Leading Food Brands Adopt Reusable Container Delivery Program
The world's leading food manufacturers are trialing reusable containers for a new delivery program called Loop.
Reusable packaging is coming to some of the world’s biggest name brands.
Companies including Pepsi, Unilever, and Nestlé are now offering select items through a service called Loop, a program run by TerraCycle, which handles sales, delivery, package returns and cleaning.
TerraCycle’s goal is to focus on “hard-to-recycle materials, developing circular solutions for otherwise linear systems,” the company notes on its website. “Today we recycle millions of pounds of such material on a weekly basis, diverting it from our landfills and incinerators.”
The New Jersey-based company says that when looking at new waste streams, “we first focus on moving it from a linear disposal system to a circular one, and then over time to a platform that is as closed loop as technically possible.”
The program partnerships signal a major nod toward changing consumer habits and shifts away from single-use containers, plastic, and bags. Last year’s biggest food story wasn’t a new product launch or new flavor — it was the cosmic shift away from single use plastic straws, Ad Age reported.
It works like bottled milk or water delivery — the products are hand-delivered and picked up when empty. They’re then cleaned and reused.
Haägen Dazs ice cream flavors will now come in reusable metal tins, for example.
Brands in the program design their own reusable packaging, some of which has an expected lifespan of nearly a decade.
Consumers will only pay the addition of a refundable container deposit fee and a shipping fee; the product prices will be in line with retail prices.
The Loop program is set to launch internationally with service in Paris, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania later this spring. The program is also eyeing a partnership with leading UK supermarket chain Tesco later this year.
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