Collaborating for a Cause: How This Sustainable Cooler Company Teamed Up with Fishermen in the Philippines to Create Insulated Packaging out of Agricultural Waste

After years of developing durable and eco-friendly coolers for fishermen in the Philippines, the natural next step for Tamara Mekler and David Cutler was to develop a mass-market, sustainable, and easily portable cooler. Determined to build the next generation of coolers and insulated packaging out of agricultural waste, Mekler and Cutler turned to Kickstarter to help bring Nutshell Coolers to life. 

Mekler and Cutler met at Stanford University during a class called “Design for Extreme Affordability,” a class where students from across disciplines were paired with NGOs and challenged to develop a creative solution to the various issues presented to them. During the course of the program, Mekler and Cutler were partnered with a marine conservation organization called Rare, which initially alerted the co-founders to the problems plaguing fishing communities in the Philippines. 

“Small-scale fishermen in the Philippines are not able to preserve the quality of their fish. By the time the fishermen come back to shore and get to the markets they are going to sell their fish in, so many hours have passed with so little refrigeration that the fish has lost most of its value,” explained Mekler. “This means fishermen are getting really low prices for their fish and are not able to support their livelihood.”

Mekler and Cutler traveled to the Philippines for the first time in [June 2018], and spent months living with the fishing communities there, learning from their practices, and building prototypes with them to develop more effective cooling solutions that would preserve the quality of the fishermens’ catch. 

“People were wrapping their broken styrofoam coolers with duct tape to help them last a little bit longer. Polystyrene foam is cheap and light, but it’s very brittle, and it pollutes the environment because tons of this broken styrofoam floats out to sea. So we got working on the coolers and trying to figure out how we could build a better product,” said Mekler.

According to Mekler, “nature has already solved a lot of the really pressing challenges that society is facing today, so there is a huge opportunity to look to nature for solutions to help us live more sustainably, build better products, and have more impactful businesses.” Thus, when searching for a way to improve upon the styrofoam coolers used by Filipino fishermen, the co-founders discovered coconut husks. 

“We kept driving by massive piles of coconut husks that farmers have no use for all of that waste so it piles up at the farm and farmers will eventually burn it, which releases a ton of CO2,” explained Mekler. “It’s a waste of a really valuable, raw material. We found that it has excellent thermal insulation properties and a lot of other cool properties too. It’s water-resistant, anti-microbial, durable, and biodegradable.”

After years of working on solving the refrigeration issues of the Filipino fishing communities, Mekler and Cutler decided to dive into the world of consumer goods with the launch of their company Nutshell Coolers. 

“Our latest customers are outdoor lovers. People who take a cooler out camping or on a day at the beach, are the same people who are at the forefront of the sustainable movement. They’re the most keen on protecting the natural environment, supporting sustainable initiatives, and buying from ethical brands,” said Mekler.

Each cooler produced by Nutshell Coolers upcycles 24 coconut husks that would otherwise have been burned as waste, releasing large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. Furthermore, since coconut husks are considered waste by coconut farmers, Nutshell Coolers provides farmers with an additional source of income in addition to replacing traditional plastic coolers with an eco-friendly, biodegradable alternative. 

Looking to the future, Mekler hopes to continue her work to fight climate change through Nutshell Coolers. “Billions of styrofoam coolers are used all over the world in any supply chain where temperature-sensitive goods are being shipped. We can have a significant environmental impact if we scale our biodegradable insulated packaging product. Nutshell is a great opportunity for consumers to contribute to this larger mission of replacing plastic foam once and for all.” 

Nutshell Coolers remains dedicated to its fight to combat climate change as they move towards launching products where the company’s impact is truly embedded inside of each cooler. You can support their mission and get your very own Nutshell Cooler by backing their Kickstarter campaign, launching August 17th, 2021. 

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