Who would have thought in 1957 that bubblewrap would become so famous and popular, not just as wrapping paper to protect items, but also as entertainment factor and stress relief. We know for sure that most people find it addictive to pop the bubbles. It is so popular that there is even virtual bubblewrap on the Internet where you can pop bubbles without wasting raw material. And mark your calendar for the last Monday of January - it is being celebrated as "bubblewrap Appreciation day".
The engineers Alfred Fielding and Marc Chevannes actually tried to make textured wallpaper with plastics at the front and paper at the back and wanted to make it stick easily to the wall and easy to clean in front because of the plastic surface. It didn't work out. And as many great inventions based on accidents a new product was born. The word bubblewrap itself is trademarked and owned by the Sealed Air Corporation, but people all over the world actually use the word for all similar packaging material now as a standard term.
While the main use for bubblewrap is certainly as packaging material to protect items during shipping and distribution, there are many other uses for it like children's games "hop and pop" that claims to stimulate kids fitness with foot-stomping on a bubblewrap filled game carpet, in Japan there is another popular toy that mimics real bubblewrap. A fun way to experience popping bubbles all year long is to buy a special bubblewrap calender where you can pop a bubble every day to count the days throughout the year. Besides inspiring some really outrageous fashion designs including even wedding dress, the packaging material even made it into movies like the comedy film "Dude Where's My Car" and "Raising Helen" where a model uses bubblewrap under his clothing to look more muscular.
The process of making the bubbles stay the way they should is a trade secret as it is very difficult to work with polyethylene as it is porous itself. Everything starts as plastic resins in the form of beads about the size of small peas that are melted into a liquid and poured out into two stacked sheets of clear plastic film. One layer is wrapped around a drum with holes punched in it, the second layer is then laminated over it so when they stick together the air is trapped in the bubbles.
Polyethylene products were created for decades through environmentally unfriendly practices and the finished product takes hundreds of years to break down. Latest research is now implementing biodegradable packaging films and offers now the possibilities to create environmentally friendly bubblewrap. The product itself can be reused quite often, so before putting it into the recycling waste bin everyone should consider to reuse it and store it for later use. A possible interesting use of bubblewrap is for thermal insulation - that way roofs and houses can be protected against leaks and reduce the costs to heat. This way the rather negative environment impact of the past could be turned into something positive after all. |
