For employees who regularly interact with customers, patients, visitors, and the public, creating a clean and well-designed workspace is an important consideration. Healthcare facilities, grocery stores, retail businesses, restaurants, offices, service counters, and other public-facing environments may use physical barriers to provide additional separation between employees and the people they serve.
Clear plastic materials such as acrylic and polycarbonate can be fabricated into protective barriers, counter shields, partitions, sneeze guards, and other solutions without significantly limiting visibility or face-to-face interaction. Piedmont Plastics supplies plastic materials that can be used to fabricate these solutions for a variety of commercial and institutional environments.
How Clear Plastic Barriers Can Help
Clear plastic barriers provide physical separation between people while maintaining visibility and communication. They can be especially useful in areas where employees and members of the public frequently interact at close distances, such as checkout counters, reception desks, service windows, registration areas, and healthcare settings.
Depending on the application, barriers can be designed as permanent or temporary installations and fabricated to accommodate openings for transactions, documents, equipment, or other workplace needs.
Plastic Materials for Protective Barriers
Acrylic and polycarbonate are two commonly used materials for clear protective barriers and partitions. Both offer excellent clarity and can be fabricated into configurations suitable for a variety of environments.
Acrylic offers excellent optical clarity and a clean, professional appearance. It is lightweight compared with glass and can be cut, routed, drilled, and fabricated for counter shields, partitions, sneeze guards, and similar applications.
Polycarbonate combines transparency with exceptional impact resistance, making it a strong option for applications where additional durability may be required. It can be used for protective glazing, partitions, shields, and barriers in demanding public-facing environments.
Material selection will depend on factors such as impact requirements, installation method, cleaning procedures, thickness, size, and the intended environment.
Applications for Protective Plastic Materials
Clear plastic sheet can be fabricated for numerous protective and separation applications, including:
Checkout and point-of-sale barriers
Reception desk partitions
Sneeze guards
Service counter shields
Healthcare and registration partitions
Office and workstation dividers
Protective glazing
Equipment and machine guards
Custom fabricated shields and partitions
These solutions can be customized to meet the dimensions and requirements of individual workplaces while maintaining visibility between employees, customers, patients, and visitors.
Supporting Public-Facing Workplaces
Physical barriers are one component businesses and organizations may consider when designing spaces that support employee and customer health. Appropriate cleaning practices, workplace procedures, ventilation, and other measures may also play a role depending on the environment and potential health risks.
Piedmont Plastics supplies acrylic, polycarbonate, and other performance plastic materials for protective barriers, partitions, shields, and related applications. With locations throughout North America, our team can help customers identify materials based on their specific performance and fabrication requirements.
Contact Us
Need help selecting a plastic material for a protective barrier, partition, sneeze guard, or other application? Contact your local Piedmont Plastics branch to discuss material options, availability, and fabrication requirements.