Reduce Your Packaging Waste with Zero Effort: Enter Loop, The New (Milk*)man.
*Anything you want. Loop is rolling out this May in New York and Paris.
Loop will deliver products to your doorstep from the biggest brands, in re-usable packaging in a re-usable box or tote. When you use up your toothpaste or shampoo, you simply throw the packages into the tote. They’ll collect it, send you new ones, and clean and re-use the ones you sent back.
Sound too good to be true? Well it isn’t perfect but as many would argue, “perfect is the enemy of good”.
The Good
It’s convenient and requires zero effort.
Loop has engaged some of the biggest brands out there — Nestlé, Unilever (Axe and Dove deodorant), Procter & Gamble (Pantene, Crest), Danone and more — to design new packaging that will withstand being washed, sterilised and re-filled over a hundred times. This means you can continue to use your favourite, tried and tested products, and still reduce the impact your consumption has on the environment.
When you’ve finished with the products, you don’t even have to rinse them, as you would for recycling. You simply put them back in the tote box provided by Loop and request a pick-up online. This is also a good moment to place an order for whatever you want to have in your next delivery. So really, not only is it easier than recycling, it also means you don’t have to go to the supermarket for all these products. It is extremely convenient.
What it hopefully means on a wider perspective is that the number of single-use packages ending up in landfills will be dramatically reduced. Many of these packages are difficult to recycle and are not accepted by municipal recycling programs. In 2018 China stopped taking the USA’s recycling waste. Since then the US has been in a difficult situation. The infrastructure and resources are simply not available to deal with the extra waste so it’s ending up in landfills. These plastics take hundreds of years to decompose and some never do. So the waste is just piling up higher and higher. Loop may be able to change this.
The big guys like Unilever, PepsiCo, Nestlé got a lot of the blame for the amount of packaging being tossed by consumers. After all, they produce it (which has a huge energy and material cost) and market it, often creating a percieved “need” that simply didn’t exist before. This has lead to people like us purchasing more and more products and binning more and more packaging. The blame and the pressure to take action has often been put on the consumer. But now these companies seem to be stepping up and taking some of the responsibility in a commendable attempt to reduce the rubbish problem.
The Bad
As always, it’s a compromise. Loop requires you to leave a deposit for your articles. The deposit will be between $1–$10. Just like in the old days with glass recycling, you get the money back when you return the empty packaging. Sounds simple and, after all, you get the money back. However, if you’re on a budget, leaving a deposit for shampoo, toothpaste, laundry detergent, deodorant and maybe a few more, adds up. And these are things you’re going to keep ordering, so when do you really get the money back? You’re not about to stop doing your laundry.
Single-use products are out there because they are convenient and above all: cheap. Who needs cheap products? People who don’t have much money to spare. In the US, where 12.3% (2018) of the population live in poverty and 32% are low-income families, the situation is dire. Expensive solutions are simply not solutions for a large part of the population.
On top of the deposit, Loop is going to charge about $20 for delivery, but it will be less the more products you order. So basically at the moment this solution is aimed at a certain section of society that can afford to pay for a better conscience.
But don’t let this get you down. All new projects are expensive. Change has to start somehwere. Just as the middle-class Suffragettes changed the lives of millions of women in all levels of society, so can middle-class consumers solve our waste problem. Once Loop rolls out in New York and Paris, it will expand to new places and to supermarkets like Tesco and Carrefour. That means the delivery cost will disappear. The companies involved and the brilliant minds working for them will keep working on better, cheaper ways to achieve the same results. Hopefully this will be reflected in the cost to the consumer, and slowly more and more people will be able to buy these products, instead of single-use ones. The pile of rubbish will get smaller.
The Ugly
Consumers have the power to influence the industry and this is proof of it. Industry will only adapt to these new demands as much as they think is necessary to keep consumers happy, but no more. Their goal is not to save the planet but to keep you consuming. They are saying: Don’t change your consumption habits, keep buying. Consumers will see that industry is “trying”, and they will become pacified. A happy and content customer no longer pushes for change. And change is what we need. We’re runnig out of resources, and our own planet’s overheating. Solutions like Loop need to pop up in all sectors and fast, if we are to have anything left for our children.
Ultimately Loop is a change in the right direction but time is running out.
We have to keep pushing.
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