Environmental Policy

General Policy

Replicat does not include disposable plastic products in our range such as balloons and single use plastic drink bottles. If such a product has inadvertently become available for sale as part of an automated supplier range update, we'd appreciate you letting us know so the product line can be discontinued.

We encourage FSC certified paper/card instead of plastic, polypropylene instead of polystyrene, recycled cornstalk instead of plastic. Use the product search features on the site to view all alternatives for a particular product e.g. swivel USB.

So what environmentally friendly choices can I make?

CDs and DVDs are manufactured from optical grade polycarbonate (OGP), a pure, high impact form of plastic essential for a laser to reliably read the information contained in the disc substrate. OGP may be recycled into less pure but still very useful plastics for use in sunglasses, reading glasses, hard clear plastic drinking glasses that are almost impossible to break and various other plastic products. Disc manufacturers now routinely on-sell OGP by-products from the disc manufacturing process to specialist plastics recyclers which further reduces the environmental impact of manufacture. The discs themselves can also be broken down by recyclers to extract the OGP disc layer for use in recycled OGP products.

Polystyrene (PS) products such as CD jewel cases are manufactured from polyvinyl chloride (PVC). These cases usually contain several additives, including lead, so it becomes the least recyclable of the major plastics. It is also the least recycled of all major plastics and generally ends up in landfill. Recycling plants and brokers will accept jewel cases for recycling and if you are disposing of jewel cases from your CD collection in future, please contact Replicat for our latest list of recycling depots. We hope that jewel cases become a thing of the past very soon, and that our clients opt for one of a large range of better environmental alternatives.

Vinyl records are manufactured from PVC too, but there's an advantage in that any excess production and old records can and are recycled to make other records. While it's not an ideal product in terms of biodegradability, at least it's possible for the factory to turn every last bit of PVC material into a record. Selecting 140g instead of 180g records is worth considering, as the lighter standard weight has exactly the same playback surface as the heavier 180g.

Polypropylene (PP) products such as DVD library cases are a better environmental alternative to jewel cases if you require plastic cases for retail sale, long life storage or disc transport. One advantage of polypropylene cases is that they are almost impossible to break. Have you ever managed to shatter a clear DVD library case? It can’t be done. The other major advantage of PP cases is less obvious. PP cases are 100% recyclable. You can extract the PP from a DVD case, granulate it, put it back into an injection moulding line and make a different PP case. 

Paper and cardboard products are biodegradable and won’t sit around in landfill for thousands of years if someone forgets to recycle them. Replicat offers a very extensive range of wallet packs, cardboard sleeves, Australia-post approved mailer wallets and paper wallets as alternatives to plastic packaging. Our company policy is to provide FSC certified stocks. These paper sourced from sustainable forests and is the standard stock used in all Replicat cardboard and paper products. 

Recycled cornstalk USB shells are a relatively new addition to our USB range. We consider these a great alternative to plastic shells, complementing our wide range of sustainably sourced natural wood and leather shells.

Replicat Smile-Cut TM gatefold wallets were developed as an alternative to digipack and jewel case packaging - displaying the full surface of the disc face design without the need for plastic holders.