Ah summer! You pack up a cooler with all your favorite adult beverages and snacks and head out for a night with friends or family. You might have made your own snacks or potentially brewed your own beer, but that giant plastic cooler you keep things in? It's not exactly eco-friendly, is it? Here's an inexpensive alternative!
Although this might look like a simple cardboard box with a bit of packing foam inside, it boasts a bit more. This box is made from 70% post consumer waste and can withstand the outdoor elements and be reused. It's inexpensive and easily takes the place of smaller coolers of equal size.
The only downfall we can see is the lack of a drainage hole like most coolers found at the store today, so make sure to dump out the melted bits to help it last a bit longer!
• Buy It: Cardboard Cooler Boxes for $14.99 from Cascades
(Image: Cascades)




Shaw's Original Fir...
Not following how a disposable item is greener than something that can be reused indefinitely. Google found me 9,000 + shopping hits for "recycled cooler" and not a one in the first five pages was disposable.
Agree w/ last comment. I reuse foam coolers & cooling packs in which items are shipped to our home & businesses...I can't force vendors to stop using foam, but I sure can re-use them & give them to others who will!
Ditto. My parents have an Igloo cooler that's at least 30 years old and still kickin' it. Nothing wrong with that. Just buy vintage!