This Thanksgiving put down your apron, set aside your mixing bowls, and treat yourself to a prepared homestyle meal delivered directly to your front door. The number of home delivered prepared meals and meal kit companies is at an all time high due to their fantastic flavors and ease of integration into people’s everyday busy lives, saving time on meal preparation and offering healthy alternatives to take out. As an industry, we have learned a lot about food packaging and the cold chain required to deliver quality and safe to eat foods from centralized distribution centers to millions of homes across the world. But with this increased amount of single use packaging, how can we have the least environmental impact and help to preserve our natural resources and protect our planet?
The answer is to choose companies that use green packaging that has a minimal carbon footprint, conserves water and energy, and does not persist in the environment after disposal. Unfortunately, many meal delivery companies are using solutions which are not truly green. Cotton insulation, recycled denim, paper, and even starch based foam peanut packaging options are labeled as green; however, many of these solutions require large amount of irrigation, the use of pesticides and fertilizers, and often are not even completely recyclable. For more information, read our application note “Is your thermal packaging really green?”
Our Ecochill solution
Ecochill thermal solutions from Illuminate are the first truly environmentally friendly cooler for shipping refrigerated or frozen meals. The insulation originates from a completely renewable source. The material is naturally dried, requiring no additional energy, the manufacturing processes use minimal power and the finished product is entirely compostable. Only practices certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative are used to produce Ecochill coolers. The raw material is grown using only sunlight and water, with no pesticides or fertilizers to pollute waterways. Manufacturing Ecochill wastes no raw material and requires no production water. Fabricating one pound uses only 4% of the energy it takes to make a pound of EPS.
Top Delivered Thanksgiving Meals
The Illuminate team has selected their top favorite Thanksgiving prepared meal providers based on menu selection and taste (not by packaging)
1. Hello Fresh Thanksgiving Feast
2. Bob Evans Farmhouse Feast
3. Purple Carrot Thanksgiving Celebrations Box
We hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and has the option to try some of these wonderful home delivered meals. Please contact our team of cold chain experts if you have any questions or requirements shipping temperature sensitive products. Our team is here to assist you. Also, we have recently introduced our Pre-Engineered Cold Chain Shippers which have been designed to properly and effectively use our specialty packaging products without the need of customized solutions or in-depth consultation.
