Why we stopped using bubble wrap

A year ago every rattan tray left our workshop in three layers of plastic. Today none of them do, and our breakage rate went down.

This is the story of how a small shop in Bandung replaced bubble wrap with recycled board and dried banana leaves, what it cost us, and the one mistake we made along the way. If you only read one thing, read this: breakages fell from 2.1% to 0.4% of orders.

The problem with plastic

Rattan is light but brittle at the rim. Bubble wrap protects the rim well, but it is bulky, it costs us about Rp 4.200 per tray, and most customers told us it went straight in the bin¹. A breakage, in our numbers, is any item a customer reports as cracked or split on arrival, whether or not they ask for a refund.

What customers said

We asked 120 customers one question by email: What would you change about how your order arrived? Their answers, grouped:

• Too much plastic (64 people), the most common answer by far.
• Box too big for the item (31 people).
• Nothing to change (25 people).

What we tried

We tested three materials over eight weeks, shipping each to the same five cities:

1. Shredded recycled paper, loose in the box.
2. Moulded pulp corners, made to fit each tray size.
3. Recycled board sleeves with a wrap of dried banana leaf.

Shredded paper was the cheapest and the worst: trays shifted in transit and the rims took the knocks. Pulp corners worked well but needed a different mould for each of our nine tray sizes. The board sleeve with a banana-leaf wrap won on breakage and on cost.

The numbers

The mistake

Our first batch of leaves was not dry enough. In the wet season a few boxes arrived damp, and two customers in Bogor found mould on the leaf². We now dry every batch for three five days and check it with a moisture meter before it reaches the packing table.

How we log each batch

Each batch gets a line in a shared sheet. The packing room exports it every Friday; this is the check that flags a damp batch:

if batch.moisture_percent > 12:
    hold(batch, reason="too damp to pack")
else:
    release(batch)

A held batch shows HOLD: too damp to pack on the packing room screen. To release one by hand, a supervisor presses Ctrl + R after a second reading. The threshold is m ≤ 12%, where m is the reading from the meter.

What it means for your order

Will my tray still arrive safely?

Yes. Breakage is now a fifth of what it was with plastic.

What do I do with the packing?

Put the board in paper recycling and the leaf in compost or general waste.

Does it cost more?

No. It costs us less than bubble wrap, so Rp 15.000 standard delivery is now Rp 12.000.