Compostable Seafood Shipper Insulation Supports Brand’s Mission

Inspired by his family legacy of fishing in Bristol Bay, Alaska—an occupation that began with his grandfather in the 1920s—Arron Kallenberg founded Wild Alaskan Company in 2017 to bring sustainably harvested, wild seafood to the masses. Articulated by Kallenberg, the company’s mission is to “accelerate humanity’s transition to sustainable food systems by fostering meaningful, interconnected relationships between human beings, wild seafood, and the planet.”

Kallenberg was driven to create Wild Alaskan after he learned of the rampant seafood fraud propagated through deceptive seafood product labeling in many of America’s cities. “It wasn’t until I moved to the ‘Lower 48’ to go to college that I realized how hard it was to eat real food—let alone reliably find sustainably harvested, wild seafood,” he says.

Today, over half the seafood Americans eat is imported, according to estimates from experts. A significant portion of that fish is unsustainably farmed. “It is harmful to the environment,” Kallenberg explains.

“As someone who grew up as part of Alaska’s seafood industry, I had no choice but to start this company,” he adds. “I believe that it is my responsibility to share and protect this amazing, renewable natural food source for generations to come.”

Read this related article, “Seafood Branding is ‘a Love Letter from Alaska’”

Given its focus on environmental stewardship, Wild Alaskan is just as rigorous when it comes to the sustainability of its D2C packaging. Says Packaging Manager Garrett McMullen, “It wouldn’t sit well with our company values and our philosophy if we were delivering sustainably caught seafood in a poor packaging solution that was not environmentally friendly.”

Since it shipped its first order, Wild Alaskan has been using a bio-based foam insulating material from TemperPack that replaces the seafood industry-standard non-recyclable expanded polystyrene while providing the same functionality. Green Cell Foam does double duty when it comes to sustainability: It’s made from a non-fossil-based renewable resource, and it gives consumers a way to responsibly dispose of the material after it’s done its job.

Bio-based insulation makes responsible disposal ‘foolproof’

With a home base in Homer, Alaska, Wild Alaskan ships wild-caught whitefish and salmon as well as specialties such as prawns and crab sustainably caught in Alaska to consumers across the U.S. Subscription members can select from among several curated boxes containing 12 6-oz portions of quick-frozen, individually vacuum-sealed fish, or they can customize their order.

The company uses a non-recyclable film to package its fillets—the best option currently available to protect the seafood and comply with FDA requirements. However, its secondary packaging is fully recyclable or compostable. It uses two sizes of corrugated shippers. One is for the standard 12-piece order, while the other, larger shipper is used when a member wants to increase their order to “add on crab legs or scallops, for example, or take advantage of limited-time offers,” explains McMullen. To keep the fillets frozen, Wild Alaskan uses dry ice.

Wild Alaskan is using a Green Cell Foam two-piece, AB panel design, with A covering the top, side, and bottom, and B used for the remaining three sides of its shipper. Image courtesy of TemperPack.

The most critical component of the shipper though is the insulated liner. “We have to maintain that frozen state of the seafood for up to 72 hours of shipping,” says McMullen. “That can be quite challenging if you’re shipping to Florida or Texas in August.”

Traditionally, EPS is used as insulation for cold-chain shipping. While effective, it’s petroleum based and, because it consists of 98% air, it’s too expensive to store and transport for recycling. TemperPack’s cornstarch-based material is completely compostable—not only in industrial environments, but also in home compost. In fact, it’s been certified home compostable by TÜV Austria. 

Even more interesting, however, is the fact that Green Cell Foam can be dissolved in water. “It’s sink safe; it dissolves almost immediately,” says McMullen.

He adds that the material offers a foolproof way for consumers to responsibly dispose of the insulation. “If it ends up in a landfill, it’s still going to dissolve at a really rapid rate,” he says.

On the downside, because it’s water soluble, Green Cell Foam will begin to dissolve if it comes in contact with moisture or liquid in the shipper. To prevent this, the insulation panels are encapsulated in a low-density polyethylene film that is store drop-off recyclable. Says McMullen, while there’s no way around using the film currently, “knowing TemperPack, it’s probably at the top of their list to find a solution.”

Peak performance depends on optimized packout design

After Wild Alaskan selected Green Cell Foam for its insulation, TemperPack began the work of custom designing an optimized solution for the seafood company’s requirements. “Here in our facility, we have a team of packaging engineers and an ISTA-certified thermal transport lab,” shares Jed Dutton, TemperPack VP of marketing and sustainability. “When we start working with a customer, it’s a very collaborative process to get the packaging right, because it’s very easy to underpackage, and it’s very easy to overpackage.”

Among the design considerations are the nature of the payload that’s being shipped, its safe temperature requirement, and the shipping duration, which depends on what courier the customer will be using. Another is the type of coolant, either dry ice or gel packs, that will be used. “Each of them works well, and each of them has their own challenges,” says Dutton. “If it’s gel packs and it’s a frozen product, the shipper becomes a lot heavier, and you have to use a lot more insulation. Dry ice is much more efficient, but it’s also not as easy to source, and you’ve got to do a few things to insulate the payload from the dry ice.”

Once TemperPack has all this information, it designs a packout that is then put through simulation testing along with chamber testing, which is done in an enclosed, climate-controlled cabinet that uses sensors and instruments to monitor and regulate environmental variables. “You can set different profiles for different temperatures,” explains McMullen. “So for example, I could say that I want the shipper to be exposed to route-specific temperature fluctuations to mirror worst-case scenarios.”

From those results, TemperPack adjusts the design, modifying the thickness and density of the panels, the number of gel packs or amount of dry ice, or other variables such as box size. The tighter a box is packed, the less air flow and the greater the thermal performance. The more dead space, the quicker the dry ice will sublimate.

Bio-based foam is a primary solution for Wild Alaskan

Starch-based Green Cell Foam is extruded and formed into sheets or panels using a proprietary process from TemperPack. Wild Alaskan is using a two-piece AB panel design, with A covering the top, side, and bottom, and B used for the remaining three sides of the shipper. The panels are manually packed into the box, after which the dry ice is added, followed by a corrugated insert that separates the dry ice from the product, and then finally the seafood.

Read this related article, “House Plant Box's D2C Biz Blossoms with Protective E-Comm Packaging”

Copy printed on the Green Cell Foam material advises members of the disposal options. In addition, a QR code printed on the shipper links to a page on Wild Alaskan’s website where members can learn more about how to compost or dissolve the material. “Sustainability is a big thing these days—it really comes down to educating our membership,” says McMullen. “It’s important to have sustainable seafood, so why wouldn’t it be important for our members to take action with the packaging? They really go hand in hand.”

While Wild Alaskan will always be looking for ways to increase the eco-friendliness of its packaging, Green Cell Foam has proven to be the best option for insulation. Says McMullen, “There are other solutions out there that we’ve looked at that we’re interested in, but nothing that we’ve seen matches Green Cell Foam.”  PW