Pacific Pulp uses recycled materials to create packaging that itself can be recycled.

While running a packaging company 14 years ago, John McNeil happened upon a material that resembled gray egg cartons and was made from old newspapers and corrugated cardboard. Unable to affordably acquire the product for use in their packaging business, McNeil and his partners set out to start their own such business.

A year of searching the world led to the purchase of a key piece of Canadian molding machinery and Pacific Pulp Moulding began operations in Tijuana.

Today the maquiladora employs 35 people. Consumer electronics clients such as Sony, Bose, Panasonic and Toshiba begin the process by sending samples of the products they want protected to Pacific Pulp’s design studio in La Mesa. The primary competition to protect electronics during transportation is hard white foam.

Pacific Pulp (pacificpulp.com) produces about 36 million cushions a year, working hardest in the five months leading up to December, when the 25,000- square-foot shop is running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In the last two years, McNeil, company president, says demand has increased substantially for packaging that is created from recycled materials in a process that uses no chemicals, and where the resulting waste can itself be recycled or disposed of through composting.

“In 1994 I thought there would be an interest at some time in the future in green packaging but I never imagined it would be what it has become,” McNeil says. “It is a pleasant surprise. I get seven or eight calls every week now from people who are interested in finding out more about molded pulp and environmental packaging.”

— Tim McClain