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Phase: Ideas Opportunity Areas: Products to People – Reimagine Delivery Models

Leave your plastic waste at the supermarket

In partnership with local supermarkets and stores, this idea is to organize week long events to raise awareness about plastic waste

Photo of Christel Tardif
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Written by

Leave your waste at the supermarket - relieve yourself of your "prisoner's ball " Leave your waste at the supermarket - relieve yourself of your "prisoner's ball "
Prisoner's Ball Prisoner's Ball

During one full week we imagined to install a huge glass container in a shopping mall.

  • Shoppers will Volunteer to leave all their plastic packaging at the supermarket

  • We will then remove all plastic packaging from their cart - replacing those packaging by glass containers or cloth bags

  • For each cart, we weight the plastic waste removed and then throw them in the giant glass container

  • We can imagine a counter saying - In X days, Y carts have been alleviated from Z kg of plastic waste


Each participant will gain a free set of glass containers and cloth bags + the symbolic image that we, for one moment, remove their "prisoner's ball"...

Idea Title

Prisoner's ball

Company / Organization Name

Our team and all generated ideas Our team and all generated ideas
This is a local community proposal, and we agreed to have this idea carried out by AIM AND SCORE consulting company

Website

aimandscore.com

Where are you / your team located?

Pornic, France

How does this Idea redesign unrecyclable small format plastic items that often end up as waste?

This idea does not literally redesign but it aims at raising awareness of the amount of waste we generate when shopping and highlight the paradoxe that we pay for a shopping cart that contain almost as many waste as goods. Ultimately, we hope that people will start modifying their shopping habits.

Which use cases does your Idea apply to?

This idea apply to all 3 use cases (and any plastic waste actually)

In what geographical context or area does your Idea plan to operate / solve?

This idea is to be implemented locally and serve as a model for other communities to deploy. We will start with Pornic, France

How do you envision scaling up your Idea?

Scaling up: model the event, make videos and a website accessible to anyone would like to do the same in his local community Obstacles: hygien and time are the 2 main obstacles - Hygien because we will remove the packaging to put goods in glass containers - time because usually people are in a hurry when shopping and it will take some time to unwrap goods

At what stage of development is your Idea?

  • Research & Early Testing: You are exploring an idea, gathering inspiration and information needed to test it with real users.

Please describe how becoming a Top Idea and working with the Think Beyond Plastics Accelerator Program will help to accelerate your solution.

Most of the time we feel alone in this battle against plastic waste. Being a top idea and receiving support from the New Plastic Economy Accelerator Program will give us means and energy needed to move forward.

Please describe from where your Idea emerged

This idea emerged from our community brainstorming, especially for this challenge

Tell us about your work experience

I am the founder of a consulting company that help companies and startups with their innovation projects - from ideas to market launch.

Please describe your legal and organizational structure

AIM AND SCORE is an established company
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Protecting the balance of the environment by eliminating harmful waste project .
Protecting the balance of the environment by eliminating harmful waste project .

2 comments

Join the conversation:

Comment
Spam
Photo of Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN)
Team

You are definitely not alone in your battle against plastic waste!

I love how specific this idea is, and how impactful it could be in illustrating the quantity of plastic waste the average shopping cart contains. The idea of giving the volunteer customers free glass containers and cloth bags is a great incentive, and might even inspire them to make more zero-waste lifestyle decisions in the future! Awareness-raising events like this are such an important part of education and system change.

I saw another submission that takes the idea of leaving plastic at the supermarket in another direction: Store Responsibility . Juliana Bispo de Filippis suggests that stores could systematically collect all plastic packaging -- a new policy rather than an awareness event. This would shift responsibility for that packaging away from the consumer and onto the stores, with the ultimate goal of pushing the responsibility back to the manufacturers. With some radical redesign, I could envision a system where this packaging even gets sent back to the manufacturers for re-use!

I love the idea of using this glass box and customer participation to kick-start a more systemic change. Awesome contribution!

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Spam
Photo of Christel Tardif
Team

Thanks for you comment Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN) making stores collect all packagings and send them back to manufacturers would be an amazing option :)
In our brainstorm we actually had that idea of sending back the packaging to the manufacturers and make them acceptable for the waste they produce.
Of course laws and policies could urge for a change. Still, I don't have the power to dictate laws and this is why we choose the option of rising awareness among consumer. Consumers altogether have the power to make things change.

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