Making Styrofoam Obsolete: An Innovative Recyclable Solution to Cold-Chain Packaging

As consumers, we spend a lot of time considering how to recycle the packaging that encases our essentials. This causes us to wonder: Do the companies that manufacture those products feel a responsibility? Do they believe the onus is on them to create packaging that doesn’t burden the Earth?

Brian Powers takes this seriously. He is the co-founder and CEO of TemperPack, an innovative company that creates sustainable functional packaging products used to transport foods, vaccines, and other perishable and essential goods. Since its earliest days, TemperPack’s giant victory has been ClimaCell, an efficient alternative to petroleum-based Styrofoam. A patented material made of renewable paper and plant-based elements, ClimaCell is certified curbside recyclable, which means it gets picked up from the same bins as your cardboard.

This solution alone is a win for humanity. Styrofoam is a 70-year-old material that needs to go: It doesn’t biodegrade and it clogs landfills. (Powers describes Styrofoam as being “the worst plastic that's commonly used out there.”) But there’s more to it. In talking with Powers, which Eva Yazhari and Ed Stevens recently did on The Beyond Capital Podcast, it becomes clear just how strong the demand for sustainable packaging is—and in turn, how massive the opportunity for innovating recyclable options is becoming.

Editor’s note: This conversation has been slightly edited and condensed. To listen to the complete original version, visit The Beyond Capital Podcast.

A Conversation with Brian Powers

Eva: When it comes to plastics and other wasteful materials, what is the scale of the challenge, and what does the demand and opportunity look like?

However big it is, it is getting a lot bigger now with the growth in e-commerce that is driving a lot more packaging consumption, and a lot more plastic packaging consumption. Not all plastics are created equal. Styrofoam is by far the worst plastic that's commonly used out there. There are a lot of toxic emissions when it's manufactured. It takes up tons of space in a landfill, where it lasts for well over 500 years. 

When we go to sustainable packaging conferences (back when there were conferences), it's funny to hear plastic executives basically say, ‘Hey, we're not Styrofoam, our plastics are much better.’ And so it's a big problem. And as much as companies are wanting to move away from Styrofoam, they also need to ship things, and at an increasing rate. Things are going direct to home,  and in increasing ways both in food and the pharmaceutical market. So it’s driving a huge need for more thermal materials, things that keep things cold or frozen during transport. It's well over $10 billion market growing at least 20 percent a year. There’s no data yet, but with COVID, it probably increased more than 50 percent just this year. So it's a big opportunity and a big problem.

What’s key, is not just getting rid of Styrofoam, but replacing it with materials that work really well. And that is truly sustainable, not just greenwashing. The two major challenges and the things that differentiate us as we've gotten started is our authentic sustainability and our true performance in keeping very high-value products—like biologic, drugs and infusion treatments, vaccines, meals—right. We have a team of over 30 engineers that ensure it's not just as good as Styrofoam, but better in many ways.

Ed: You used to be in finance and investment banking. What led you to get into the packaging industry?

The idea to go into packaging actually goes all the way back from college. One of my co-founders, James McGoff, he and I were childhood friends. We went to middle school and high school together outside of DC and Maryland, where we grew up. We always wanted to start something in high school. We started a junk removal business called Junk Runners. We started a rock band called Paper Planes. We wanted to do something really big. James’ dad is an entrepreneur and always inspired us to go build a business. James was going to go study engineering and I was going to go study finance. He went up to Montreal at McGill where he met Charles Vincent, our third co-founder. I went to Penn to study finance. The three came up with a lot of ideas all over the place, truly blank canvas, but stumbled upon this cold-chain market, which had a lot of disruption, which meant a lot of opportunity.

After I graduated I went to Wall Street for a year. I learned a ton, including that it was not, for me. But it was very helpful in learning about business. After they graduated, we got started and really tried to, to get the company going. It really has been a whirlwind of growth.

Eva: You mentioned “greenwashing” and finding an alternative to Styrofoam. What have you seen that was in the greenwashing category purporting to be sustainable, but, and, and maybe not even effective?

