Supermarkets and grocery stores generate a lot of plastic waste and packaging. Until recently, these were overlooked environmental issues. Now, grocery stores are moving towards a zero plastic waste system. One such startup is Rotterdam-based online supermarket Pieter Pot.
Secures €2.7M funding
In a recent development, Pieter Pot has raised €2.7M to make circular packaging for groceries the norm. Three impact-oriented venture capital funds – SHIFT Invest (also the party behind
Vandebron), Future Food Fund and InnovationQuarter have invested in Pieter Pot. The company will use the investment to meet the enormous consumer demand for sustainable alternatives to single-use packaging.
This follows a crowdfunding campaign that raised €500K at the end of 2019. “With this investment, they will be able to scale up operations, serve the tens of thousands of people on the waiting list and develop their own circular packaging. Every person in the Netherlands uses an average of around 25kg of plastic per year. Pieter Pot’s solution can make an important contribution to the reduction of single-use plastic and make circular packaging for groceries the norm.”
Packaging-free online supermarket
The ‘packaging-free’ online supermarket now serves all of The Netherlands, and nearly 30,000 consumers have signed up for the waiting list. Founded by Jouri Schoemaker and Martijn Bijmolt in 2018 in Rotterdam, the company claims to have reduced 120,000 single-use packagings and has an impact in two ways – reduced packaging waste and decreased CO2 footprint of consumers. “Even if packaging gets recycled, it still costs a lot of energy. You can compare it to a bottle or a can of beer: bottles are the more sustainable option after they have been reused around ten times”, says Schoemaker.
Pieter Pot has teamed up with Haribo, Heinz and Ecover. More A-brands want to use their products in Pieter Pot’s circular packaging. The first big brands that are now also available in the jars of Pieter Pot are Haribo, Heinz and Ecover. Their products will be sold in new jars designed by Pieter Pot. These jars will be more user friendly and lighter, thereby contributing to an even lower CO2 footprint.
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