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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Loop

Deliveroo Is Running a Reusable Container Program in Paris

Deliveroo France and circular-packaging company barePack have started offering customers of the delivery service the option to get their food delivered in reusable containers, according to a report from Green Queen. Around 60 of Deliveroo’s restaurant partners are already participants in the program, which is live in Paris with plans to expand to other areas of France in the future. The program is also available to customers in the London area.

Deliveroo and Singapore-based barePack first partnered in 2020 to bring the reusable container option to customers in that city-state.

The Paris deal is similar. Deliveroo customers wanting their meals in reusable containers must first download the barePack app and sign up for a monthly or yearly subscription, which go for about $2.43 and $23 USD, respectively. The barePack app will provide a passcode users can enter into their Deliveroo account that then allows them to select the barePack option from participating restaurants at no additional charge. 

Customers can return containers to any restaurant participating in the Deliveroo-barePack Paris program. All containers are professionally washed and returned to the circular system. 

Deliveroo is the first major delivery service to offer a program for reusable containers. While 60 restaurants in a single city is only the smallest of dents, it’s nonetheless a dent in the world’s restaurant trash problem. If the Paris program is successful, it could bode well for reusables throughout the rest of Europe, where serves multiple countries, including the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and its home country, the U.K. The company also operates in Australia, Hong Kong, Kuwait, and the UAE. 

No delivery service in the U.S. has yet to implement a widespread reusables program, though the hope is that a company as large as Deliveroo could wield a certain amount of influence over others. DeliverZero is a smaller operation that offers reusable packaging in parts of the U.S., and Dishcraft offers its own “containers as a service” program for restaurants. Some chains, including McDonald’s and Burger King, are working with TerraCycle’s circular packaging business Loop in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Burger King Partners with Loop to Pilot Reusable Packaging

Burger King announced today that it has partnered with TerraCyle’s circular packaging service, Loop, to test out the use of resuable food and beverage containers.

Starting next year, select BKs in New York City, Portland (the announcement didn’t specify Maine or Oregon) and Tokyo, will give consumers the option of getting their sandwiches, sodas and coffee in the reusable containers and cups. Customers opting for the reusable packaging are charged an undisclosed deposit upon purchase that is refunded when the containers are returned to a collection system at the restaurant. From there the containers will be picked up by Loop, cleaned and sanitized and reused by Burger King.

If this sounds fast food news sounds familiar, that’s because McDonald’s announced a similar partnership with Loop last month to trial reusable cups in the U.K. next year.

Both of these trials are good news as fast food giants like Mickey D’s and the BK Lounge are both sources of a lot of single-use packaging waste. Their involvement in the battle against waste will be important, as my colleague, Jenn Martson recently wrote:

Whether you love big restaurant chains or fear they’ll be the only ones left after the dust from the restaurant industry upheaval settles, it’s worth acknowledging that they’re typically the ones with the deep enough pockets to invest in new forms of to-go containers.

For people who care about waste and recycling, it should be noted that Loop continues to expand its services. In addition to Burger King and McDonald’s, Loop is broadening its CPG shopping service across the U.S. and its parent company, TerraCycle, is working with Hive’s just-launched online market.

This reusable container partnership with Loop also reinforces Burger King’s sustainability commitments, which include having 100 percent of its customer packaging be sourced from renewable, recycled or certified sources by 2025, and recycling of customer packaging in 100 percent of restaurants in Canada and the U.S. by 2025.

McDonald’s Partners With Loop to Pilot Reusable Packaging

With the restaurant industry currently being reinvented with to-go-first experiences in mind, there’s cause to worry that the shift will add even more single-use cups, straws, and boxes to our already bulging landfills. So it makes for a small silver lining that McDonald’s today announced a partnership with Terracycle’s zero-waste platform Loop to pilot a reusable cup model.

The program will first be trialed at select McDonald’s in the UK in 2021. For a small deposit, customers will get a reusable Loop cup for their hot beverages. The deposit can be redeemed by returning the cup to any participating McDonald’s location, according to today’s press release. Loop will retrieve the used cups, wash them, and return them to the cycle.

As to whether this reusable cup program will make its way to the States, a McDonald’s spokesperson said, “The feedback collected through these packaging trials will help inform which options are scaled up or adopted in other countries around the world.”

