The Breezesta Story
Breezesta was founded in 1999 with the vision of creating sustainable, outdoor furniture from recycled materials. With millions of tons of plastic being sent to the landfill and polluting our waterways every year, Breezesta felt they could play a part in reducing those numbers with a creative solution: Recycle the post-consumer milk jugs and detergent bottles into colorful, durable, and environmentally conscious outdoor furniture products. Recycled high density polyethylene furniture was still in it's infancy, and Breezesta knew they could do something different.
Now, through years of experience in the poly lumber industry, Breezesta is proud to call themselves an industry leader.
Here’s how they do it:
The Process
Each day Breezesta rescues over 100,000 pounds of recycled plastic before it can be buried in landfills. The first part of the process takes place at their recycling facility. It’s here where they take bales of plastic, break them up, and send them through specialized optical scanners to sort plastics by type. Breezesta furniture is made from HDPE, or high density polyethylene, and they repackage the other types of plastic to be used in other manufacturing operations.
Once the HDPE is sorted, it is ground into flakes and washed to get rid of debris and labels. The clean material is sorted again to remove colored plastics that might be mixed into the natural HDPE. The clean, sorted flakes are then sent to be pelletized and stored in silos, waiting for the next steps.
From the silos, auto loading tubes transfer the plastic pellets to Breezesta’s extrusion machines. This is where the Sun-Guard technology, a proprietary formulation of colorants, UV inhibitors, and UV stabilizers, are mixed with the melting plastic. This process is controlled by their state of the art computer monitoring systems, to ensure a consistent, beautiful hue of stable, non-fading color. The extruders push the plastic through dyes, turning it into poly lumber. As the poly lumber is pushed through the dyes, it is pulled through cool water to dissipate the heat evenly, ensuring that the dimensions stay stable and the surface texture is consistent. After that the HDPE poly lumber boards are cut and stored by size and color.
An important part of the sustainability of your furniture is the sourcing or origin of raw materials. Poly lumber that is sourced close to the furniture reduces the overall carbon footprint, which is why Breezesta recycles their own HDPE just 20 miles from where they build the furniture. Once the poly lumber is brought over to Breezesta’s Lancaster County Manufacturing plant, it gets crafted into eco-friendly, sturdy, comfortable furniture that requires very little maintenance and lasts for years to come.
Breezesta prides itself on manufacturing its HDPE plastic furniture entirely in the U.S.A., providing jobs for the local community, reducing plastics in the waste stream, and maintaining a smaller carbon footprint compared to furniture manufacturers that work with far-off suppliers. It’s the strict focus on innovation, quality control, and environmentally conscious production that has led them to become an industry leader in poly furniture.
The Materials
Breezesta’s furniture does not only look good, it's good for the environment too. The recycled HDPE poly lumber that they use keeps millions of milk jugs and detergent bottles out of landfills or from ending up in the ocean. They use a proprietary blend of high density polyethylene that has a higher recycled content than other competitors. Breezesta poly furniture is also heavier and uses thicker lumber to ensure that it will stand up to all kinds of weather conditions like sun, wind, rain, and salt spray.
Breezesta furniture uses Sur-Lok joint mortise and tenon construction, typically seen in fine woodworking, in all pieces of furniture. It helps ensure a refined design, additional sturdiness, and less fasteners. The stainless steel fasteners are rust resistant, powder coated, and color matched so all of your focus is on the rich, vibrant color and stylish design of the furniture. The hardware is also guaranteed not to rust or corrode for a period of 2 years.
Thanks to Breezesta’s Sunguard technology, its proprietary formulation of color pigments, ultraviolet inhibitors, and stabilizers, Breezesta guarantees that your poly furniture will not fade for 3 years! This means you can enjoy the rich, vibrant colors that you chose without worrying about repainting, staining, and more. Color is infused throughout the poly lumber pieces, so there's no worry about white marks from scratches. And because Breezesta makes their own materials, they have given their HDPE poly lumber a unique surface graining that looks like wood and will help conceal minor scratches.
Although Breezesta furniture may look like hardwood, it doesn’t have any of the drawbacks. It is easier to maintain and is warranted against cracking, splintering, chipping, peeling, and rotting. It also has excellent advantages over wicker or aluminum furniture. And because Breezesta uses thicker, heavy high density polyethylene boards for it’s furniture, you don’t have to worry about it blowing away or getting damaged.
Breezesta stands by their quality materials and excellent craftsmanship, and is proud to offer a limited lifetime warranty on all Breezesta furniture. For full details on the Breezesta Warranty, go to breezesta.com.
Also, Breezesta furniture is not just made out of recycled materials, it is fully recyclable itself! It will last season after season, but when it comes time for a change you can simply remove the hardware, find a recycling center nearby, and properly dispose of the poly lumber boards. Breezesta made these choices on sustainability so you can have peace of mind about the environmental impact of your purchase.
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