Why a network?
As a private person you can get your reCIRCLE BOX at a reCIRCLE restaurant. Are there no partners in your area? Then get in touch with us and tell us your favourite restaurant.
You can recognize partners by looking for the reCIRCLE beachflag or the door label at the entrance. You can also find them on our map. At those restaurants you can order your meal in the reCIRCLE BOX.
You pay CH 10.- for the reCIRCLE
BOX and enjoy your food wherever you like, at home, at work, at the park or even at the pool! After you finish your meal you just return your reCIRCLE BOX at the next partner and get either a refund or a new BOX - your choice. Or you clean the reCIRCLE BOX yourself, keep it as long as you want and just refill it over and over again. It`s that simple!
Damaged reCIRCLE BOXes can be exchanged for new ones at our partner restaurants. They are collected by our partners, returned to us, recycled directly by the producer and thus receive a new life!
Together we can save valuable ressources on an everyday basis: Use a reCIRCLE BOX once a week instead of a disposable container and you can already save 1,5 kg of Plastic waste per year.
Because sharing is more sustainable than owning.
Why reuse?
Or even better: Why use disposable containers if you can eat your delicious food out of a practical, chic and tightly closing reusable bowl?
More and more takeaway lovers are switching from disposable to reusable.
Our products can be washed hunderets of times and - if they are well taken care of - even longer than that.
Everyday 50`000 disposable contaiers are being replaced. That equals 1`500 garbage bags saved in only one day.
By washing instead of throwing away you can save valuable ressources. Using a reCIRCLE BOX seven times already makes it more environmentally friendly than disposable plates. Show the world that you care about the environment and the future of our planet.
You can even use the reCIRCLE BOX at home, as a lunchbox or on the road. Because the container and the lid are both separately stackable, they are very space saving.
Thanks to the reCIRCLE BOX you can even save food waste: Just take your leftovers with you and eat them later, when you are hungry again. You don`t need to throw them away with the disposable packaging.
So let us ask you: Why not reuse?
Why aubergine?
reCIRCLE is new. To achieve a change in behaviour, it must be made visible. Therefore we had to choose a colour that clearly stands out against existing packaging colours.
Any meal looks delicious in it! We want the focus to be more on the food than on the colour of the reCIRCLE BOX. All food colours match with the reCIRCLE BOX. Green salad, red tomatos, or yellow curry - all food colours go with the reCIRCLE BOX. A brighter colour would stain easily from heavy coloured ingredients like curcuma, beetroot or carrots.
Gender neutral! The colour had to be accepted by both men and women equally and so far experience shows that augergine is working.
Aubergine is conquering Switzerland as the colour of reusables!
There are places where the aubergine coloured reCIRCLE BOX is already a remarkable part of the city image. Its visibility thoughout the city - be it a cool woman or a nice guy, who is walking though town or queueing in front of a hip restaurant, eating delicious food - makes it attract more customers very quickly.
Why Plastic?
Believe
us, we`ve spent a lot of time on this subject. We would like nothing
more than have a material which is made of love and which becomes love
again after every meal. Unfortunately this does not exist yet. Therefore
we asked the different target groups what they expect from a reusable
packaging.
The takeaways want something tightly stackable, fast-closing, shatterproof.
The hygienists and dishwashers
want a container that can be washed and dried easily and cleanly and
that is ventilated well while stacked so that no moisture can
accumulate.
It is important to customers that it is leak-proof and must be dishwasher and microwave-proof - and affordable!
The logisticians and environmentalists
want a container that can be used as long and as much as possible and that does not break when washed, stacked or dropped.
Cities and communities want a container that cannot contain any risk of injury, for example a shard of glass if it is broken.
We have analysed and tested the following materials:
Glass:
breaks quickly and we would have to use tempered glass, which is not
recyclable. Glass also performs poorly when it comes to stackability.
Due to the risk of breakage stacking noses cannot be used and due to the
temperature difference a vacuum can form. In addition, the glass would
become so hot that it can no longer be held.
