It is simple Environmental Economics - why bulk is better.
The month of March brought a lot of changes; Daylight Savings, hints of spring, COVID-19 isolation, and just before that hit - my personal discovery of the bulk industry in Toronto. Of course I knew about it insofar as the Costco-concept: as quantity increases, the cost per item decreases - but you have to buy the quantities they pre-package. The bulk industry I refer to is more akin to: take what you need from our bulk supply and avoid a plethora of single use packaging.
A multitude of containers exist to suit your needs/quantities.
In these uncertain times we’re being advised to buy according to what we need, rather than excess. The bulk industry allows for this. My insights about this industry are as follows:
There is a lack of awareness around available bulk product options
The bulk industry has a poor user experience, and needs a revamp
The adoption curve needs to jump over the ‘chasm’ by attracting non-environmentally/price conscious individuals
…
Lack of Awareness
I really leaned into the bulk concept in recent years at Bulk Barn, a Canadian bulk chain. These stores go beyond offering your standard bulk grocery store items like coffee, almonds & the odd sweet treat - but rather a rolodex of everything under the sun. The last time I was there, to prepare for isolation, I got 30g of veggie soup mix, 200g of pea protein, 50g of loose Tropical Mango White tea & 200g of peanut M&Ms to help me weather the storm. A random assortment.
Little did I know this bulk industry extends into shampoo, conditioner, dishwasher soap, laundry detergent, body lotion, epsom salts, essential oils, bentonite clay, shea butter, the list goes on. On March 6th, before North Americans started to feel the effects of COVID-19, I went on a Toronto Bulk Tour to visit, what I’ve dubbed, six ‘Bulk Essentials’ stores.* They were:
Saponetti - Bloordale Village
Unboxed Market | Dundas West
Urban Bulk and Refill | Queen East
Bare Market | The Danforth
eco & amour | Scarborough
Green and Frugal | Scarborough
*This list includes stores purely dedicated to bulk shopping, it does not include other stores which offer some bulk products.
I was first tuned into this concept last October, when I attended the Zero Waste Conference in Vancouver. It was there that I first learned about Nada, a packaging-free grocery store. BYOC(ontainer), BYOB(ag), BYOJ(ar) are acronyms you should be familiar with when shopping there. Nada buys in ‘bulk,’ then is able to pass along the savings to its customers - provided they supply their own packaging. Beyond loose fruits, vegetables, grains & nuts - Nada made other home essentials like body lotion, shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel available.
As a Bulk Barn regular, I’m accustomed to using i) a free polyethylene (poly) bag provided by them, or ii) reusing one of the many low-density polyethylene (LDPE) produce bags I’ve acquired over the years from grocery stores. To be fair, they do now offer reusable containers, but given the option, my bet is that 9/10 people choose the free poly bag.
At Nada, no poly bags are available, rather, Nada has a rather advanced BYOC system. You weigh your container when you first arrive and receive a RFID tag which will take off that weight when you check out. I also saw one of these at Bare in Toronto. Forgetting isn’t an option at these stores - most provide free, sanitized containers for your use (though I’ve seen this suspended during COVID-19 times). Nada, and most other Bulk Essentials stores will provide reusable containers for purchase too.
When I went on my bulk tour, I did not plan to purchase anything, so I was ill prepared when I inevitably did. My takeaways? An old kombucha jar filled with eco + amour concentrated laundry soap, and some witch hazel in an old pesto jar (this was when hand sanitizer was flying off the shelves, and witch hazel is an ingredient for DIY hand sanitizer [now proven ineffective for proper sanitization]).
These stores also supply net new containers, where the classic mason jar is a popular option. One store, Saponetti, has the option of ‘renting’ a mason jar. You pay a $1.25 deposit for a new jar, then when you’re done, they’ll pick it up with a subsequent order delivery or you can drop it off at the store to get your deposit back. COVID-19 has changed this process a bit, but things will even out. Personally, I have no intention to return the few that I have acquired in my time as a customer, because really - who doesn’t need another mason jar? Salad dressings, soups, drinks, pens, granola - all conveniently storable in a mason jar.
Poor User Experience
After reading through all of the above steps for how one participates in this industry, you can see why it has not fully taken off. My first point of contention with this industry - why is this not standardized? This is easy for me to say when I’m new to the industry, I have no skin in the game, and a ton of lofty ideas. I’m not blaming these stores, but rather, ourselves for not asking this question sooner. The multitude of options for retrieving these bulk items complicates a seemingly convenient process. I’ve always said that to be unsustainable is to be lazy, but even this irks me a bit. We need a standardized system. So, introducing my lofty idea: the Bulk Ubiquitous Dispensing System (BUDS).
