PackAge

The challenge

I'm going to take you on a journey to a country, in which people are on the hunt for food on a daily basis. They don't literally hunt; their society is quite sophisticated and food can be bought in supermarkets. In those supermarkets, those people buy... waste. Not metaphorically, they literally buy waste. These are people like you, and me. In the second half of the 20th century, prosperity rose to sky high levels in Western Europe. Unfortunately, this also meant that for example, more than 4x more waste per person was produced by Dutch inhabitants in 2020, compared to 1950 (CLO, 2021). Lots of waste is bought to immediately get rid of it after usage: cups, cans, jars, boxes... The list goes on. Modern supermarkets are built upon disposable plastic packaging and basically can't live without it, while this enlarges the waste mountain to new record highs. We can do better.

The solution

We *should* do better. I'm Wouter and I proudly present you: PackAge. A system with which packages can be reused and reused again, fully integrated in the existing supply chain of supermarkets. In a nutshell, it goes as follows: instead of lots of unnecessary small packages, one large unit of a product arrives at the supermarket, to be used by lots of customers. The units are to be placed inside a to-be-designed portioning tool. People will pay per gram; no volume discounts. This tackles two other issues: 1. Life being more expensive for smaller households, since smaller packages are relatively more expensive. 2. Less food being thrown away uneaten (Voedingscentrum, 2017). The units will be designed especially to fit into the existing supply chain of supermarkets, thus perfectly fitting in food containers that are brought to and from supermarkets on a daily basis. Customers won't see the latter, though. For them, the process of buying food will change as follows: instead of buying a glass jar at the supermarket and after usage taking it back to the supermarket to dispose it, refill & reuse it! In short, this is what my TiU Challenge will shed its light on. In the upcoming weeks, this idea will be made more concrete, while I'll participate in the challenge. Questions, ideas or just curious to get in touch with me? Check my LinkedIn on the left.