Boxing moves, made easier
July 18, 2010
Barbara Turnbull
LIVING REPORTER
Enough with the cardboard already.
That loathsome task of digging up boxes to move from a house or office can be a distant memory, thanks to some GTA companies making packing easier and more eco-friendly.
You can also forget about buying them, assembling them, dealing with packing tape and getting rid of them afterwards.
“People move every day and cardboard boxes are not the best technology for that application,” says Philip Harbut, an owner of Frogbox, a company that rents plastic boxes that have many strengths, besides durability.
“You need something with handles, that’s weatherproof and stackable.”
For a price based on the size of your abode, you can use plastic boxes that come assembled, are a uniform size, easy to close and can boast a near-zero footprint.
Made from plastic garbage, these boxes can be delivered to one home and picked up from another.
Frogbox, which originated in Vancouver in 2008 and soon added Seattle to its territory, is a Canadian company with plans to expand across North America (they appear in the upcoming season of CBC’s entrepreneurial hit Dragon’s Den). A person can have boxes delivered in any one of their cities and picked up from the same city or another, Harbut says.
There are at least four GTA companies in this business, all start-ups within the last couple of years. Companies vary in their pricing, but most charge upwards from $99, depending on the number of boxes and length of time needed.
The boxes last about 200 uses and can be recycled again, says Richard Yu, of Good Boxes.
“We wanted to do something for the environment that would actually make an impact,” Yu says. “And we wanted to promote reuse.”
Reach Barbara Turnbull at bturnbull@thestar.ca or @barbturnbull on Twitter.