The Meal Delivery Service That Will Save the Polar Bears
I’ve thought about this a lot, and there’s only one solution….
Hello there! Welcome to Polar Bears Eat Free, the world’s only boutique meal delivery service focused on providing meals to polar bears in need! The earth’s polar bear population is only just starting to rebound and needs constant monitoring and support. Thanks to hundreds of generous members, Polar Bears Eat Free can play a minor role in the continued conservation of polar bears. We’re glad you paid us a visit and hope you’ll stay to learn more about our story!
About Us:
Meredith Baer founded Polar Bears Eat Free in 2019, two years after the National Geographic video of the starving polar bear went viral. Meredith was so disturbed by the National Geographic video, she realized she had to make sure a polar bear would never starve to death again.
Meredith brought up her concerns to a good friend Wilma Osborn over coffee a few weeks later. While Meredith cared about polar bears, she didn’t know the first thing about starting a business. Wilma did, having studied business and entrepreneurship in college, and the two women kicked around ideas. Both women wondered why the filmmakers hadn’t done more to intervene in the bear’s situation.
During this first coffee brainstorming session, Wilma commented how the U.S. sends millions of dollars to aid people in underdeveloped countries around the world, yet, is reluctant to mobilize the same power to support the polar bears despite possessing the ability to do so given enough willpower. Meredith responded that because humans were responsible for the current mess, it should also be humanity’s responsibility to ensure the survival of the endangered species.
After the U.N. failed to ratify another international agreement to curb CO2 emissions, and governments abdicated their responsibility, the need to take matter into her own hands was stronger than ever. The question “Why not me?” burned in Meredith’s mind like a hot branding iron. Meredith kept coming back to the idea of aiding the Arctic. Through organizations like the Red Cross and USAID, humanitarian aid regularly shipped around the world to people and countries in need. The Arctic wasn’t home to very many people, and it wasn’t a war zone. But even so, she should be able to do something.
How expensive could it be to provide food for a couple of polar bears? It’s well known that polar bears primarily eat bearded and ring seals. Why not modify fish farms so they could accommodate small seal populations? Then there would be a stable and easily renewable food source for polar bears. The only thing left to figure out was how to distribute the seals.
And so, the idea for a specialized meal delivery service for polar bears was born.
Meredith pitched the new idea to her friend Wilma, who agreed to help create a rough budget and draft a grant proposal. In those early days, Meredith and Wilma participated in a Climathon event hosted by Climate-KIC, where they proposed and refined their idea for conservation-based meal delivery service. It was some of the most challenge 24hrs of their lives! But at the end, they had a solid and workable proposal for their business.
With a lot of hard work, Meredith and Wilma won a $3000 Climate Change Innovation Grant from the Yale Business Center. This was a huge step forward in making the dream of Polar Bears Eat Free a reality!
We’ve been in operation for three years now. As a company, we’re committed to the best sustainability and conservation practices. It is our goal to create a renewable, close-looped system in which we can provide at least half of the caloric needs of polar bears. To create this reality, our team has applied for an NSF American Seed Fund grant. We strongly believe that our organization is the kind of environmental technology they’re looking for. We hope to secure funding for a safe and stable future for polar bears.
How it Works:
We have two small fleets of drones able to survive cold temperatures and freezing waters. Using hydro-sonic technology they emit high frequency streams that flush ringed and bearded seals towards the surface and into state-of-the-art holding pens.
Currently, Polar Bears Eat Free has five industrial sized holding pens, each capable of supporting fifteen seals. The holding pens float on the surface of the water, making them highly maneuverable and able to tow behind a ship. The nets can withstand strong currents, limiting the number of escapes. We use the most sustainable open ocean farming practices and careful site selection mitigates traditional waste management and sea lice problems.
While the animal handling teams do not hold the captured seals very long, they take great care to ensure any food necessary for the seals comes from operations certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. (Note: Polar Bears Eat Free is currently in the process of becoming ASC certified). We do not use fish meal created from endangered forest species. On the rare occasion fish meal is needed, we source the product from companies using alternative methods such as drawing down CO2 or methane gasses.
Given the fragility of the high Arctic ecosystem, our board of directors has made the strategic decision to supplement our seal supply with Emperor penguins. To make this a reality, Polar Bears Eat Free charters a ship that sails to just off the coat of Antarctica before launching a fleet of drones from the ship deck. Upon arrival, short range drones launch from the deck of the ship. The drones locate a group of Emperor penguins before knocking out and immobilizing the animals using tranquilizer darts with a fast-acting vegan formula. Aside from the initial shock, the process is painless and noninvasive. Our team cleans and guts the penguins on the return trip to the high Arctic. By the time our ship arrives, there is a plethora of ready-to-eat, nutrient dense, penguin morsels available for the polar bears.
Polar Bears Eat Free works closely with biologists from polar bear conservation groups such as Polar Bears International to track bear denning and hunting patterns. Consequently, we can find the most strategic drop points for our penguin and seal delivered cargo. If necessary, we can place high quality meat right outside the dens of female polar bears and their newborn cubs.
Similarly, we can track down struggling polar bears and provide them with enough sustenance to give them a higher chance of making it to their next hunted meal. It is important to note; we take our responsibility to maintaining the health of the community seriously. We only assist the animal when deemed crucial to their survival. If over-familiarity with humans or dependence on meal deliver services is detected, animal support is terminated immediately. In certain cases, Polar Bears Eat Free teams may capture the bear and transport it to a partner zoo to serve as an ambassador animal.
