Nevada-incorporated Airdex International Inc. is touting the "world's lightest pallets" in China and the Asia-Pacific region. The company made headlines in mainstream Chinese media, presenting a pallet model that weighs just 3.5 kilograms (7.7 pounds) but can hold up to nearly 5 metric tons (11,023 pounds).

Together with its Singaporean partner Broadway Industrial, Aidex has produced about 100 million such pallets in factories in Shanghai, Suzhou and Shenzhen for electronics makers like Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba.

By manufacturing in China, the company hopes its light pallets can replace the 12- to 25-kilogram wooden and plastic pallets currently in use by Chinese air freight companies.

If Shanghai ships out 100,000 Airdex pallets to Europe instead of wooden pallets, the company claims, emission of CO2 will be cut by at least 730,000 kilograms.

What materials are the world's lightest pallets made of? I found the answer from Airdex's Web site: expanded polystyrene (EPS) in the inside and high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) on the outside.

Airdex has manufacturing facilities in the U.S., China and Malaysia.