Grocery delivery services have become way more popular since the pandemic started. And while most companies deliver their food in plastic packaging, Walmart is stepping up its delivery game by offering refillable and reusable products.
The supermarket giant has announced an exciting partnership with the recycling and reuse platform Loop. Now, customers can get their favorite foods, beauty products, and home goods in refillable containers.
How does the refillable delivery service work?
The program brings refillable, reusable products straight to customers’ doors. Instead of buying and throwing away ketchup bottles, for example, you can put your empty container outside your home for pickup.
Once you get your next grocery order, the bottle will have been cleaned, refilled, and returned — all without sending excess plastic packaging to a landfill.
This sustainable delivery service is available for people who are getting groceries through Walmart+ InHome (which currently has a 30-day free trial). Soon, the company plans to expand the number of products covered by the service.
Currently, most of the refillable products come from major brands like Clorox, Kraft Heinz, Gillette, and Cascade.
Walmart’s vice president of merchandising for household essentials, Corey Bender, explained in a press release how the move can make grocery shopping way more convenient and sustainable.
“We see a unique opportunity to help our customers eliminate packaging and single-use plastic from many of their regular purchases,” Bender said.
And because Walmart is the largest food retailer in North America, this move is a huge deal — especially if it proves to be popular.
What’s next?
There’s no doubt that Walmart partnering with Loop is a step in the right direction, but there’s still a lot of plastic ending up in our oceans and landfills.
Every year, the U.S. produces about 40 million tons of plastic waste. That makes it all the more important for major brands like Walmart to step up and cut down on their trash.
Currently, Walmart’s service is only available for those living in the metro areas of Bentonville and Rogers, Arkansas. But if the program succeeds, it could encourage Walmart to expand elsewhere.
In the meantime, the CEO of Loop hopes to partner with tons of additional food distributors.“If we can make it work with [Walmart], it’s a huge step in the right direction on being able to create a global reuse system,” CEO Tom Szaky, said in a statement.
Follow The Cool Down on Instagram and subscribe to our newsletter.
Cool Picks
