Guest: Shashwat Gangwal | Founder | InfinityBox
Category: 🍏 Sustainablity | Food Packaging
Podcast’s Essential Bites:
[2:02] SG: "Single use plastic is a big problem for our generation and the upcoming generations. [...] Less than 8% of the plastic ever produced since the 1950s has ever been recycled. And that's probably an overestimated figure. [...] When food delivery started out globally, it was always single use plastic containers. Because plastic has a lot of benefits. It's cheap, it's light, it can hold the temperature, it's insulating, etc. But what that meant was that with the growing demand of food delivery and hence the growing order volume, there was a lot of single use plastic waste generated, which wasn't collected back [...]."
[2:55] SG: "Infinity Box is aimed at creating a reuse platform for not just food delivery, but for any quick commerce delivery. So we want to reuse the resources that have already been utilized in creating different products, like plastic containers to use for delivering food, over and over again, and ensure that they're completely recyclable at the end of life, so that we can create a truly circular economy. [...] Quick commerce [is] anything that's delivered to your house frequently and in a high density area."
[18:16] SG: "Swiggy has a team of dedicated [...] customer care agents who give you a call as soon as an order is placed in one of our partner restaurants. And they asked you if you want to opt in for a reusable container, and we don't charge anything extra. So if you do, then we send somebody to collect it from your house at a convenient time. We bring it back to our facilities, wash them, and then replenish the inventory of partner restaurants. [...] But in about three to four months time when the tech integration is done, that is when there'll be a toggle option on the Swiggy app, giving customers the option of opting in for a reusable container at no extra cost and also picking the slot that they want."
[25:46] SG: "[One problem is] information dissemination around compostability, which can easily be [solved] with proper labeling. If you get a material today, it's compostable [and] doesn't specify what that means, unless you literally google it, that's a big problem. It's only ruining your recyclers' revenue streams, and also ruining the environment, there's nothing good that's coming out of it."
Rating: 🍏🍏🍏
