tear, which means a bulk bag that has been weakened by exposure to UV radiation may be prone to fall apart under pressure. That’s the absolute worst time for an FIBC to fail.
• Extreme weather: In addition to sunlight exposure, extreme weather conditions can wreak havoc on the complex chemical structure of the polypropylene fabric used to make bulk bags. Storing bulk bags outside where they can be exposed to rain, snow and cold weather can contribute to the deterioration of polypropylene fabric, especially if it has been weakened by UV radiation already.
What If You Need to Store Bulk Bags Outside?
Although it’s not recommended that you store bulk bags outside, if you have no alternative, you should take precautions to protect your bags from the elements. Keep them covered completely with a material that will block as much UV radiation as possible. Make sure your bags will stay dry at all times, and move them indoors into a clean, dry storage space as soon as possible.
Bulk bags are built to withstand a lot, but that doesn’t mean they can survive anything. To maintain the integrity and safety of your FIBCs, it’s essential to follow the right storage procedures and keep them protected from the elements as much as possible. Otherwise, your bags may fail when you need them the most.
Daniel Krassenstein, Director of Asian Operations in Shanghai, assisted in obtaining children’s books and delivering them to Dandelion Children’s Library to promote literacy in China.
Dandelion Children’s library is located in the street of Eshan, Pudong district. It’s a public library under Shanghai Dandelion Child Development Center which is one NGO focusing on Child reading promotion and education reform in rural region of China. It initially started in United States as PLCF foundation (Pass Love Charity Foundation) which now still receive the donations from domestic donors.
By building 102 village libraries in 8 years and impacting the lives of 20,000+ children, PLCF’s Dandelion Village Library program has created a sustainable and scalable model for improving student reading in the primary grades in rural China.
On October 18-19, the 4th annual Moron’athon took place. The Moron’athon is a 24-hour ultra-marathon relay held in Shanghai. Teams of 6 runners take turns completing 5km laps over a non-stop 24 hour period.
In all, over 1,200 runners competed and all of the money raised went to support the worthy charity Operation Smile (providing free surgeries to repair people born with cleft lip). More information can be found at http://china.operationsmile.org/ and http://www.moronathon.org/
Dan Krassenstein is Procon Pacific LLC’s Director of Asia Operations and has competed in this race since its inception 4 years ago. This year, he ran 40km.
The Dandelion Library is a China-based initiative to provide world class libraries to children in impoverished parts of China. This is accomplished by donations.
Dan Krassenstein is Procon Pacific LLC’s Director Asia Operations. Dan has raised considerable funds for this worthy charity and also takes time each month to read English language children stories to the children. As he is often training for a running or biking event, he combines the exercise to bike/run over to the Dandelion Library on the other side of Shanghai (Pudong) to stay involved (thus explaining the unusual attire in the photos!).
November 2, 2014 was the running of the annual Shanghai Marathon.
Procon Pacific’s Director of Asia Operations, Dan Krassenstein, participated in the Half-Marathon event.
This is Dan’s 9th straight year of running either the half or full marathon in Shanghai. This year, Dan ran to support the One Less Orphan charity organization (http://www.1lessorphan.org/) The worthy China-based philanthropy works to help underprivileged families deal with exorbitant medical costs for their child.
On March 25, 2014, Rabbi Nussan Rodin performed a successful audit of the Procon Pacific manufacturing facility. Responding to today’s expanding global food industry and rapidly growing demand for kosher products, KOF-K, the leading Kosher certification in China and the Far East, visited Procon Pacific’s main manufacturing plant in China.
The task of keeping kosher is greatly simplified by widespread Kashrut certification. Products that have been certified as kosher are labeled with a mark called a Hekhsher that ordinarily identifies the rabbi or organization that certified the product. The process of certification does not involve “blessing” the product; rather, it involves examining the process or facility by which the product is prepared, and periodically inspecting the processing facilities to make sure that kosher standards are maintained.
We are honored that Procon’s facility was certified as kosher, and thank Rabbi Rodin.