Project Good Box: designing a reusable packaging system for sustainable grocery delivery

We are Good Club, an online retailer delivering ethical and sustainable staple grocery items to UK households at affordable prices.

It is our mission is 'to make sustainable products accessible to all' delivered with the lowest environmental footprint possible. Our unique business model allows us to offer healthy, organic and sustainable food and household items to customers for 20-40% cheaper.

Today, UK bricks-and-mortar supermarkets use a staggering 59 billion items of plastic packaging per year, that's 900 pieces of plastic packaging per person, much of which is single-use, wasteful, with at best a 50% recyclability rating (Which 2019) -- even less will be physically recycled. We are disrupting this market and our next step is to implement a Closed Loop reusable packaging system that can eliminate grocery plastic packaging waste.

Since going live in 2019 we now sell ~4000 sustainable products to thousands of customers but we deliver the majority of these today in single-use/recyclable carton boxes, existing supplier plastic packaging and off-the-shelf containers. Our current packaging and delivery system is sub-optimal for our ambitions and our customer needs. This project will kick-start an important next phase in our growth.

We plan to develop a Closed Loop reusable packaging-system for the delivery of sustainable products to customers, that could be collected, cleaned and reused by us. We are developing and piloting this Closed Loop supply chain in 2020 using off-the-shelf crates, product containers and fillers, but we need a bespoke design solution for the system to work effectively for customers and stakeholders.

The main focus for the project is to design this new packaging-system, to include a delivery 'box', individual containers and product 'protection', that are easy and cost-effective to transport, store, clean and refill across user's homes and our 'reverse logistic' supply chain.Reuse and refill strategies are important models for tackling plastic packaging waste and are growing. Yet most today are for a single categories or brands i.e. beauty, personal care, household cleaning, making our solution innovative by offering full grocery category delivery.

The nearest direct competitor is Loop but our solution is innovative because i) we offer MUCH more choice (~4000 vs 165 items) ii) Loop is prohibitively expensive and elitist (Loop packaging deposits can cost 60% of the RRP) ii) we offer ethical/sustainable groceries, rather than mainstream brands, which can help move shopping towards a more resilient, sustainable diets and food systems.