Let’s talk a little bit about poly shipping bags. First of all: what are they? So the ‘shipping bags’ part seems pretty self-explanatory. But it’s that ‘poly’ part that starts throwing people off. Don’t feel bad, it threw me off too. I had to learn all about ‘poly’ and so now I will tell you. First of all, ‘poly’ is really just short for ‘polypropylene’ and now you can see why they were trying to keep it simple.

Nobody likes something they can’t pronounce. If it can’t be pronounced than surely it is something dangerous, like some mind-trick of the government or some secret agency that is somehow scamming us into doing their dirty work by not using the full term. Allow me to clear the air. I will spare you the spiel about the chemical and physical properties because it really doesn’t make any sense. Polypropylene on the molecular level doesn’t really matter to us because we are just trying to talk about poly shipping bags. I will tell you that it is a kind of polymer which, in the synthetic world (synthetic is a fancy way of saying ‘fake’), is basically plastic. So that probably doesn’t come as a surprise. Poly shipping bags are plastic. Big whoop. Well did you know that polypropylene is the second most important plastic? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

This type of material is chosen to make things out of because it is durable: its not easily destroyed, and it can withstand freezing and especially heat. On top of that, it is able to be joined by heat fusion which is a huge plus. All of this now ties into poly shipping bags. When you buy them you know you are getting a durable product that won’t be easily ruined, which means that it could probably even be reused, and at least whatever it is holding will be sufficiently protected. As for the heat joining, this is the cool part.

At PackagingSupplies.com they sell bag sealers, which does exactly what it says it does: it seals a bag by melting the two ends together, cutting off the excess in the process. The hand sealers come equipped with timers based on the thickness of the plastic, so that you don’t have to worry about doing a poor job. In particular, the rolls of poly tubing seem like the most effective type of poly shipping bags. You can use the heat sealer to just roll off however big you want the bag to be, and then seal it, and the next bag can be even bigger or smaller. When it’s all said and done, polypropylene has done the world of shipping and packaging and storing a huge favor.