Our culture loves all things delivered. But this comes at a cost. The cardboard boxes and plastic waste are piling up, putting a strain on landfills and recycling centers around the world. Forbes reported that roughly 165 billion cardboard packages are shipped in the U.S. each year, which equates to more than 1 billion trees. Our obsession with convenience has consequences whether we see them or not.
We believe, however, that the solution is simple. We reuse our packaging. Each week, our customers’ old baskets, ice packs, and insulating foil are picked up on delivery, then washed and reused to reduce waste. With the core principle of reuse, Patagonia says, “As individual consumers, the single best thing we can do for the planet is to keep our stuff in use longer.” It would be a contradiction if we advocate for sustainable agriculture and reducing food waste while filling landfills with single use packaging. So we choose to ‘keep our stuff in use longer’.
The recent picture below, for example, is of a basket with our original (not glamorous) logo – proving it’s been in circulation for 7 years and reused at least 364 times. That’s 364 freezer packs, insulating foils, and cardboard boxes NOT filling a landfill. And that’s just the impact of one customer! Multiply that thousands of times over, year after year, and our community’s waste reduction in Atlanta becomes significant.