Loop’s main business lets customers shop online for grocery, household, and beauty products from well-known brands, then get them delivered in packaging. Living up to the platform’s name, Loop  retrieves and cleans the empty containers once a customer is finished, and the cycle starts again. The company currently has partnerships with Häagen-Dazs, Tropicana, Nature’s Path Organic, and several well-known personal care brands. The service is available in select U.S. cities and is in the process of expanding to more places, including international locations.

The McDonald’s partnership comes at a time when the fight for a more sustainable restaurant has to co-exist alongside the fight against COVID-19. Some chains, notably Starbucks, have banned reusable cups for the time being, (understandably) citing safety concerns. But the sustainability issue can’t be put on hold for long, particularly since the increase in to-go orders could eventually equal an alarming increase in trash, too.

Whether you love big restaurant chains or fear they’ll be the only ones left after the dust from the restaurant industry upheaval settles, it’s worth acknowledging that they’re typically the ones with the deep enough pockets to invest in new forms of to-go containers. For its part, McDonald’s has already piloted other circular solutions for cups, including the Recup system in Germany and the chain’s participation in the NextGen Cup Challenge in the U.S.

Earlier this year, the company also completed construction on its first “net zero energy-designed restaurant” in Florida. At the time of that news, I wrote that billion-plus-dollar restaurant chains like McDonald’s, Chipotle, etc. are the ones that need to take the lead in writing the playbook for sustainability in the restaurant. Smaller restaurants — the ones that have managed to survive the fallout — still struggle to remain open, so it seems unreasonable right now to ask them to also reinvent the paper cup. 

McDonald’s, on the other hand, has a $4 billion off-premises business and a recent track record that’s heavy on the innovation front. Using some of those dollars and resources to create a more sustainable restaurant experience seem the next logical step. 

Waste Free! Loop Expands Reusable Packaging Program Throughout the U.S.

With the coronavirus pandemic forcing me to order more things than ever online — from groceries to toiletries to fancy dried beans — I’m accruing quite a lot of single-use packaging at my house. And I feel bad about it.

Maybe I’ll soon be able to assuage some of that guilt when Loop, the reusable packaging service, expands nationwide over the next few months (tip via Fast Company). Loop, an initiative from recycling company Terracycle, sells name-brand CPG products directly to consumers that are packaged in reusable containers made from metal and glass. After the consumers use them up, they put the empty containers back in the tote they came in and Loop picks them up to be sterilized and refilled.

Loop launched in the U.S. last May with a pilot program in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. According to an Instagram post from the company, Loop will roll out its reusable-container service across the contiguous U.S. sometime this summer. Globally, Loop is available in Paris and has plans to head to Canada, Germany, Japan, and the U.K. this year.

At launch Loop already had a roster of big-name partners like Kroger, Pepsi, Nestlé, and Walgreens. The platform has expanded to include roughly 200 products, including plant-based burgers and ice cream from Häagen-Dazs (my personal favorite).

I know what you’re thinking — during a pandemic when we’re all anxious about contamination, are we really going to be okay with receiving groceries packed in containers that someone else has already used? Especially since bring-your-own mugs and reusable totes in retailers are becoming a thing of the past?

Loop’s CEO certainly thinks so. He told Fast Company that Loop has seen evidence that “consumers are comfortable with reuse during COVID.” Since Loop has a reuse protocol in place — with stringent cleaning measures and pre-established health and safety checklists — he’s confident that they’ll be able to continue their closed-loop packaging practice without putting users at risk.

If users are comfortable with this, Loop’s extended platform could be a real help to cut down on our persistent packaging problem. Even if your delivery boxes are technically recyclable, COVID-19 is causing challenges for the waste management industry as a whole. Many packaging elements — like styrofoam and ice packs — aren’t recyclable anyway. Considering that the EPA reported that over 32 million tons of packaging and containers went into landfills in 2017 — almost a quarter of the total waste from the entire year — this is an issue we need to take seriously.

Today is Earth Day, so there’s no better time to take a moment and consider how we can help preserve our planet. Come this summer I know one small step that I’ll be taking cut down on the amount of packaging I’m tossing out. Bonus: I still get to enjoy my chocolate-fudge ice cream.