I’ve previously talked about the thickness of plastic, how it’s measured in microns and how thick a micron actually is. For those of you with short memories, or who are too busy to go hunting for the article in question (which, to save you the trouble, is here), a micron should actually be called a micrometre which is one millionth of a metre, one thousandth of a millimetre, or 0.000039 inches.

Microns…Give Me Strength!

It was an article that piqued interest among some and frustration among others. “Yes, yes, Davpack blogger,” the latter cried, “that’s all very interesting, but how does it relate to your clear polythene bags? We now know that your 125-micron heavy duty poly bags are 0.125mm thick and that that’s about 25% thicker than a human hair. But we’re uneducated in the world of plastics and that still sounds tiny to us! In a nutshell, what can we put in it without the contents dropping straight through and smashing to pieces on the floor below?”

Calm down. The simple answer is anything weighing up to about 20kg. Naturally, you wouldn’t want to put in anything that weighed 20kg and had lots of sharp edges as well, but these are pretty tough packaging products we’re talking about.

“Thank you. Now that’s useful information and quite impressive. What about at the other end of the scale? Your thinnest polybags are 20 microns thick. Now, to us, there doesn’t seem a whole lot of difference between 0.125mm and 0.02mm, but we’re guessing that in the world of plastic bags it’s quite significant.”

And you’d be right. You wouldn’t want to take a chance on anything above 1.5kg.

Up, up and away!

“Trickier one now. If you took your largest poly bag and filled it with helium, would it be able to carry our husbands and wives away?”

Well, we have 100-micron heavy duty gusseted poly bags that measure 1200 x 2000 x 2300mm. That gives us a volume of 5.52m3. Helium can lift about 1.1kg per cubic metre, so that bag would be able to lift just over 6kg; that means that, unless your spouses are really, really small, the answer would have to be no. You might be able to get a couple of Pomerainians off the ground, if that’s any use.

“Not really, but thanks anyway, Davpack blogger.”

No problem.

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Dave Smith

With a background that has included spells in marketing and editorial management in the publishing and performing arts industries, Dave is now a valued member of Davpack’s marketing team, where he is our lead blogger and senior copywriter. Still relatively new to the business, he will be aiming to look at the world of cardboard boxes and packaging materials from a slightly different angle to the usual. Davpack

Latest posts by Dave Smith (see all)

• An environmental guide to plastic carrier bags - 22nd June 2015
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