USEFULL: using tech to reduce waste

USEFULL is partnering with the Block Island community to move towards a reduced waste future. USEFULL will enable the community to migrate from single-use packaging to a circular foodware solution, as a means to reduce the negative impact disposable products have on the ecosystem. 

The collaborative partnership with USEFULL will help the Block Island community restore, sustain, and benefit from a resilient ecosystem where single use packaging and plastics are no longer used day-to-day on island. By implementing USEFULL, the community can eliminate up to 30 tons per year of disposable packaging that currently needs to be “imported” onto the island by ferry and then hauled off island as trash. This process of importing and exporting packaging is wasteful both in terms of financial and environmental impact.  

According to a 2018 BBC report, 99% of all disposable plastic and mixed paper cups and containers end up in the landfill, or as litter in our cities, oceans, beaches and even on mountaintops. In the US alone, this amounts to more than 329 million cups and 437 million containers every single day. The pandemic exacerbated this issue by forcing people to order to-go as opposed to eating in a restaurant. Even prior to COVID, our global consumption practices had created a mountainous waste problem that recycling and landfilling cannot solve. 

In principle, the issues generated by single-use products are being addressed through recycling programs and or the implementation of “sustainable” products-either materials designed to be compostable or heavier plastic products designed to be reusable. 

In practice, these “responses” to global consumption practices are problematic. Current recycling capacities and capabilities do not match the needs of the population, and often the

Our mission at USEFULL is to reduce waste by providing safe, sustainable, and convenient alternatives to everyday single-use products; leveraging technology to capture data and collate insights, and stainless steel inventory that is more durable, healthful and ultimately more recyclable than its plastic and “compostable” counterparts.

USEFULL is a tech-enabled circular economy solution designed to replace plastic products to prevent waste and pollution. We provide technology and inventory of custom-designed, stainless steel to-go cups and containers to our partners. Our app and back-end technology enables our returnable inventory platform. The mobile app tracks usage, measures impact, and creates individual marketing opportunities for our partners. 

Our returnable products create a circular system that is convenient for consumers and retailers. 

In collaboration with the community, we aim to scale and implement the USEFULL solution to fit within the existing Block Island infrastructure; so that any resident or tourist can check out a cup or container at a cafe, restaurant, then return it to a bin anywhere within the network - in downtown, at the beach or even at the ferry terminal. Meanwhile, our technology allows us to monitor the “where and when” of this circular process. We’re able to track the cup or container from checkout out at the restaurant to the return point, and through the cleaning and logistics processes, to be made available again for its next use, stored clean behind the counter. 

We aim to leverage the MIT Solve program to pilot a robust rollout of the USEFULL solution in a “closed-loop community” on Block Island, Rhode Island - an historic community listed on The Nature Conservancy’s “The Last Great Places'' list with ~40% of the island designated as conservation land and a wildlife refuge. However, due to the huge increase in consumption the island sees during the summer tourist season - a daily deluge of ~17x of the year-round residential population, the Island’s residents see a profound need for solutions that can help mitigate the environmental and financial burdens of waste.

In our year-long pilot, we will initially serve the Island’s residential community with three key goals:

• Introduce and socialize the concept of reusable systems to the Block Island community as an educational case study highlighting the potential of an “all-in” approach to implementation in any type of ecosystem

• Build and scale movement to strengthen local economies, reduce waste and build positive impact through a collaborative, grassroots approach

• Create a significant, quantifiable savings opportunity by removing single-use disposables which cause environmental and financial waste 

Block Island is a community in “our backyard” that “exports'' waste for processing. Due to outsized tourism, this community has the financial burden of exporting a tremendous amount of waste despite being such a small island community. What this presents is a fantastic opportunity to highlight the benefits of moving towards a circular solution - waste reduction, cost savings, and leadership positioning as a community driving impact toward greater conservation of our oceans, beaches, town squares and beyond.  

Moving this island community towards zero waste is a great case study on how this can be done on a more regional, global scale. Once more, the amount of tourists visiting the community provides an influential opportunity to educate and get people curious about implementing change in their communities. 

