"If the pilot project is well received by our guests, we will be offering the reusable system in all of our restaurants and Take Its throughout Switzerland this summer," says Kaspar Wittwer, Head of Coop Gastronomy.
And this is how it works
The concept of reCIRCLE is simple, but well thought out: the Coop customer takes one of the reCIRCLE reusable boxes for his takeaway menu. Sometime after he is done with the meal, he simply hands them back to the participating partners of reCIRCLE. If he wants, he can also keep the box for reuse. The down payment is 10 Swiss francs per box. "The fact that we were able to win over Coop for this pilot project gives a great deal of visibility to our vision, going from disposable to reusable, while at the same time making it even more convenient for reCIRCLE users thanks to the ever-expanding network," says Jeannette Morath, Managing Director of reCIRCLE AG.
Who is reCIRCLE?
reCIRCLE is the first Swiss reusable system for take-away packaging. ReCIRCLE's vision is that reusable packaging for food and drinks will be offered by take-away vendors as an alternative to common disposable tableware and will be used regularly by guests. Conventional one-way take-away boxes not only cause waste, they also consume resources in disposal. If a guest only uses a reCIRCLE reusable container instead of disposable packaging once a week, he saves 1.5 kilograms of plastic a year alone. The goal of reCIRCLE is to establish a nationwide network, with reCIRCLE partners throughout Switzerland.
Coop has also been reducing the use of plastic and packaging in its supermarkets for many years. Since 2012, the retailer has done away with nearly 20,000 tonnes of packaging materials. In the case of take-away salads, for example, the proportion of material was reduced by around 34 percent, and in the organic products sector almost 114 tons of packaging material were saved last year.
For more information: www.tatenstattworte.ch/verpackungen