How do you improve the world with your idea?
For edible oil, packaging is currently made primarily from single-use glass and metal. Both require enormous amounts of energy and resources during production and therefore contribute significantly to climate change. Glass production additionally requires gas, which creates a dependency on fossil fuels from other countries. Alternatives such as plastic bottles or composite cartons are not any better, as they contribute largely to today’s waste problem on land and in the world’s oceans.
With our reusable glass packaging, both CO₂ emissions and resources are saved, since the bottle does not need to be melted down after every use but can simply be washed and refilled.
What is innovative about your idea?
Our reusable system is just as easy to use for oil mills and edible oil distributors as the single-use glass they currently rely on, because we take care of the entire background service. This includes the collection of empties from retailers, logistics, and bottle washing. The only difference is that new glass doesn’t have to be produced every time – instead, we deliver washed bottles ready for refilling. This is made possible through a partner network of washing service providers, where we deliver dirty bottles and pick them up clean.
Our customers don’t purchase containers from us – they purchase a service for a usage fee. As simple and affordable as single-use, but much more ecological. For end consumers in retail, nothing really changes, as they can return the reusable bottles at deposit machines just as they are used to.
What is your vision for the future of your industry?
In the food sector, most products are currently packaged in single-use containers, as these are often still cheaper for brand owners and involve less effort in disposal. We want to change that by gradually introducing reusable systems for more and more product categories, always with the aim of making packaging more sustainable.
Not every product makes sense in reusable packaging. But where it does, we want to help establish an efficient and ecologically meaningful reusable system – in order to save energy and resources in the long term.
