FACTS AND FIGURES ABOUT DUPONT TYVEK® BRAND PROTECTIVE MATERIAL DID YOU KNOW...?

The 1955 discovery of Tyvek® was a chance occurrence by a DuPont researcher, Jim White, who noticed white polyethylene fluff coming out of a pipe in the lab. It took 12 years from the discovery of Tyvek® in its preliminary form (strong yarns of linear polyethylene) to the time it was commercially available in its current form (nonwoven sheet structures). In the past 25 years, enough Tyvek® has been made to go to the moon and back again. Captain Scott O'Grady survived being shot down in western Bosnia with the help of a map made of Tyvek®. Boeing's Defense and Space Group uses Tyvek® covers to protect NASA space station modules during the transportation, storage and manufacturing processes. The production of Tyvek® with 25 percent post-consumer recycled (PCR) content for envelopes has redirected more than 400 million milk and water jugs from landfills. A home wrapped in Tyvek® will maintain 94 percent of its installed R-value, compared to only 37 percent for a home without Tyvek®. Tyvek® has expanded the packaging and sterilization choices available to medical device manufacturers, enabling sterility maintenance of medical devices to protect the health of literally millions of patients worldwide.