Aluminium or chrome steel:
is not suitable for microwaves. That alone would be a killer criterion.
It bulges quickly and is then no longer stackable. It is also difficult
to seal the containers properly, because clips or silicone edges are
not hygienic, because germs and bacteria can hide behind them. In order
not to burn your fingers, you have to make the container double-walled
and that would mean high costs, which would not be accepted by the
customers. We have also noticed that a lot of people do not like to eat
out of metal containers.
Wood: hygiene and drying problems.
Bioplastics: We
are against the production of plastic from food. Even plastics made
from renewable resources, such as palm leaves, bamboo or potato
peelings, are provided with additives and are therefore no healthier
than traditional plastics. Bioplastics are also often thrown into the
compost or PET collection, which destroys the collection.
Compostable: see bioplastics
That is why we have chosen polybutylene terephthalate with 30 % glass fibre (PBT GF30),
PBT for short. To make the containers especially hydrolysis resistant
and fast drying we add 30% glass fibre, so the reBOXes only consist of
70% plastic! PBT is a synthetic material that has been on the market for
a very long time and from which we have been eating healthy foods for
many years. It does not consist of the harmful phthalate, so it does not
contain plasticizers. reBOXes are therefore free of plasticizers. The
suspected BPA has been completely removed and we have even been able to
remove all animal fats: reBOXes are vegan. The colour pigments are also
all food safe. Plastic is often demonized today because it is disposed
incorrectly, for example in the lake or in the forest, and because it is
omnipresent, as it is in shampoo, we also wonder... But disposable
plastic is not the same as reusable plastic.
PBT
and PP
(lid) can be recycled. There are no official collection channels and no
official recycling process. But we, that is reCIRCLE with the producer
Stefan Kälin AG in Einsiedeln, can regranulate the reBOXes, i.e. shred
them, and thus produce new granulate.
At
the moment we are not allowed to use it for new reBOXes (don`t ask us
why, it`s something lawful, you lose the food approval), but we are
currently trying to figure out how we can make BOXes again without
losing the food approval. Currently we are collecting the few reBOXes
that have already come back. As soon as we have a ton of the material,
we will decide what we`ll do with it. But this could take years, because
reBOXes are extremely durable!
Why an app?
Fast, easy, contactless, deposit handling and customer loyalty with the new reCIRCLE App
The reCIRCLE APP is a modern, NFC-based smartphone application that digitizes the depot handling for reCIRCLE BOXes. This makes the payment process easier for our partners, they can handle the reCIRCLE BOXes more efficiently. The app also contains an overview map of all reCIRCLE partners and a loyalty points function to help you find our partners and increase customer loyalty.
All reCIRCLE partners are marked on the map with the aubergine pin.
App Supporter, where you can load your BOX onto the App, are marked with a green dot.
Points Supporter, where you can collect loyalty points, are marked with a yellow dot.
Please note that the app is brand new and therefore still prone to errors. If you notice a problem, please let us know!
(Your device must be NFC compatible.)
Life-cycle assessment
The following diagram illustrates, that the increasing spread of convenience products, which are often packaged in disposable containers and consumed in public places, causes various problems.
On the one hand, they consume a disproportionate amount of energy and resources compared to their life cycle. On the other hand, in many cases they are not disposed of properly, which leads to unclean streets and parks and in extreme cases even contaminates pastures.
So far, there are no possibilities to transfer these disposable containers to a recycling process, so they have to be thermally recycled.
With the life-cycle assessment it was determined that less than 10 washing cycles are required until the reCIRCLE BOX has a lower environmental impact than disposable containers*.
This is particularly true in the case of production, since the environmental impact of production can be broken down into the number of circulation cycles due to reuse for the 10 or 200 circulation cycles shown here.
*Containers were included in the comparison which are very common among the takeaways participating in the pilot project in Berne and which correspond approximately to the reCIRCLE BOX (then called "Bring Back Box") in their functionality.
