Via CruzFoam News

Updated Environmental White Paper highlights a water solubility and ecotoxicity report confirming Cruz Foam’s rapid dissolving in water and the mixture’s properties being akin to fertilizer for plant growth.

It’s time to celebrate Plastic Free July and no better way to do that at Cruz Foam than shipping our first cold chain products with customers like Verve Coffee and Real Good Fish both based here in Santa Cruz, California. Cruz Cool(™) is our first curbside recyclable cold chain product providing 48-hour insulation and protection for conventional cold chain e-commerce fulfillment.

“Working with Cruz Foam has been one of the highlights of our year! We are absolutely thrilled to soon launch Cruz Foam insulated shipping containers for our cold-chain products,” said Baker Carroll, Head of RTD, Verve Coffee. “Whether our customer is down the street or across the country, the innovative and high-quality containers from Cruz Foam give us complete peace of mind on the safety of our food products and the fact that they are sustainably manufactured with a true love for the environment sets Cruz Foam far apart from other companies. Cruz Foam has not only created a product that works well and can be disposed of in a way that is safe for the environment, but they have worked extensively with us to ensure proper function for our products. To have a first-of-its-kind product supported by such an attentive, thoughtful, and creative team of developers and salespeople is a rarity in this day and age, and Cruz Foam is setting the bar high!”

“Globally, 31 trillion pounds of styrofoam is produced every year. It is one of the most pervasive and destructive forms of pollution. At Real Good Fish, we knew that in order to truly be a sustainable seafood company, we’d have to go beyond our seafood and deeply look at our supply chains and, most importantly, our packaging,” said Alan Lovewell, Founder & CEO, Real Good Fish. “We pride ourselves in never using styrofoam and finding value-aligned partners dedicated to developing better solutions for people and the planet. Working with Cruz Foam allows us to maintain that commitment while ensuring optimal product temperature and quality and delivering an exceptional customer experience. In a truly circular way, packaging made of shrimp shells is an elegant solution for an industry that has been reliant on otherwise unsustainable materials.”

Cruz Cool is a great solution to replace traditional plastic foam-based coolers and shipping containers, which are rarely recycled and frequently end up in landfills and waterways where they can degrade into microplastics that harm the environment and wildlife. Orders for Cruz Cool and other sustainable packaging solutions are available on the Cruz Foam product page and with our go-to-market partner Atlantic Packaging. Check out these and other plastic-free solutions in their New Earth Approved Catalog.

“As we ship our first products, we are proud to be working with Atlantic Packaging, who shares our passion for innovation and sustainability and who has the capability to bring these products to market at scale. Once we met Wes [Carter] and learned more about Atlantic Packaging’s commitment to an intelligent transition to a circular packaging supply chain and a waste-free world, we knew we had found the right people. We’re excited to work with Atlantic and their initiative A New Earth Project to deliver Cruz Foam products to people around the world.”

This month, Cruz Wrap(™) also made its debut protecting wine and spirits at Farm Cottage Wines and Venus Spirits. The wrap can be used to protect bottles for take-home and shipping and also provide insulation to keep cool during transport during these warm summer months. Cruz Wrap replaces both traditional plastic bubble wrap and also plastic foam sleeves for shipping and transport.

We are just as excited about the release of our updated Environmental White Paper which includes the addition of the results of our first Water Solubility and Ecotoxicity Report that confirms Cruz Foam’s rapid dissolution in water, as well as the positive qualities of that mixture which, in a controlled laboratory environment, performed on par with fertilizer.

In a comparison test to see how different types of soils affect the growth of lettuce seeds, they looked at untreated soil, soil treated with Cruz Foam, and soil treated with regular fertilizer. The Cruz Foam treatment made the seeds sprout the fastest and helped them grow much better than the untreated soil. It even did just as well as the regular fertilizer.

In addition to our earth-friendly disposal, we treat our sourcing with the same care. Cruz Foam is committed to making products for a circular world which is why 70% of our product is made from upcycled ingredients. This means that these ingredients are procured and produced with surplus or by-products from manufacturing using verifiable supply chains.

The recently published report, Turning off the Tap, from the UN Environment Program makes us hopeful that the world is headed on a better track:

“Advancing and scaling substitute materials provides an opportunity for innovation and economic development. Importantly, deployment at scale of composting infrastructure for compostable products, as well as segregate collection, would be crucial in any circumstance where these products replace plastic items. Innovation on new materials that are bio-benign, ephemeral, lower-cost and/or are coupled to available waste infrastructure for zero leakage can unlock greater impact from reorienting and diversifying to near-zero pollution in the coming years.”

We hope that you join all of us in finding ways to reduce the amount of single-use plastic we consume in our daily lives and our businesses. We will be posting content to our social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter & LinkedIn) all throughout July and hope you will share your ideas with us and our global community!