barePack

barePack was created from the frustration of some nature loving individuals upon witnessing the abundance of disposable, single use plastics involved in our daily consumption, particularly in Southeast Asia where the founding team of barePack lives. 

We have imagined a practical day-to-day solution to make meals more sustainable and fight disposable cups and food boxes, by leveraging the power of the sharing economy.

Packaging waste, which includes single-use disposables such as plastic bags and food packaging represent about one-third of the total waste disposed of by households in a city like Singapore.

These disposables unnecessarily contribute to fuel ill-adapted waste management cycles and result in avoidable greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), air pollution issues, and even in real political issues as evidenced by the recent regulatory enforcement on plastic imports in China and Southeast Asia.

But poor waste management isn’t even the real issue. The overuse of plastics exacerbated by economic growth is also directly linked to climate change through its value chain (oil extraction, refinery, manufacturing process and transport). Since 1967, global plastics production increased 3x faster than the world’s GDP . Projections estimate that the plastics industry could account for 20% of total oil & gas consumption by 2050, which is equivalent to 15% of global annual GHG by 2050. 

Moreover, the plastic pollution of our oceans is a critical global challenge that is finally getting international attention. Beyond dirty beaches all over Asia, the realization that microplastics have been invisibly entering our food chains have made citizens more sensitized to a problem that is impacting their health directly.

We are serving and working with four types of stakeholders:

1- End users/consumers: barePack exists to provide them with a convenient alternative to carrying and cleaning your own reusable items. We have been testing our first design with 110 daily users for the past 2 months.

2- Corporates: to align our offer with their CSR programs. We are working with one corporate in Singapore since March 2019 to design a program that not only signs off their staff on the platform but also sensitize them through talks and events.

3- Restaurants/chains: they are part of the problem and of the solution. We onboarded 16 of them on our platform and are conducting interviews and focus groups to better understand their needs.

4- Government: to better understand their pain points and plans for the waste management systems of the country

The positive impact of reusables over single use food packaging (even recyclable ones) is now well documented and proven. The impact case is much more compelling to the one of plastic bags although their elimination has gotten a lot more attention lately.

barePack proposes an alternative to reduce the amount of waste produced in the first place, most of which is completely unnecessary.

We are building an affordable and user-friendly circular platform of shared food and beverage containers.

Our solution