Can your packaging be recycled?

With an ever growing focus on environmental issues, sustainability and the climate crisis, making a business as eco-friendly as possible can be a challenging experience. Here at Ottena we try very hard to make our products and packaging as eco-friendly as possible but do ask you, our amazing customers, to help us on our journey to a more environmentally friendly future.

When you place an order for teak garden furniture with us here at Ottena, our warehouse team will take a lot of care and time in wrapping and packaging your order so it makes its way to you as safely and quickly as possible.

For our larger items, such as our teak patio sets and teak Adirondack chair sets, you will receive these mounted on pallets with a small amount of bubble wrap, to protect any edges that may be at risk whilst in transit, and shrink wrap to help contain your teak garden furniture on the pallet securely. Our pallet deliveries are a “kerbside service”. This means that the courier will deliver it to the nearest kerbside at the address specified by our customer. For more information on pallet deliveries for teak garden furniture from Ottena, click here.

Pallets are commonly recycled, either for fire wood or put to use for garden projects etc. I personally made some small pallet cold frames for my wife to go in the garden. If you search for “pallet cold frame” online, you will find many great ideas if you wish to get your creative head on! Alternatively, they can be taken to your nearest recycling station where there is usually a wood/timber skip.

Our range of teak garden furniture is wrapped in corrugated cardboard. This can be easily recycled, either in your weekly recycling collection or taken to a vast number of recycling facilities across the country.

For our smaller items such as our teak garden benches, teak folding chairs and small teak table and chair sets, we wrap these in bubble wrap to protect them whilst they are in the hands of the courier. This helps to prevent damage in transit, as we do not want our handmade teak garden furniture to go to waste!

I know what you are going to say, single use plastic? At Ottena we have tried many different styles of packaging but still find that plastic bubble wrap gives the best protection for our teak garden furniture whilst it is in transit. We would prefer to use an alternative, and we are exploring the use of biodegradable bubble wrap in the hope that this will make us even more environmentally friendly. Having said this, it is possible to take any unwanted plastic to many locations near to where you live. Our local supermarkets have cages outside (usually in the trolley bay by the front door) that will take plastics for recycling. This includes shopping bags, and bubble wrap! We hope that some customers recycle our bubble wrap for their own use, if a friend or family is moving house for example, but if you have no use for the bubble wrap then please consider depositing it at one of these recycling locations, rather than putting it out with the rubbish.

We have looked at single use plastic long and hard, and continue to explore ways to improve. Our decision to switch to a pallet delivery service for our larger orders of teak garden furniture has been great for this, it has reduced our bubble wrap use substantially.

As you can see we would be very, very grateful if you could help do that little bit for the environment and take any items that can be recycled to their relevant recycling facility. To help you on your search for these locations then please visit this website https://www.recyclenow.com/ where you will find a massive amount of information on where and what you can recycle by simply entering your postcode..

We hope this explains a little bit about the packaging of our teak garden furniture, giving you a better idea of  how your items will arrive and what you can do with the packaging once your teak garden bench, teak dining set or teak steamer chairs are in the garden. If you have any questions then please let us know at hello@ottena.co.uk and we will endeavour to get you the answers.