Back to the Roots of Food Delivery: No Plastic at Your Doorstep

A startup based in San Francisco, United States, delivers grocery items in reusable glass jars, omitting completely plastic packaging – just like the milkman in the good old days.

“I wanted to make it easier for as many everyday, hardworking Americans as possible to adopt a plastic-free lifestyle,” says Zero Grocery founder Zuleyka Strasner. “There really isn’t anything that we cannot provide. Plastic is a new phenomenon, and certainly from before the 1960s, it was commonplace for nearly all items to not come in plastic. So we’re just kind of returning back to some traditional packing procedures and packing our products combined with the technologies that we have underpinning them.”

So far, the startup has more than 1,110 items – from common brands to vegetables, yogurt, and milk – delivered in reusable packaging, but it also offers meat and fish in compostable wrappers. Each customer pays a $25 membership that allows them to have unlimited free deliveries. Empty containers are left outside the door and collected upon the next delivery, then cleaned and sterilized before repacking. The company first bought from manufacturers in bulk packaging. Now, it has added manufacturers that use plastic-free packaging. By buying directly from manufacturers, it is easier to track the supply chain.