REUSABLES || This Canadian Venture Aims to Make Takeout and Delivery More Sustainable in 2022
A startup venture in British Columbia is seeking to make takeout and delivery more sustainable as we step into the new year.
Living in a fast-paced city, we often favour convenience over sustainability, even though we understand the importance of how sustainable living benefits the community at large in the long run. Sustainability initiatives and businesses of the past, while impactful, still required a lot of effort on the consumer’s part: bring your own mug, bring your own containers, consume your drink quickly before the cardboard straw melts – you remember those days. What if there was a service that can satisfy both conditions and be convenient and sustainable?
This is where Reusables comes in. Co-founders Jason Hawkins and Anastasia Kiku started the budding business during the depths of the pandemic in 2020, and the business has already diverted over 200kgs of packaging waste out of the landfill by reusing over 4,000 containers this year. Hawkins shares that their goal is “to make reuse as convenient as a single-use and accessible to everyone.”
The co-founders seek to create a circular economy and have already diverted over 4000 containers from landfills in the past year.
The business model is simple. Users sign up on the Reusables app, order food from participating restaurants, receive their takeout in reusable containers and return the containers to collection points in their community after each use. In comparison to existing plastic disposable packaging, Reusables’ containers can be reused about 1,000 times before being recycled.
The co-founders had set out to test whether there was demand in the community for resuable containers during the pandemic in 2020 when disposable plastic use exploded with the sharp increase in food delivery orders. The initial goal was to sign up 5 restaurants and 100 members. Within two weeks, the business had garnered so much interest from the community that they had to temporarily halt additional registrations. With sufficient data to confirm the demand for the service, Hawkins and Kiku proceeded to develop apps and systems to manage inventory.
Users can sign up on the Reusables app and select Reusables containers from participating restaurants when ordering on UberEats.
When asked how many restaurants they would need to hit critical mass in a community, Hawkins shares that it’s more important to focus on sub neighbourhoods and have a variety of food types within the community, because most people are living within 15 minutes of where they live, especially during the pandemic where work from home has become more common. This means once Reusables can sign up restaurants within a select pocket, it will become worthwhile for residents in the area to try out the service. Members have 14 days to return their Reusables containers to a collection point, giving users flexibility in when and where they return the items.
Kiku shares that the team works closely with all stakeholders as they continually refine the logistics to build a circular economy.
“It’s always a really close consultation with food businesses and the end consumers and all different parties involved in this. We firmly believe this kind of design approach and systems thinking is the only way to design a system that will work for everyone and really scale,” says Kiku.
Reusables containers can be used an estimated 1,000 times.
So far, Reusables has signed over forty restaurants in the Vancouver area and hundreds of members, with that number growing day by day as the team looks to add more Reusable containers collection points and expand to new markets. Earlier in October, the business expanded to North Vancouver, offering more pickup and drop-off points with each new business added to the roster.
So, how much does it cost to be sustainable and have your delivery order arrive in stylish stainless-steel containers? Just five dollars per month. A successful business promoting sustainability must minimize the amount of friction when it comes to service adoption, and we see that Reusables’ efforts will be fruitful, given the business is already reducing barriers with a low monthly membership and a vision to increase integration with food delivery services that are now a widely used service around the world. When asked what their next milestone is, the team shares that they aim to reuse 500,000 containers in 2022. If the business can achieve full integration with food delivery apps like Uber Eats, Skip the Dishes and DoorDash, this goal is likely easily within reach. With this next wave of sustainable businesses on the horizon, we can see how future businesses can be convenient and sustainable.
Photos courtesy of Reusables
