© 2024
Virginia's Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Richmond Firm Fights Glut of Plastic Packaging

The world has a packaging problem – too much plastic piling up in landfills or floating in the ocean. But Americans love convenience and there’s growing demand for perishable products shipped in styrofoam or packing peanuts. 

Now, three friends from college have started a Richmond company that keeps products cool without threatening the environment. 

TemperPack began four years ago in a garage with three employees.  Today, it has 350 workers in Richmond and Las Vegas, making three different packaging products.  The first is thermal blankets that can be laid inside a cardboard box.  Co-CEO James McGoff shows me a small square coming off the assemblyline.

“This is cotton, and if you look closely you see there are little seeds and sticks in it, and this is cotton that wasn’t good enough to be used for textiles, for clothes,” he explains. “The benefit is it’s a natural resource.  It sequesters CO2 as it grows.  It’s a great insulator,” he says.

Then there are packing peanuts made with a secret sauce – cellulose.  Once they’re used to ship, they can be sent to paper plants where they’re mixed with water to create pulp.

“Cellulose as a base material is amazing, and cardboard, paper, these things are renewable, they’re natural," he explains. "You can make them in a way that there are very low emissions.  You can recycle them and compost them.  It’s one of the best materials we have access to."

And, finally, TemperPack makes pop boxes – specially corrugated cardboard that helps keep contents cool.

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with the silver bubble foil – kind of like bubble bags.  This is similar to that, and it brings recyclability to the game,” McGoff says.

TemperPack workers make a thermal blanket from cotton to keep merchandise cool.

Add a gel pack or dry ice, and – depending on which product you choose – TemperPack guarantees it will keep contents frozen, refrigerated or cool for up to 55 hours.

“ Let’s say I have diabetes and I take insulin.  It’s coming right to my doorstep.  It needs to be between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.  There are a lot of companies now that are side-stepping pharmacies and going right to people’s doorsteps.  If the person is not home, you have to make sure that this packaging can keep the temperature requirement so that the drug stays effective.

In addition to medicine, the company provides packaging for meal kits, flowers, frozen dog food and ice cream. 

With business partners Brian Powers and Charles Vincent, McGoff has raised millions of dollars to design and build specialized machines to make green packaging, and investors have seen rapid growth – sales rising 500% over the last three years.  They’ve had to document the protective power of their products and secure a recycling logo from the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, but those things done, McGoff says customers were anxious to do the right thing.

“By 2025 people say there is going to be more plastic in the ocean than fish by weight, which is pretty insane if you think about it, and the other thing that I like to hang onto is one third of all the city’s waste is packaging material. You have so much stuff that’s going to the doorstep now that’s perishable, so you need a lot more of this temperature-controlled packaging, but at the same time you have a large pushback on these single use plastics.  They don’t really have a good brand appeal, so there’s a big hole in the market – about a $20 billion hole – that we’re trying to fill with new, innovative packaging concepts.”

TemperPack is competing with some packaging giants, but the guys don’t worry about competition from overseas.  The profit margin on packaging materials is so low, they say, that manufacturers in Asia can’t afford the cost of shipping to the United States.  

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.

Sandy Hausman is Radio IQ's Charlottesville Bureau Chief