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FoodBox

2020
A new way of distributing food that doesn’t use single-use plastics

FoodBox imagines a new way of doing groceries, which focuses on recipes rather than ingredients. The main focus is on reducing or completely eliminating single-use packaging waste in the whole supply chain.

Nowadays, global food waste amounts to about one-third of all food produced, and we are using packaging to make our food last longer. That is why I think that packaging waste is not a problem in itself, but a symptom of a supply chain that is deeply broken.
 

FoodBox tries to approach the whole system from a different angle. What if, instead of having to guess what people will eat, we actually know? What if people can shop for meals, not ingredients. And what if instead of making packaging a one-way street we build a system that can collect and reuse it without additional stress.
At the heart of this projects lay the reusable containers. They will be used and reused hundreds of times, reducing their impact on the environment. After their lifespan, they can be recycled way more easily, because we know exactly what they are made of.
 
Everything at FoodBox works together, and the FoodBox hub is where that happens. It starts by talking to the farmers: What do they have, and what is ready to be harvested? Once we know this, the chefs can create delicious and simple recipes, which can be planned ahead for a few weeks. Once the time comes, ingredients arrive here from the farm or factory, get portioned and cut (if needed), and then assembled according to the ingredient list. Once boxed, they can be loaded onto trucks and shipped out to the customer.

After a week, those same trucks bring all the dirty containers back to be cleaned, and the whole cycle starts again.
 
When you take a step back, you see that what causes our problems is not the packaging, it’s just a way to optimize the system we have, a symptom of a problem.

Get rid of the problem, which is how we distribute things, and everything else will fall in place. No supermarkets means no huge fridges that are always open, one big place that doesn’t have to be air conditioned anymore, and food that comes to your door will be more accessible to everyone.

As an added bonus the fact that your delivery driver also collects your dirty reusable cups means garbage trucks will all but cease to exist, simply because we don’t need them anymore.
 

A circular system done right doesn’t reuse or recycle waste, it never creates it in the first place.

Process