Organic food firm adopts wool packaging
Wool packaging to replace styrofoam?
In what might be considered a pretty amazing achievement, UK organic food delivery firm Abel & Cole has replaced its polystyrene-insulated packaging with a sheep’s wool packaging called Woolcool.
Abel & Cole, which makes approximately 25,000 deliveries to customers every week, has begun using Woolcool packaging boxes across its range of chilled and perishable goods, including meat, poultry, fish and dairy products.
Woolcool is made from British sheep wool that has been washed, scoured and needle-felted to produce a fleecy insulation material. The fabric is cut into strips and sealed into recyclable food-grade LDPE, which is micro-perforated so that the wool can breathe, allowing for a hygroscopic cooling effect.
Once used by customers, Abel & Cole’s Woolcool boxes are collected by Abel & Cole’s delivery drivers, and can be reused. They are also biodegradable and recyclable. Abel & Cole claimed the switch would save the equivalent of 87 40-foot trailers of polystyrene packaging every year.
Woolcool can keep contents below a temperature of five degrees centigrade for at least 24 hours, which makes it more effective than polystyrene.
Innovations like this, especially those that might reduce our reliance on such inexplicably packaging such as styroforam, are so flat-out cool. I’m so encouraged by efforts like this. Not to mention other biodegradable packaging that I see these days.
How do you suggest we light a fire underneath other companies to explore using this?