This is a grassroots movement to strengthen economies, reduce waste, and stop making our waste impact communities globally. At scale, this revolutionizes the “to-go” food and drink market by lessening the environmental and financial waste it creates.  

Block Island is also a community at risk, as it is at the forefront of ocean plastic pollution and sea level rise due to climate change. Also, as an economy that relies almost entirely on tourism, they also face a unique set of challenges.

The USEFULL solution provides the technology to collect and analyze data to measure the consumption and allows the community to position themselves as an ecotourism destination. Block Island is a regional leadership in this space, they have wind turbine energy, the stewardship of its wildlife, and now the reduction waste on-island.

We have implemented this solution and the technology in other contexts with great results. The technology has been rolled out in an urban retail environment, within a corporate office as well as an education campus. However, we see real promise in the context of Block Island, as it provides a feasibly-scaled test case for an “all-in” circular economy in partnership with the local municipal government, community leaders, local businesses and residents.  We, as well as the Block Island community, believe this case study can provide tangible, accessible guidance and insight to other communities large and small, urban or rural, island or land-locked.  Additionally, the project is large enough in size to learn from the operational complexity, but not so much that it becomes an obstacle or a hindrance to implementation.

The USEFULL solution is innovative in the approach we have implemented to mitigate waste through good, simple design in products, technologies and business models.

Our cup and bowl products are made of custom-designed vacuum-insulated, double-walled stainless steel.  As such, they:

• have a longer life cycle than both single-use disposables and compostables

• are less problematic to the environment and human health than plastics or compostable products

• maintain food & beverage temperature and quality

• are attractive, stylish and trendy 

Added bonus, at the end of their USEFULL life, they can be sold to metal recyclers with a retained value, as they are circular by design.

We then combine these products with an easy-to-use, user-friendly frontend app and a customizable backend administrative portal to collect, analyze and distribute data to develop deep insights on usage, waste mitigated, GHG emissions avoided, monies saved and other metrics. 

We were focused on driving critical mass adoption. We aim to continually test a few strategic components: 

1. Working with large communities who have a say over campus culture. 

2. Making it a “no-brainer” to use the USEFULL offering

   1. We have priced USEFULL to be free to the end-user. 

   2. We priced USEFULL for our partners to beat the cost of single use packaging and hauling. 

   3. We encourage partners to go all-in and either no longer offer single use or up-charge for single use packaging.  

3. Incentivizing timely returns to increase efficiency, reduce the amount of inventory needed, and keep costs down.

Before the pandemic, USEFULL was servicing 6 cafes and 2 businesses in the Boston area. As of now, we are scheduled to serve Mount Holyoke College (~2200 users) by the fall and are working with multiple other businesses and communities to continually build our pipeline. 

For the purposes of MIT Solve, we are focused on the Block Island implementation of USEFULL. In Block Island alone, we anticipate serving upwards of 500K cups and containers in Year 1 and increasing to up to 2+ million in subsequent years, depending on scale of adoption, tourism numbers, etc.  

Beyond Block Island, we continue to work with college/university and corporate communities. We are also continuing to white label our solution. In year one, we plan to have a total of 4 accounts that each represent a “community” whether it be a college, corporate, or closed loop. By year 5, we anticipate having 99 accounts total. This is a very attainable growth plan. For year one, we are already halfway to our goal with VERY strong additional partners in our pipeline. 

The Block Island implementation will serve as a use case for how we can scale and grow our solution for mid-sized cities before tackling the large cities.

Our technology enables us to track our goal of eliminating 10 million cups and 10 million containers, literally in real time. In fact, at Mount Holyoke College, they have a monitor set-up that real-time tracks their impact for everyone in the dining commons. Students, staff, and the campus community can see how many cups and containers have been used (and therefore spared from the landfill), what that equates to waste tonnage and greenhouse gas emissions.

Similarly, each individual user can see their own specific impact via the app. 

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As a team, we realize USEFULL’s impact is derived from a collaborative effort, with both internal and external stakeholders. 