Here at Polar Bears Eat Free we are working on a way to farm both ring and bearded seals and penguins. This will help the company achieve our goal of long-term sustainability by reducing our dependence on wild-caught game animals. In the future, we would also like to charter a ship powered by renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. This is currently out of our price range, but we are hopeful for the future.
Our Pricing:
MONTHLY PLAN — $80 / bi-monthly
The monthly plan is designed with prime affordability and flexibility in mind. Generous donations from supporters such as yourselves are a large part of what keeps our organization going! With our bi-monthly plan, you will receive a FREE membership swag pack which includes a picture of a polar bear signed by Meredith Baer. Perhaps the bear in the photo is the same bear you are saving with your membership! You will also receive a free T-shirt and membership certificate to rub your eco-consciousness in all of your friends’ faces. Most importantly, by signing up for a bi-monthly plan with us you guarantee that at least one polar bear will be the beneficiary of our work each billing period. That means one less polar bear is headed for extinction!
SEMI-ANNUAL PLAN — $350 / billed twice a year
The semi-annual plan is designed for maximum impact. With this plan, you will get the most bang for your buck! Billed twice a year, you will receive all the cool merchandise perks that’s available with the monthly plan, like the T-shirt and membership certificate. PLUS, you’ll get a cute polar bear plushie and VIP gold card for discounts on merch in our online store! With generous support, we will repair some everyday wear and tear suffered by our drone fleet. Your membership will also support us invest in R&D into our seal and penguin meat farm. The best part is that a semi-annual membership comes with a guarantee feeding at least six polar bears every billing period! Neato!
ANNUAL PLAN — $1,000 / yearly
If you are as depressed about the state of the Arctic and its probable future as we are, then the annual plan is for you! Your generous assistance will supplement the cost of trips to both Antarctica and the high Arctic and help us afford to repair wear and tear on the drone fleet. The annual plan includes ALL of the merch perks from both the monthly and semi-annual plans AS WELL AS an invitation to join our team in Washington D.C. for our annual lobby day!
Come help us pressure lawmakers to do the right thing and provide more funds for our organization and other organizations like us! With the annual plan, we can guarantee that at least two dozen polar bears saved from extinction every billing period when you sign up for this plan! Show the world that you care!
How You Can Get Involved:
If you donate to Polar Bears Eat Free, you’re granted free access to our live feed of the Arctic for one full year! With this access, we will email you a download link to our 24 hours a day live feed of sensitive areas where polar bear activity is heavy. Once you create your account and join the live stream, you can navigate around a selected area, and virtually hunt for polar bears. Viewers objective is to find polar bears within their selected territories. Once located, a user has the option to click the large red button that says, “SEAL IT!”.
The action marks that particular polar bear as a meal delivery recipient for our team. The user will then see a pop-up dialogue box with the following message: “Congrats! You have just successfully delivered 1 ring or bearded seal (species subject to availability) to polar bear [ID number]. Thank you for your part in helping keep the Ursus martimus population stable!”
Please Note: we impose a three seal limit a day on every live stream user. To ensure equal distribution of resources, if an individual bear receives more than five seal contributions from distinct users, the additional seals are dispersed randomly throughout the surrounding bear population.
Every polar bear in the Arctic is tagged with a radio collar that allows our team to track bears flagged by live stream users and find an appropriate place to deliver the allotted seals. The Polar Bears Eat Free team will email seal delivery videos to the people on our listserv. Three days after this, donors will also receive an email containing the swag bag details. The staff of Polar Bears Eat Free has worked hard to create a transparent and valuable partnership between our staff and the generous individuals, like yourself, who donate to our cause.
We also host an annual Lobby Day, where team leaders from our organization and volunteer members gather in Washington D.C. to lobby Congressional representatives to pass bills that would allow us to grow and expand our operation. More details are available on our Volunteer page.
Testimonial from satisfied customers like Emilia A.:
“Government inaction on climate change frustrated me for years. I wasted so much time writing letters to my representatives and taking part in protests for change. I even tried to limit my footprint by cutting out plastic straws and driving less. I didn’t take a vacation, or see my family, for seven years! My family lives across the country, and I feared the amount of emissions I’d create flying anywhere. Any time a family member offered to come visit me, I bullied them, accusing them of not caring enough, and I yelled that they would be a horrible person if they flew commercial.”
“Despite everything, it seemed like every month there was a new news story informing me that the Arctic was seeing unprecedented warming. Seasonal ice was at record lows. I was frustrated and paralyzed with climate anxiety. I didn’t know where to turn. That’s when a friend of mine recommended I check out Polar Bears Eat Free.”
“Within thirty minutes of browsing their site, I was sold!”
“I signed up for a semi- annual plan, and I got to work virtually scouring the Arctic for signs of starving polar bears. The first time I ‘sealed’ a polar bear, the satisfaction I felt was unparalleled. I could finally take addressing climate change into my own hands. Six months into this venture, and I’m hooked. Every morning before heading to work I spend forty-five minutes on the live feed checking for polar bears. I can feel that I’m making a real direct impact.”
“My family hates me now, — my sister has me saved in her contacts as ‘Climate Alarmist,’ — but I can at least sleep at night knowing the polar bears are safe. Thanks, Polar Bears Eat Free!”
— Emilia A