Styrofoam is sometimes marketed as recyclable, which it almost never is. There's very few facilities around the country that will recycle it. You have to go drive there to do it and can't just put it in your bin. And a lot of consumers still are confused by that. Styrofoam cannot be curbside recycled.

We see other materials that claim to be biodegradable, have no data to support that claim. And maybe they use plastic, which is not biodegradable or compostable or recyclable all without data. These are poorly regulated claims and consumers get confused by them, as you would expect. We've gotten third-party data on all of our explanations, which has just been a really important thing. And we've seen the industry develop and get a lot more sophisticated and consumers get a lot more sophisticated. Whereas it used to be enough when we were just getting started to say, ‘hey, we're not Styrofoam.’ Now it's, ‘we're recyclable, we have this carbon emissions impact.’ And, ‘if you switch to us, this represents a 95 percent reduction in your overall plastic use.’ So it's getting a lot more sophisticated. In the last couple of years, we've seen a huge momentum build from buyers and consumers on the specifics of sustainability, which has been really awesome.

Eva: Have you thought about the opportunity outside of the US and globally for your product?

We are starting to think about that. The US is a huge market and as fast as we grow there is still a ton of opportunity here. But we are starting to export to the UK and Europe. We had initial talks with buyers in Asia and Australia and New Zealand. So it is something we're looking into. Exporting works surprisingly well for our product. The way our product is configured, it ships flat unlike Styrofoam, which ships more air than the Styrofoam. So we can fit three times as much, which not only lowers the carbon footprint but lowers the transport costs. So long term, we do see manufacturing it globally.

Ed: Sustainability is at the heart of your mission and yet sustainability can mean a lot of different things to different people. What does sustainability mean to you and to TemperPack?

Sustainable means if it scales really big, is it a good thing for the world. Does it or doesn't negatively impact the world? There's obviously good when you ship food to someone's home. That's a good thing. They get food, they get convenience. So the question is, did that come with negative externalities that poorly affect current or future generations. Everything has an impact. Almost everything produces some level of carbon, some level of waste. So you really want to minimize that to a point where a society can deal with that waste over time so that it doesn't accumulate and affect future generations negatively.

That's what we're building toward. We started out of the gate with a huge improvement over Styrofoam, which was a low bar to hit. But we want to get better, better. We want to, each year, use less energy and reduce our waste internally, use less material in general for the same outcomes.

There’s a ton of opportunity because Styrofoam is a 70-year-old material. It did the job for many years. And then in the last, sometime the last five to 10 years, people started saying that this isn't really good enough. This has a huge impact on the environment on landfills—and we're not going to work with brands that use it.

Ed: Is your focus purely environmental, or is there a social impact component as well?

Our commercial focus is certainly on the sustainability end, but how we run the company we certainly try to have a strong social impact. We operate in economics zones, opportunities zones, low-income areas. We pride ourselves on promoting from within we've had awesome experiences for people coming in as an assembly worker and working their way up, which I'd love to say out of the goodness of our heart, but it's really just because they proved themselves. It’s great to be able to offer that kind of opportunity. We certainly try to evaluate ourselves on a number of ESG criteria other than just environmental.

Eva: Would you describe opportunity zones and how you create your manufacturing in those areas?

Opportunity zones are regions that the government, usually the federal government, has listed as low income areas that they want to encourage companies to invest in. So they offer incentives to investors in companies operating in those zones, and you also can qualify for low interest loans, grants, other things like that on the state and federal level. When we were picking our plants, we were on a budget. So it made sense to go to a place that was affordable. These incentives are pretty attractive. And when you do, you hire the local workforce, which has been a really good thing for us. It’s a lot of strong ties, and the communities offer a lot of opportunity where there wasn't much opportunity.

Eva: Is your packaging solution more expensive than the market standard. And if it is, do you find that you have to kind of educate or convince potential customers of the value of sustainable packaging?

We pitch ourselves as being the least expensive when you think about it from an all-in cost perspective. And what we mean by that is when you take into account the costs of shipping, so all the weight in the box. When you take into account the brand effect, and the fact that the biggest reason why consumers cancel subscriptions to meal services is because of all the plastic packaging. When you factor those things in, we have a great return on investment for customers.

