When it comes to the detrimental impacts of our first world lifestyle on the environment, takeaway food containers don’t get nearly as much attention as they should. Takeaway food packaging has been identified as one of the four dominant single-use plastic polluting items in our oceans [1]. Naomi Tarszisz is the founder of RePlated, an emerging Australian company with a novel concept to reduce our reliance on single-use takeaway food packaging. RePlated was celebrated by B Lab as among its top 5 percent B Corp Certified companies in 2021.
Ilona: Well, it’s great that in recent years, we’ve all had a focus on takeaway coffee cups and just how bad they are for the environment. But I think there’s one other thing that’s probably worse, that doesn’t really get as much attention. And that is: The takeaway food container. So I’m happy to be talking today with Naomi Tarszisz, the founder and CEO of RePlated, which is coming up with a solution to this problem. Thank you so much for joining us, Naomi.
Naomi: It’s an absolute pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, Ilona.
Ilona: Tell us about RePlated. What is it?
Naomi: Well, RePlated makes reusable takeaway food containers that are designed to replace single use, and we also create systems to make that switch to reuse a success. So, we are working in quite a few different ways-from everyone from corporates through to individuals, and from takeaway food delivery, and all kinds of ways you can get food.
Ilona: You’ve actually got one of your containers there, let’s have a look.
Naomi: It’s beautiful. They are Australian made, we designed and made them here in Sydney, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, not very far from the centre of town. They’re a beautiful product. They’re made from recycled material, and they are recyclable as well. But we’re actually a business that is circular by design, so the containers themselves, we also take back at the end of their life to turn into new products, which is really important to us.
Ilona: Excellent. Yes. And so, if I’m a consumer, a person who wants to get some takeaway, how do I participate? How do I join in?
Naomi: That’s a great question. So, for most Australians at the moment, we are really using BYO. So, you buy a container to use the system. And then when you do, we look at your postcode, we make sure there are at least three to five places local to you on our network, which you can see on our website, and you can take your container and use it there. If you find other places that are local, that are using it, let us know we add them to the network. It’s growing all the time. That’s probably the most common way that people are using it now, but we also run a swap and wash pilot in Waverly about to extend into Bondi. With that one, you can actually order ahead. It’s a swap system, so you can order ahead or have your food delivered. And you just need to let them know that you’re using RePlated, and they’ll tell you how many containers you need to leave on your front doorstep or to bring, and you’ll be able to swap your clean containers for cleaned, freshly filled ones.
Ilona: I think that’s some really key points there. At the moment, it’s a take your own container concept. I would opt in by visiting your website, get my container, and then search for the businesses in my area who are onboard. Then I could turn up, order my food and collect it in my container. Working on this program with Waverly, will enable you to ring ahead, which we all like doing!
Naomi: We do! We like delivery even more.
Ilona: We do, don’t we? We do! So, that’s really great. What’s to stop me from just taking my own container down to the store, and asking them to just do it in my own container?
Naomi: Well, I would ask you what is stopping you? Nothing is stopping you! At the moment, I think that represents about 0.1% of the market. There are definitely Climate Leaders who do that without any question, I like to call them Waste Warriors actually, who do that. And I think that’s great we totally encourage that. The issue that you sometimes get on the food vendor end, if you don’t know them particularly, is it the right size? How do I know how to portion in that? That seems to be really common problem. Our containers a standard litre size, it’s got to fill line at 750 ml, which is the standard takeaway size. For things that are portioned in that way, that’s there, and it also fits things like sushi really nicely. I guess it’s that a food vendor knows that they can trust that our containers are the right size, and they also know they can refuse them if they’re not clean, which is really the big thing we always talk about. It’s just always, whatever container you bring, is clean. There’s nothing to stop you doing it, it’s just that most people don’t do that currently. And we think that’s partly because, it feels weird. For the people that are doing that, we congratulate them. We just want to help more people join them in that fight.
Ilona: As you said, you’ve worked with vendors to get some standard sizing that they’re happy to accept as well, which is not something that we all generally do, or will have lying around at home.
Naomi: And even if you do, I think it just sometimes feels a bit strange to go and do it. Whereas with this you know that you can use it, and that’s really helpful.
Ilona: You’re part of a program. You’re part of something.
