Ice packs: Just what the @#$! are they?

Like many people, our family buys these easy-to-make dinner kits. We happen to buy Hello Fresh, but I suppose they're all similar. They ship perishable food to you, hoping it arrives quickly. In case there's a small delay, they put what I assume are standard "coolpak" ice packs in the box.



And not just a few! Each time you order, you get 3 more of these gargantuan packs. There's no way that anyone has a freezer big enough to hold these things, so what are you supposed to do?

The pack says that it's non-toxic, water soluble and fine to just toss out:




Unfortunately, one of our packs sprung a leak, so I didn't want to just toss it in the trash. So I thought, "well, if it's water soluble, it should go down the sink just fine." Nope. It appears to be some kind of silicon based substance that, while it will absorb water indefinitely, will not actually dissolve *into* water.

But wait! The pack label talks about recycling! yay! I love companies that take responsibility for their own trash! And we *hate* companies that make it our problem, right?

But if one goes to the link that they provide - hellofresh.com/recycling - one gets a 404, "page not found".


By the power of Google search, the only thing that I could find on their entire site was a tiny mention of either re-using it (ya, right, who has that kind of space?) or just throwing it out. It's actually less information that what's on the ice pack!


I broadened my search to ask the entire innertube, what is in those ice packs? I got this from the most awesome site, Wikipedia:

Gel packs may be made by adding hydroxyethyl cellulose (Cellusize) or vinyl-coated silica gel.

Well, what are those? Hydroxyethyl cellulose is a commonly used substance, that just happens to be the main ingredient in KY Jelly.

hmm, perhaps there *is* a way to re-use this stuff...

But how do we know that it's not the other stuff? Silica gel is that stuff they pack all your electronics in to absorb moisture. The stuff sure *looks* like silica gel.

Silica gel isn't toxic but many substances that they add to it are. If Hello Fresh says that their packs are non-toxic, should we believe them? Who knows?

All this begs the real question: Does Hello Fresh actually expect us to make a second order from them, when we just toss half their package into the trash? Why not pack their boxes with something genuinely usable? Like ... cucumbers. Or carrots. Or beats. Or potatoes. Even if they go bad, I can just toss them in the garden.