If you’ve started buying basic supplies like shampoo and toothbrushes online during the pandemic, you may notice that you’re creating a lot of extra waste in your house. But soon you’ll also be able to buy versions that come with sustainable, reusable packaging.
Loop, the milkman-style platform that partners with big brands to offer subscriptions to common products like Tide detergent in reusable packaging, will expand its delivery service across the US early this summer.
This isn’t the first time we’ve written about Loop. Last May, we introduced the Loop service, which was set to trial at an apartment complex in Brooklyn. That trial seems to have been a success with Loop gearing up to serve the whole country.
As an increasing number of people have been avoiding crowded stores as much as possible in the last two months, consumers have turned to e-commerce, including Loop’s service. The expansion is a response to demand from customers, but also offers an alternative to recycling at a time when the recycling industry is not doing so well.
Instead of shipping products in packages designed for a single-use before recycling, or ending up in landfills and polluting the environment, the platform sells products in packages designed for multiple reuses.
When a container is empty, a consumer drops it in a shipping tote, schedules a pickup, and then sends the packaging back to be fully sterilized and then repackaged for another customer. Four hundred brands, including some of the biggest conglomerates, have now signed onto the platform and are working through the process of developing new packaging for their products.
