BC Business
Reusables founders Anastasia Kiku and Jason Hawkins aim to make sustainable choices as easy as single-use.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began in B.C., local restaurants saw an influx of takeout orders—and consumers saw an influx of takeout waste. Anastasia Kiku and Jason Hawkins, co-founders of Vancouver-based Reusables, watched as the garbage piled up. “The problem was really in our faces,” Kiku says.
Hawkins, who was working for grocery delivery company Spud.ca, knew that packaging was at the forefront of conversations in the grocery and hospitality industries. That, combined with the pair’s love for the environment (“We’re both skiers and spend a lot of time in the outdoors,” Kiku notes), inspired them to develop a more sustainable solution than single-waste takeout containers. They launched the Reusables container program this March.
According to Kiku, the goal of the company is to make the environmentally friendly option just as easy as the piles-of-garbage one. “Being sustainable, or doing the right thing, requires that extra step, but we’re aware of that and trying to design this in the way that makes sense from both perspectives,” she says. Here’s what switching to Reusables looks like for both restaurants and consumers.
So far, Reusables has about 1,000 of its stainless steel containers in circulation in Vancouver, and that number is about to double—it’s launching with a group of restaurants in Deep Cove on Monday, October 18. The 20-plus establishments include Bluhouse Market & Café, Bean Around the World, Cafe Orso, Momiji Japanese Cuisine, the Raven Pub and Scratch Kitchen. Reusables will also be available at Fresh St. Market (their first grocery partner) in Vancouver House starting on the 18th.
As modern as this solution may feel, Kiku compares it to a couple of traditional borrowing practices: milk jugs and library books. “Surprisingly, our shrink rate so far has been around 2 or 3 percent—we get almost all the containers back,” she says. The app helps with that: each container is connected to its last user, and they get a reminder to return it. Plus, failing to return a container can cost a consumer up to $25, so that’s a pretty good incentive.
At every step, Kiku says the aim was to make the program as economical, safe, convenient and functional as possible. “We want it to be just as simple as single-use.”
You can find a full list of Reusables‘ participating restaurants here.