New Pig world headquarters has been in the path of Snowmageddon this week.

You, too? Here’s a quick look at products we carry that are related to snow. Not many items (and one of them is on clearance, hint hint), but talk about drifty … er, nifty.  Click on the captions to see ‘em!

Strap-on cleats for snow and ice!

Hide your snow melt in style!

Like upholstering a 5-gallon bucket of snow melt!

New Pig will be the recipient (once again!!!) of three Product of the Year awards at the Manufacturing Summit and Awards ceremony to be held in Chicago on March 29th. The products honored are:

PIG BLUE™ Absorbent Mat in the Maintenance Product Category

PIG® Sheet in the Maintenance Tools and Equipment Category

PIG® Vapor-Control Latching Drum Lid in the Fluid Handling Category

The readers of Plant Engineering magazine voted for the products they deemed best in each category as featured in the November issue. New Pig may receive a gold, silver or bronze medal based on the results of this balloting. Winners will be announced at the ceremony in Chicago during the Manufacturing Summit and will be recognized within the pages of the April 2010 issue.

We’ll keep you posted on the results!

Better late than never, here are some photos taken this past August at X Games 15, where insane daredevils highly-skilled athletes compete in events such as skateboarding, motocross, BMX and rally car racing. We donated some PIG® 4 IN 1® Universal Absorbent Mat for some of the techs to use behind the scenes, soaking up messes AND acting as a seat (quick, change it to “5 IN 1″!).

Don’t look now—well, actually, please do look now— but the PIG® brand has gotten some more broadcast love.

Yeah, baby, we’re takin’ over your tube.

This time it was an appearance on Horsepower TV, which appears on Spike TV (insert manly grunt here). To see the clip, click here, and look for “Click Here to Play Video” about halfway down the page. PIG® Absorbent Mat is the dressing on the table of goods in the first minute or so. It makes that cast aluminum intake manifold, 750 cfm remanufactured Quadrajet Carb, Summit hydraulic cam & lifter kit, and Summit double roller timing set look sweet—not to mention lying in wait to catch oil and grease.

Quite a few Piggers were in on an email conversation last week regarding static-dissipative absorbent mats. I was asked to post some of my information from that.

A little background: Static-dissipative absorbents help reduce the risk of electrostatic discharge. This increases worker safety in fueling area cleanups and applications near flammable vapors. Static-dissipative mats are specially treated to meet NFPA 99 standards for static decay, which basically means that static charge is safely dissipated within half a second.

The material in our PIG® Stat-Mat® Absorbent Mats performs better than others we’ve tested. A particular competitor’s mat barely passes the .5 second static-dissipation cut-off, while ours does it in 0.01 seconds and has done so consistently for years. Another competitor’s mat isn’t bad, in a range between .25 and .35 seconds, but that’s still not close to our .01 seconds.

The big difference is in how the static-dissipative treatment is applied. We use a topical application while some folks out there use a polymer blend. Counter-intuitively, the topical application is better. The polymer blended material tends to “bloom off” the anti-static agent, as the agent isn’t compatible with the polymer, in as little as 6-12 months.

On the other hand, the topical solution doesn’t bloom off or lose effectiveness. We’ve taken mat from a seven-year-old PIG® Oil-Only Spill Kit at a local marina and sent it out for testing. The results came back like brand-new material.

One of our sharp-eyed Pigger programmers, Greg Hill, spotted a PIG® Spill Kit in a 95-Gallon Overpack in a photo taken inside the heavily-guarded Cheyenne Mountain, home to part of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense), which keeps an eye on the sky for nuclear missiles and other threats—but also tracks Santa Claus around the world on Christmas night.

See the Spill Kit there in the foreground? Compare it to the photo below. It’s a style that we haven’t sold in a while. I guess that means that there haven’t been any emergency spills in that section of NORAD recently—but the site operators are standing ready. They’re good at that.

Lots of us face temperature issues indoors at work: It’s too hot, it’s too cold …

Here’s how we cope, according to a survey just released by the International Facility Management Association (the link opens a PDF):

Here are categories where we have related products:

Supplemental clothing

Okay, just kidding. But we do sell those.

Block or redirect vents

We have HVAC Diffuser Filters and Deflectors for you.

Tamper with or adjust thermostat

We have ways to constrain who can adjust the thermostat.

Thermostat Protector - 2.5″ W

Thermostat Protector - 5.5″ W

Thermostat Protector - 8.5″ W

Other

Yes, the survey notes that one way that hot office workers cool off is a “small wading pool under the desk to paddle the feet.” It’s hard to imagine a facility where this would be the best solution, but hey, our smallest PIG® Containment Pool would be perfect!

Feet image © VladGavriloff - Fotolia.com

Many New Pig customers are going green without changing a thing. That’s because PIG® Universal Mat now contains 50% recycled content.

Believe me, it feels good when you can improve your best-known product behind the scenes in a way that helps customers reach environmental initiatives—and still deliver the same performance and value.

We’ve prepared for questions with the information below. Feel free to ask anything else with a comment here on the blog or by calling New Pig Customer Service at 1-800-HOT-HOGS® (468-4647).

What should I expect from PIG® Mat with 50% recycled content?

You can expect the same great performance you have always known. The recycled content in PIG® Mat is still 100% polypropylene. The color is the same and all of the features you love about PIG® Mat are completely unchanged.

What is the recycled content?

The raw materials used to produce PIG® Mat are comprised of over 50% post-industrial recycled polypropylene fibers generated from sources outside our absorbent manufacturing process. These fibers could otherwise be destined for a landfill, but instead we recycle them into our gray Mat products. This simple change cuts our consumption of new polypropylene in half—and that’s good for the environment.

How do I know it’s still the best Mat on the market?

We’ve developed a process that uses only recycled materials that meet our rigorous standards. Then we perform extensive testing on finished PIG® Mat samples to confirm that critical characteristics such as absorbency, durability, strength, wicking, floor grip, flame resistance and chemical compatibility meet our expectations—
and yours.

Is it still as strong? Will I still be able to walk on it?

Absolutely. We’ve RAT-tested (reciprocal abrasion tested) PIG® Mat to make sure that it still holds up to foot traffic. It still has eight thermally-bonded layers that stay together—even when the Mat is fully saturated.

Will it still be as absorbent?

Yes. Absorbency and liquid retention are unchanged.

Will it still be as chemically resistant?

Yes. It is still 100% polypropylene, so you can use PIG® Mat with confidence to absorb anything that you’ve used it for in the past.

Will it still last all day/week/month?

Since durability, absorbency and chemical resistance are the same, it will have exactly the same longevity as the PIG® Mat you purchased from us last week, last month or last year.

Will the price go up?

No. Unlike some green products that come with a higher price tag, the price of PIG® Mat will remain the same.

Why would we mess with a good thing?

New Pig wants to help protect the environment. We’ve developed a way to incorporate recycled content into
PIG® Mat and still maintain the same performance. Using recycled fibers in our Mat keeps a large amount of process scrap material out of landfills and significantly lowers our consumption of new polypropylene. It’s a simple change that has a positive environmental impact for us—and for you.