If you look at it just on the material itself, we do charge a premium. Instead of using petroleum-based plastic products, we use plants—and that does cost more. Fortunately there's enough of an unoptimized industry and enough of a consumer need that when customers get educated about it, they see that it's not inconsistent with their bottom line. I think that's what makes us unique as a company. A lot of companies really do get torn between their bottom line and having a good social impact. At the end of day for many companies is a trade-off.

For us, I think we're just in this unique space where we're very aligned. When we invest in the sustainability of our product, we can charge more and our customers can market that to their customers and who are ultimately willing to pay more or order more as a result. We've been fortunate to be very aligned so far and I think there's a lot of market opportunities that are like that that are increasing because consumers are being more vocal about what they want.

The last thing I'll say about the packaging with e-commerce, is if you walked into a retail store, a big part of your perception of the brand was how that store looked. What was in that store. When you buy something online, you see a website that looks a lot like other websites. That is one of the biggest differentiators: the packaging that it comes in. That is the only physical presence that an online customer gets other than the product itself. And so people are investing in that packaging and sustainability is absolutely one of the biggest ways to do that.

Ed: Have you seen any unintentional or unexpected consequences arise from your work and your products?

In the early days you certainly are building the bus as you're driving it. And it took a lot of trial and error to get the product right and to scale well, and to convince the big brands that we could scale up with them. In the early days, certainly lots of mistakes made as far as scaling up. I think we took on any order in the early days that we could get our hands on and we over committed at times. I think we've gotten much, much better at that. And I think we're now one of our biggest differentiators is our service and just being reliable in the early days.

We got fortunate there because our first big customers were meal kits who were just starting out themselves, desperate for a non-Styrofoam option. We were able to grow with them, and matured with them and then diversify to other types of food businesses. When you grow really quickly, it's always hard to train everyone as much as you want. People get thrown into the fire right away. Some people thrive on that and they love that others like more structured environments. It's always a challenge getting that. Being based in Richmond and Las Vegas, we operated in communities that were truly hungry to be a part of something that was a rapid growth, socially minded business, so we were able to get a lot of really dedicated people to see us through those challenges.  Fortunately I think we've had more wins than losses since we got started.

Eva: What is something that is giving you hope right now?

The huge increase in startups focused on climate technology and sustainability in general. It seems that a lot of the smartest people out there are going into this in their careers, whether it's investing or building companies. It seems to really be coming into its own, which I think is encouraging. If it stays a niche, then we're not going to solve climate change. We're not going to solve the plastic problem. So it seems to be attracting the human capital needed to actually make a difference, which we are a super small part of that and want to be a part of a big wave of that stuff happening.

Eva: What is a big trend you’re seeing in your industry? And, what is mushroom packaging, which we’ve heard about a lot?

A big trend is the incredibly discerning consumer. They want to know everything about the products they're buying and the packaging used for it. They are viewing their purchases as extensions of themselves and as ways to express their moral codes. I think that's what's fueling our growth. Some of our customers are truly fundamentally dedicated to sustainability. Others are doing this purely because their consumers are asking for it and they just serve their customers and they give them what they want. I think that's a trend that you see in lots of different industries.

Mushroom packaging is so cool. That was one of the few things out there already when we got started. They grow mushrooms for packaging that replaces Styrofoam. They play more on the protective side with appliances and electronics. We do more of the food and life sciences side. We haven’t competed with them yet. But it's a really cool idea, and one that really paved the way for a lot of sustainable packaging. It's captured people's minds about packaging, which is something that people really didn't think much about until five, 10 years ago,

Eva: Just turning back to your company and to you as a leader, 10 years in the future, what mark do you think TemperPack will leave on the world?

I think within 10 years we will have virtually eradicated Styrofoam coolers. And I think we will have massively reduced the burden on landfills by creating recyclable and compostable packaging. I think we will have lowered the costs, both environmental and economic, to transporting food and medicine to consumers and patients, their homes, which will hopefully increase, get nutrition and increase access to food and life sciences products. Ten years to me is an infinite horizon, so I could keep going, but those are the main goals that we want to accomplish—and also on a global, not just in the U S

To learn more about Brian Powers and TemperPack, visit TemperPack.com.

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