Naomi: Most the food vendors, they’re on our network. We’re rolling out some really nice stickers, so you’ll see that on their point of sale or in the window, letting you know that you can use your container at their venue.
Ilona: Excellent. So, what’s next for RePlated?
Naomi: We really want to be able to scale what we’re doing with swap and wash, that’s a really huge part of the business. We also work with corporates. So the idea for the business came from, I was working in the city in a building and the problem that I wanted to solve at first was that lunchtime one and helping companies live the values that they say. Most companies have signed up to some pretty ambitious waste targets that they set themselves, and we want to help them achieve that. This innovation helps them purchase that for their teams to use at lunchtime, and in some instances, in-house cafes are starting to switch over from single-use to re-use. Some of them might be doing a canteen service on a ceramic plate, but people want to be able to take it to their desk or take it somewhere else or out of the building too. Lots of really exciting pilots in the mix for that coming up in the next couple of months, which is really exciting.
Ilona: Yeah Definitely. You touched a little bit on, where the idea came from, but what is your background? Do you have a sustainability background?
Naomi: I feel like I’ve kind of done a master’s in sustainability in the last couple of years. I’ve been a Waste Warrior my whole life. I started up picking out rubbish from Sydney Harbour beaches for Keep Australia Beautiful day back in the 80s with my mum or dad. 30 years on, I’m back on the same beaches with my own kids picking up the same rubbish and I had that that thing, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with beach clean-ups, I still do it, but I wanted to do something to fix the tide of plastic that was coming out and all of that waste. That’s really where RePlated came from, but my background is in service design, digital transformation, that kind of thing. The thing sometimes people ask me is, you’re a techie who picked a non-tech business, but actually this business is becoming a tech business. We really are a circular tech company that focuses in on hospitality. And that’s really exciting, because we’re now heading into the part of the business that I already knew how to do, as opposed to all the stuff we didn’t. On the plus side, I think I think we’ve done a good job. Like, we were top 5% in the world for B Corp this year, which is our first year of being a B Corp, outside of only doing pilots. And we also won a Circle award a couple months ago as well in the B2B category for our commitment to circularity. We’re really proud of those. And I feel like I still have so much to learn on my sustainability journey, but I know that we’re doing the best we can, definitely.
Ilona: Yeah, congratulations. No mean feats, all of those awards that you just mentioned there, huge congratulations. I loved when we were chatting and you, and you said to me, it was sort of like the Keep Cup for food. Can we just quantify this problem a little bit, because I think we all sort of have the stat for the takeaway coffee cups in our mind, but can we just quantify this this problem a little more?
Naomi: Yes. Australians eat four and a half million takeaway meals every day. The average Australian eats out three times a week. It is a very big problem. I think it’s more than one and a half billion takeaway meals a year. Obviously, not all of those are in containers, some of them are going to be pizza, some of them are going to be burgers, but what you have within that, it is all of that. It’s still a similar problem to a coffee cup. But I think, if we’re honest, coffee is a simpler one to solve. There’s less sizes involved. It’s the same thing that goes in it every time, so it’s a simpler problem to solve. They both need to be solved. We just decided that we wanted to try another big problem, and it’s going to need a lot of solutions to get it right. We just want to be there to help Australians on that first step on this journey.
Ilona: Yeah, amazing. For people who are listening or reading, where do they go to find more information, or if they’re a food vendor and they want to get on onboard?
Naomi: We love food vendors. So, everything’s available on our website www.RePlated.co
You can also follow us on Instagram, @RePlated. So those are the two main places people come to us. There’s a whole section for food vendors on the website, which explains how it works, and how they can get on board and contact forms. You can also buy them on our website. There’s also a growing number of food vendors who themselves sell them. All of our swap vendors sell the containers as well. And there are other retailers coming on board across the country in the next couple of months. The one thing I meant to say, we’re about to relaunch the product. So, the product that we have out in the market, that I have here is actually our beta product. And that’s about to be upgraded to our 2.0 product which is going to be in some beautiful colourways. That’s all going to be launching on the website in the next week or so. You should definitely check them out, there’s two beautiful blues to choose from.
Ilona: Lovely. We will pop all of those details in the post with this video as well, so people will be able to easily find you and see these beautiful new designs.
Naomi: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Ilona: Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us and can’t wait to see all of your successes rollout.
Naomi: Oh, Neither can we.
Ilona: Thanks, Naomi.
