“Who’s going to use that?” The words of my other half, recently, on receiving a Green Retail World newsletter headlining with details of the latest in-store packaging recycling scheme from the UK retail industry.
“Quite a few people do,” would be one answer – especially when it comes to Boots’ loyalty-linked beauty packaging recycling, which has handled circa 15 million items since launching in 2020. Currys’ Trash for Cash, which offers vouchers to consumers bringing back old electricals for recycling, is also growing fast and proving to be a real commercial driver for that retailer.
However, my wife’s point alluded to how difficult it is for people to take a whole load of used packaging or old goods with them when they visit a shop. And she’s right.
Even though it works for some, it’s not hugely practical – and the majority of the population just aren’t doing it and therefore not participating in this part of the circular economy.
It tallies with what Charlotte Morley, founder of TheLittleLoop, told me in an interview we published earlier this week. Consumers need access to the circular economy to be easy; the barriers to entry need to be lowered for real progress to be made.
If goods for recycling or reuse could be collected from the doorstep of consumers, then surely more people would engage. And I mean beyond the weekly or fortnightly local authority collections currently in place across the UK – these services typically do not include hard-to-recycle products.
It needs private sector intervention and ingenuity.
Milk and more services
Enter The Modern Milkman, a from-farm-to-home delivery service, which has this year started offering collections as part of its service.
Initially available to consumers in Harrow, Wellingborough, Warrington and Newcastle, ‘Collections, by The Modern Milkman’ gives participating customers a chance to leave their unwanted electrical items or toys on their doorstep. The Modern Milkman will take them away, using the same logistics network deployed to drop fresh goods on the person’s doorstep in the first place.
For the cost of a £2.50 bag, The Modern Milkman promises to sort the collected goods and recycle responsibly or – in the case of the toys – find new homes for the items, in association with its partners such as Toys4life.
It requires a licence to carry waste, but this is a mere point of admin for The Modern Milkman which has already established processes to deal with the return of old milk bottles – for them, it makes sense to collect other unwanted goods in this way.
What if every delivery van of every company also collected items for recycling after dropping off an order? With the right infrastructure and waste management/circular economy partners in place, this could get useable materials and would-be waste back into circulation quickly rather than seeing it all landfilled or incinerated. It would fill lots of the empty space being transported around the country, too.
If more of these vehicles were always full with goods travelling in one direction or the other, then there’s more justification for them taking up the space on the UK’s roads and local communities.
Precedent
This isn’t a new concept. Order a washing machine or white goods from AO or Currys, for example, and those businesses will offer you the chance to take advantage of their recycling services to remove your old items.
And Ocado – as part of its work looking at reusables alongside the consultancy GoUnpackaged – offers a refillable packaging service which means consumers can order dry goods in containers that are emptied by the household on arrival and returned to the retailer to be used by other customers. It’s a method to reduce single-use packaging from the home delivery supply chain.
Companies such as MYGroup, which operates the aforementioned Boots recycling scheme as well as several other big retailer initiatives, offers consumers a paid-for service to pick up recycling from the doorstep across the UK. Customers can pay for collections if they feel strongly about it all – I did for a period of time but stopped it after a year on the grounds of cost.
All of this is the bones of a circular economy, but if all retailers, couriers and distribution networks adapted to think about collections as well as drop-offs, more flesh would be added to those bones. They’re already devising reverse logistics operations for customer returns, of course.
I’m not naïve to think this is easy to implement. Retailers have battled for two decades – and are still battling – to create an efficient operating model for e-commerce and home delivery; changing the status quo is never simple.
And retailers would need to identify the commercial imperative to do it.
But just imagine if Amazon was mandated to collect goods for the circular economy every time it made a doorstep delivery and imagine if all retailers had clear access to a circular economy network that they could plug their reverse fulfilment into. The opportunity for uncovering value from precious metals found in consumer electronics, keeping untarnished goods in circulation, helping charities get hold of better quality products, and reducing waste levels across the UK is there to see.
M…L…K
Having reported on the hyperbolic tech revolution in retail during the 2010s, I often mused with colleagues that someone should launch an ‘on-demand’, ‘direct-to-the-consumer’ delivery service that transports goods in reusable containers that arrive to people’s homes via an electric vehicle and call it something lacking vowels, like M..L..K.
The joke being that using modern parlance for the good old-fashioned milk round can make it seem futuristic.
But, now, The Modern Milkman is actually kind of doing that – and supporting the foundations of a circular economy in the process.
As the company says itself, the milk round has worked for more than a century “because it met households where they were”.
“We’ve spent the last few years proving that doorstep delivery still makes sense, for breakfast essentials from British suppliers, delivered three times a week in reusable glass bottles,” it adds.
“Collections is the natural next step. We’ve always collected empties. Glass bottles, milk pouches, the things you’re done with. Now we’re collecting what no longer belongs in your home.”
It starts with toys and smaller electrical items, but the business plans to extend Collections to other goods in the future.
I for one am watching with interest to see how it develops and to see if it sparks some inspiration among those in the wider retail industry to do something similar themselves.
Direct from doorstep is what consumers are looking for, if they are to truly get behind the circular economy.
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Ben Sillitoe, editor, Green Retail World (@bsillitoe)
[image credit: Green Retail World]
