If they get wet they ll dissolve and they re made to be highly biodegradable so they ll break down pretty quickly anyway.
Packing peanuts attic insulation.
In a wall cavity they would offer little resistance to air movement so they would be of limited r value.
The very reason why plastic peanuts work well as packing makes them a bad choice for wall insulation.
I m not sure when they switched to the new kind but it wasn t more than five years ago or so.
Another problem is that newer environmentally friendly cornstarch peanuts dissolve when wet.
The older kind might work okay.
We found millions of packing peanuts loose in the attic presumably intended to function as insulation.
But the problem with using packing peanuts for attic insulation is that while the individual peanuts may have an r value of about 4 0 per inch the peanuts have large air spaces between them which allows air currents to easily flow through a layer of packing peanuts.
The problem comes from the large interstitual spaces between the pieces.
The r value of polystyrene is about 4 0 per inch.
Good insulation works by trapping air.
Most packing peanuts are made of polystyrene.
Osborn a former associate editor replies.
Has anyone ever seen this before.
New packing peanuts are made from a type of corn starch.