Internally, our team has a breadth and depth of experiences. In addition to being a sailor, our CEO has a background in ocean sustainability as well as boutique management consulting with experience in data & analytics, IT consulting and strategic planning. Our Impact Officer has two decades of experience in management consulting focused mainly on agriculture, with experience in sustainability, strategic partnerships, operational effectiveness and economic development. Our CTO is an expert technologist with a background in application development, software architecture, and startup building. We also have an amazing Advisory Board with deep experts in directly-aligned industries and functions, such as food & beverage consumer goods, food retail, waste systems, social enterprise, operations & logistics and “blue” technology. 

Based on the guidance and insights we have gathered from these internal and external stakeholders, we believe we have built a responsive and resilient platform to address the needs of our partners, consumers and the communities at large. We believe that we are not only well-positioned to deliver this solution; but that we are uniquely suited to do so, based on our ability to combine technology, product design, adaptive business models, and the collaborative efforts and partnerships of a broad range of stakeholders to bear.

We have been very purposeful in sourcing, attracting and developing diverse talent on our leadership team.  USEFULL is woman-owned and has representation of BIPOC and immigrant leadership as well.  Additionally, our Advisory Board is diverse in gender, ethnicity and background. As we scale, we will continue to promote the tenets of diversity, equality, inclusion and culture within our construct.  Additionally, USEFULL is focused on providing a solution that is accessible for all - regardless of ability, socioeconomic status, background, etc. We believe that environmental justice is social justice, and we aim to lead as such. 

We are applying to MIT Solve to help us build partnerships and momentum during our Block Island case study. We are hoping to leverage and learn from the mentorship, coaching and strategic advice provided, as well as continue to develop a network of like-minded entrepreneurs, investors and practitioners. Lastly, we believe that our solution could strategically align with MIT’s own sustainability and waste mitigation goals, on campus and across the greater MIT global community. 

Ultimately, though, we see this as an opportunity to bring visibility and attention to an issue affecting our global ecosystem - plastic waste. We’re proposing the mass adoption of a new model of consumption to build a more sustainable, more resilient and less wasteful future. 

While we employ a simple, but effective technology, we believe that through partnership we can refine user experience, design more efficient implementation systems and collaborate to build capacity and capability for the circular economy at scale. There are some levers that other stakeholders external to our business are better positioned to pull or push. As such, we see partnerships as necessary to explore opportunities to drive:

• Greater technology integration with circular systems (e.g. IoT, AI, etc.)

• Better supply chain management (e.g. build domestic value chain)

• Increased access to capital for circular solutions

• Better optimize infrastructure and logistics capabilities 

• Scaled implementation across various contexts in public, private and social sectors (e.g. municipality-driven, city-wide models; corporate sponsorships; nonprofit collaborations) 

• Development and implementation of policy aligned with moving toward increased responsibility in our culture of consumption - both at the producer and consumer levels

In the context of the Block Island project, we aim to partner with several key organizations to drive adoption and increase the likelihood of success.  These partners include:

• The New Shoreham Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber intends to collaborate to drive increased promotion and participation across the business community.  

• Town councilors and community leaders. These official and unofficial leaders will help move the community to action and facilitate engagement between island residents, tourists, the business community and USEFULL to drive critical mass adoption. 

• Private sector corporate sponsors. We would love to partner with a local private sector entity in Rhode Island as a sponsor of the project. In return for funds provided, the sponsor would receive:

  • increased exposure (via branding opportunities on marketing materials and/or on product - like CitiBikes or BlueBikes models) to the year-round residential population as well as the 15-20K daily seasonal tourists

  • Community goodwill

  • Opportunities to discuss and market their sustainability alignment   

• Educational partners. There is a large opportunity to partner with local/regional research universities to develop specific analyses and studies based on the design and implementation of the USEFULL program on Block Island.  

• Conservation entities. Partnering with entities such as these individually or in consortium would provide an effective means to market and drive mass adoption, while scaling a collaborative coalition to build greater overall resilience on island.