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Brrr Box Cooler: A Sustainable Alternative to EPS

Startup value-added packaging company develops a reusable, recyclable cooler made from DS Smith’s water-resistant, food contact-safe material that offers an alternative to wax-coated and EPS materials.

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After four years of trial and error, value-added packaging company Vig Pak, LLC finally found a material that ticked all the “boxes” for its EPS-free, 100% recyclable and biodegradable convenience cooler. Company co-founders spoke during DS Smith’s demo, “A Cooler Alternative: Greencoat® Sustainable Plastic Foam Replacement Packaging,” presented on Wednesday at PACK EXPO Connects.

“We have probably 15 patents on this cooler,” noted co-founder and President Ed Battle. “And this has not been an easy project. We’ve been working on this for over four years because this is almost an impossible thing to make work. But we did it. In the back of my mind, I had always been looking for a product that could replace Styrofoam, and our initial impetus in this thing was to dominate the retail market, and the retail market is anybody who sells ice.”

The Brrr Box™, “The Official Cooler of Planet Earth™ ,” uses DS Smith’s proprietary Greencoat corrugated moisture-resistant and FDA food contact-safe material made of sustainable renewable fiber that is repulpable and recyclable. Explained Adam Olson, DS Smith Sales Director, Greencoat® & Specialty Unit for DS Smith, the material was launched 13 years ago as a solution to wax-coated boxes for poultry and has since been adopted by a number of other markets, including meat, seafood, and produce. The company has even begun providing Greencoat for cremation boxes and corrugated coffins to address the increasing costs of funerals.

Greencoat uses a patented process applied on its corrugators at one of its three Greencoat facilities. According to Olson, the technology combines impregnation in the paper and coating on the paper. He adds that advantages of the material include a lower cost than wax-coated and EPS boxes, and unlike EPS, it ships flat, saving shipping and storage costs. Greencoat also allows for high-impact graphics and is easier to glue than wax-coated material.


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