Foam Recycling

There has been a tremendous amount of misinformation surrounding the unsuitability of foam containers (EPS or expanded polysturene) for shipping frozen items.  The narrative has, for many years, been that EPS is unrecyclable and terrible for the environment and that using dry ice is a preferable method of shipping frozen food.  New technologies are changing that narrative.

Dry ice seems to be the perfect method of shipping frozen food- it is really cold and melts away to nothing when the package arrives and is unpacked.   A little deeper dive into it reveals other considerations.  First of all, it takes a tremendous amount of energy (typically electricity) to freeze CO2 to -190F and keep it there while it is stored for sale and use.   While renewable energy is rapidly gaining a foothold  (about 20% in 2022), 80% is still produced by coal, hydro and nuclear with all their attending environmental issues.  Raw Wild Dog Food, as a small, family run business, can’t afford to build and maintain a freezer capable of maintaining such low temperatures and the cost of the electricity used in doing so is.  Buying it in smaller amounts results in a lot of waste (think CO2 released into the air) and a lot of fuel transporting it to the packaging facility.  Secondly, dry ice is simply frozen CO2, the gas we are trying to sequester, not release.

EPS has historically been treated as garbage and thrown into the land fills and that is indeed not the place for it.  New technologies that have arisen in recent years now make it cost effective to recycle.  There are a number of companies that are engaged in recycling EPS and over 500 locations nationwide where you can drop it off to be recycled, with more being created as more uses for the recycled EPS become evident.  There are a number of websites talking about its recyclability and we want to share one that can point you to 510 (current) locations across the US where you can recycle the foam containers we use to ship Raw Wild Dog Food to you.

Take a look at it here.  https://www.homeforfoam.com/home/

We recognize that there are other alternatives to EPS and dry ice and are constantly  evaluating them but feel that at this point EPS is the most cost effective and (assuming you as a consumer will avail yourself of the recycling opportunity) environmentally shipping method.

If you have any comments we are always open to hear them.

Cheers

The Raw Wild Team