Recycled Plastic Lumber Planters: Helping the world’s Rainforests.
In 2009, DeepStream started offering low maintenance Recycled Plastic Lumber Planters (RPL) as an alternative to tropical hardwood planters.
Over the past 12 years more and more DeepStream customers have been choosing recycled plastic lumber planters over tropical hardwoods harvested from rainforests. By 2017, RPL was specified more often than natural wood thanks to the concern of our customers and their commitment to the environment.
High profile green roof projects such as Boston’s Fenway Park have chosen DeepStream’s planters as the perfect combination of sustainable design, recycled, and recyclable content providing both the lowest total impact on the environment and lowest cost of ownership over time and low maintenance.
Recycled Plastic Lumber Planters reduce maintenance costs while enhancing your properties and brands through the timeless beauty and environmental statement that DeepStream Recycled Plastic Lumber Planters, trash and recycling bins make with your customers.
Like many successful companies, DeepStream was created in a response to a need. While building a condominium project and reviewing the “universe” of garden planters, we found that what we wanted was not available elsewhere.
Wood planters were all carpenter-built with wood-on-wood construction, and as I’ve detailed in my Planter Selection Blog and, like many other construction techniques and materials, they just don’t last and waste a precious resource and your money. They give your business a bad image of low quality and lack of care, it’s better not to use any at all.
The valuable wood harvested from the world’s rapidly diminishing rainforests is wasted, as the planters tear themselves apart and are thrown away in a few years (typically 3-4 years here in Miami).
If your project absolutely must use tropical hardwood, then specify DeepStream’s Mariner Planter System as it is engineered with the principles of Sustainable Design to use, or even reuse, hardwood or recycled plastic lumber in a design that honors the wood, allowing construction that extends wood life by decades.
Harvesting tropical hardwood destroys important habitats around the world, even if “sustainably harvested,” as hardwood trees take 50 years or more to reach maturity. A recent article in the New York Times put the percentage of tropical hardwood illegally harvested but sold with counterfeit documents at 50% for Brazil and 90% from Peru.
According to the Yale School of Forestry, while estimates vary, it is thought that between 30 and 50% of all certified Tropical Hardwood shipped into the United states has been “Greenwashed,” meaning that shipments have been provided with falsified and counterfeit documentation. In some countries like Peru, it’s estimated that 90% are illegally logged, devastating their Amazon watershed.
For more information click here: “ Greenwashed” Timber and FSC certification
Planters made with non-structural Recycled Plastic Lumber planks (RPL) inside DeepStream’s unique structural aluminum frame are a perfect choice for outdoor placement, while making a strong environmental statement.
Separate from the environmental concerns about using real tropical hardwoods, we highly recommend RPL Wood Planters, especially in locations such as shopping centers and parking lots, locations serving food and drinks which stain natural wood and make a mess, or anywhere sanitation and easy maintenance are a concern. Because DeepStream’s trademark planter legs are anodized, not painted or powder coated, RPL planters can be pressure cleaned.
All natural tropical hardwood planters will turn a light gray color and show stains and mold spots if not treated with a waterproofing and UV protector several times a year. This treatment will make all wood darker over time.
Given the time and expense necessary to keep natural hardwood looking good, and the damage done to the rain forests to harvest it, versus the “set and forget” ease of using recycled plastic lumber, you should give serious thought to which you will select for your project. RPL comes with a 50-year manufacturer’s limited warranty, and DeepStream’s aluminum frame makes up for the fact that is non-structural.
DeepStream makes it easy and cost effective to go Green and stop contributing to climate change. See the comparison between natural hardwood and recycled lumber on this informative page and decide for yourself. By selecting recycled plastic lumber for your order, you will be preserving the world’s rainforests, the cooling lungs of the earth, while creating a sustainable market for post-consumer and post-industrial plastic waste.
Please discuss saving this diminishing resources for future generations with clients that specify tropical hardwoods. Our recycled plastic lumber requires no maintenance and lasts for decades without fading, saving your clients money while looking better over time than wood ever will.
If you do order natural hardwood, unlike carpenter-built planters, with DeepStream’s trademark anodized aluminum extrusions you know that your purchase will last for decades and not waste this precious resource.
Like offsetting your carbon footprint by buying carbon credits, another way to reduce this impact is to replant far more trees than are used in crafting our products. We do so in our customers names through Trees for the Future.
Eliminate needless rainforest destruction by specifying DeepStream RPL planters and fixtures. The RPL DeepStream uses is backed by a 50-year limited warranty by its manufacturer.
Please call Sheila at DeepStream Designs 305 857-0466 to discuss your needs.
For every product DeepStream’s American craftsmen create for our clients using wood or recycled plastic lumber, we plant between 50 and 100 trees in your honor through Trees For The Future. By mid-2021 our program has planted more than 500,000 trees. Their Forest Garden program has many positive benefits for the earth and its people, in addition to planting trees.
