Dewalt has officially announced their new Tough Series tape measures, which are said to be extra-durable and capable of surviving drops of up to 100 feet onto packed soil.
Side note: I picked one up at the local Home Depot – please let me know if you have any questions as I work on the review.
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In addition to announcing the new tapes, Dewalt has also announced that they will be packaging the new tape measures using new sustainable packaging.
If you look at other Stanley, Stanley FatMax, and Dewalt tape measures on the shelves at Home Depot and other retailers, you’ll noticed a fair amount of plastic used in the packaging materials.
Some brands’ tape measures use more plastic than others, while Stanley Black & Decker brands tend to use a combination of card stock and plastic.
With the new Dewalt Tough Series tape measures, the company sought to reduce the amount of plastic packaging that would eventually enter the waste stream.
Dewalt says that by implementing a new eco-friendly clip-card design, they will be eliminating 10,000 pounds of PVC per year. They say this is the equivalent amount of plastic as 400,000 0.5 liter water bottles.
That’s a huge reduction in plastic that is unlikely to ever be recycled.
This is all part of a Dewalt pledge to make all of their packaging reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025.
The all-cardboard packaging did stand out to me when I picked up a Tough Series 25′ tape, but I didn’t realize this was part of a new initiative.
Buy Now: 25′ via Home Depot
Buy Now: 16′ via Home Depot
Buy Now: 35′ via Home Depot
Discussion
Sounds good to me. The packaging still requires a cutting tool to liberate the tape measures from their retail packaging. but the entire package is made from recyclable cardboard and paper cardstock.
*Thumbs up* to Dewalt and Stanley Black & Decker, this sounds like a great initiative to me.
I wouldn’t be quick to assume that Stanley Black & Decker will use the same style of packaging for their other lines of Stanley and Dewalt tape measures. If you look closely at the above photos, the new Dewalt tapes don’t pack as densely on the shelf, which lets the cardboard packaging take up more space.
But, SBD and Dewalt have their waste-reduction pledge with a 2025 goal, and so it seems we’re bound to see more packaging changes over the next few years.