Meal subscription service Field Doctor has completed a four-week reusable packaging pilot, which saw the boxes its meals were delivered in collected on arrival of the next delivery and reused.
Field Doctor – which specialises in flash-frozen ready meals that can be personalised based on health goals or dietary requirements – worked with e-commerce delivery provider Hived and supply chain company Oakland International on the trial. It proved hugely popular with customers, it said.
The pilot, which customers could opt into, used Oakland’s OakRA (Oakland Returnable Asset) box, which is water resistant, washable and made from a similar material to car bumpers. Each box contains an RFID chip to manage their availability and location and “quantify the carbon saving as they are in use” Oakland said.
“We believe that reusable packaging has to be a big part of the future for customer deliveries – both D2C and B2B – which will help us reduce our usage of cardboard,” said Field Doctor co-founder and chief commercial officer Alex Brooks. “The customer feedback on the pilot has been excellent and we’ve seen the OakRA box performing really well versus our standard packaging, to help us deliver our meals in perfect condition.”
Hived claims to be the first fully electric delivery company designed specifically for the e-commerce market. The company said it would now be taking the model to other retailers and looking at how the solution can scale. It said it “anticipates growing consumer-driven demand for the reuse-as-a-service model”.
“Our mission to decarbonise e-commerce deliveries goes beyond electrification,” said Hived head of impact Gemma Neal. “Supporting the circular economy is a crucial development, and this trial is an exciting step toward becoming the go-to courier for circular business models.”
Returnable packaging schemes in grocery – which have chiefly focused on individual products – have had mixed success in the UK. Tesco in 2022 quietly wound up its reusable packaging trial with eco company Loop, after admitting such initiatives would require a major consumer mindset shift before they could be rolled out at scale.
In October, Ocado extended its reusable packaging scheme to more own-label SKUs after launching the initiative in August, claiming to be the first major supermarket to trial an online reusable packaging scheme.
Consumer demand appears significant. A survey of 2,000 consumers undertaken by Ocado Retail and Savanta revealed almost three-quarters (72%) were concerned about the amount of waste generated by single-use packaging of grocery products, with one in three opting to use retailers that provide refillable options for their pantry staples. The majority of consumers (73%) agreed more supermarkets should offer refillable options, especially across essential items.
“Our hope is this becomes a consumer-driven model, where consumers and organisations drive the need for a sustainable option of delivery with suppliers,” said Oakland strategic innovation manager Luke Attwell.
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