TemperPack Announces Successful POPBOX Trial Completion
TemperPack’s POPBOX replaces bubble foil meal kit liners with certified curbside recyclable alternative:
RICHMOND, VA – April 10, 2018 – TemperPack, a leading manufacturer of sustainable insulated packaging, has announced today the successful completion of a season-long trial of POPBOX with PaperliteTM, a new, fully curbside recyclable packaging innovation for perishable food shipments. With the success of the pilot program proven, the company is now ramping up capacity to meet the 2018-19 seasonal demand.
With 30M households considering trying a meal kit in the next six months, and e-grocery poised to become a $100B industry by 2022, more media attention has been focused on packaging waste in the food industry.
“We noticed that a lot of our customers prefer to shift towards thinner, more economical packaging insulation during the colder seasons,” said James McGoff, cofounder and co-CEO. “The problem is the only insulation available to them were shiny bubble bags that are virtually non-recyclable, a particularly big problem in an industry that has caught a lot of flak for wasteful packaging. Our goal has always been to make the packaging as thoughtful as the product it protects – so we set out on a journey to make our own OCC-e certified recyclable replacement for bubble liners.”
To test the concept in the market, TemperPack built custom manufacturing machinery and partnered with a major meal-kit company who shipped over 800,000 units of POPBOX in its popular meal kits across the country. Based on a national recyclability rate of corrugated material (93%), by utilizing POPBOX instead of bubble wrap, TemperPack was able to divert 156,000+ cubic feet of plastic waste from landfills, roughly equivalent to two Olympicsized swimming pools. POPBOX represents TemperPack’s first foray into certified curbside recyclable insulation. The company designed it using paper-based materials in response to the extremely low rate of plastic film recycling in the US. The product is also constructed as a single-piece design which packs flat during freight shipment and pops open, making it extremely efficient for those working in the fulfillment operations. The liners were also branded with high fidelity graphics that touted its curbside recyclability. “The overall reception of the product has been tremendous,” added McGoff.
As the summer season approaches TemperPack is expected to wind down production of POPBOX in favor of more powerful insulation solutions. The initial season test of POPBOX outperformed expectations and left the company asking, “why would anyone use bubble wrap insulation anymore?” TemperPack expects to ramp production of this truly unique product up to full scale in October with the goal of diverting 5 million pounds of packaging waste from landfills to the recycling stream within the first 3 months. To contact the company about potential commercial sales and partnerships of POPBOX, or any of TemperPack’s other sustainable insulating products, please reach out at http://www.temperpack.com/contact.
About TemperPack:
Founded in 2015, TemperPack solves thermal packaging problems through sustainable design. The company was born out of a desire to reduce the amount of unsustainable packaging that correlated with the rising world of ecommerce delivery. They specialize in bringing custom solutions for clients to scale in the perishable food and life sciences industries. Today, TemperPack operates two facilities in Virginia and Nevada and is rapidly expanding its reach in the perishable and cold chain shipping market, all with the goal of reducing the amount of packaging that ends up in landfills.
The TemperPack press release was published on April 10, 2018.