Imagine a store you could walk into that has several large, but aesthetically pleasing units in it that you can place your standardized bulk receptacle, push a button, tap your card for payment & then walk out. This is the idea behind BUDS. Think bulk vending machines. The receptacles to retrieve the goods would be BUDS branded with a connective top that would match the dispensing unit, as well as a barcode. This duo would ensure the proper amount is dispensed into your bottle (as read by scanning the barcode), as well as ensuring no wastage (by connecting your bottle to the unit) - wastage is an accepted byproduct of the modern day bulk dispensing process.
This human-less interaction is reaffirmed in this COVID-19 era, but in reality was inspired by reducing human touch points in order to make the user experience more straightforward. Less confusion = likeliness to adopt.
My deep dive into bulk started with my campaign against single use items, which include the shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, etc. bottles that these items come in. I read somewhere that the shampoo bottles thrown out every year in the United States could fill 1,164 football fields. That’s bigger than Vermont. And that’s only for the United States.
When asked about the future of the bulk industry, both Jenyfer Hodgson of Pure, and Phillipe Choinière of ONEKA - the top one and two bulk manufacturer in Canada - stated they they had recently been thinking about what the next step would be. Expanding distribution is the top priority, with one of the two of them having considered a machine like BUDS. The only problem? The cost to build and maintain it strictly for their own products, outweighs the benefits. But what if you weren’t responsible for the capital to build, just for renting space in BUDS? It’s the same reason there isn’t a Pantene Store, but rather, shelves in Walmart.
Some of these bulk depots act as the resellers of bulk products (Saponetti, Bare Market, Unboxed Market, Urban Bulk & Refill, Bare Market), while others both manufacture and have a private label (eco & amour [eco & amour, Lines of Elan], Green and Frugal [Green and Frugal]). Manufacturers include, but are not limited to:
AMERICAN
Dr. Bronners - Vista, CA
Common Good - Brooklyn, NY
The Good Fill - Nashville, TN
Fillaree - Durham, NC
Plaine Products - OH
The Refill Shop -Ventura, CA
CANADIAN
Oneka - Frelighsburg, QC
Pure - Saint-Alexandre-de-Kamouraska, QC
The Unscented Company TUC - Montreal, QC
Sapadilla - Vancouver, BC
Carina Organics - Vancouver, BC
Really Great Goods - Toronto, ON
The Soap Works - Toronto, ON
The Green Beaver Company - Hawksbury, ON
Rocky Mountain Soap Co. - Canmore, AB
Jumping the Chasm
The general sentiment that I get from both shop owners and product manufacturers is that they’re in this together. In order to compete with the multinational consumer goods brands like Proctor & Gamble or L’Oreal, their strength is in numbers. If they can collectively introduce bulk to more and more consumers, there will be a bigger demand for it everywhere.
Above is the Product Adoption Curve, which reflects who buys a new product, and when. We can argue that the eco-conscious and the price-conscious are a large subset of the Innovators and the Early Adopters. They are the most willing to encounter some kinks, and the most willing to withstand the ironing of said kinks. The ‘chasm’ is the figurative doldrums, where you transition from the tech enthusiasts (Innovators) & the visionaries (Early Adopters), to the pragmatists (Early Majority) who are seeking an evolution over a revolution. Early Adopters are risk adverse and want to see precisely how this new product/solution will fit into their lives - they don’t want to be a part of the beta testing group. So how do we drive demand for a new product category such as bulk dispensing systems?
We’ll start with Location, Location, Location. I would start by renting space in key neighbourhoods around Toronto. Very little capital will be needed for leasehold improvements, as all that is required is the space for the units and a coat of paint. Parkdale, Ossington, Little Italy, Leslieville - this is where we’ll find more Innovators and Early Adopters - those who weren’t willing to have mason jars of shampoo, but are willing to try BUDS. Capital will be spent on prototyping and product design. The system is the company, product & retail mechanism.
Now, with a larger population of Innovators and Early Adopters, how will we get over the chasm? The creation of BUDS 2.0. This is when BUDS has children, and partnership agreements are made with the Loblaws, Shoppers Drug Marts, and Bulk Barns of the world. This new unit would be modular, as in, you could buy/rent one unit, or six. I envision the entire shampoo aisle at Walmart becoming the new home for multiple BUDS 2.0 units - which would house more dispensing options per square foot than BUDS 1.0. As the technology evolves & develops, so will people’s opinions on the ease of buying bulk. That is the mission.
BUDS would not try to oust these pioneers in the bulk manufacturing industry, but rather give them another platform to dispense from. BUDS would look to partner with these manufacturers to give consumers options. A multinational product or two would be included while launching, so as to not have them immediately squash us, and attract new customers who already use these brands. Mr. Choinière and I agreed: There will be no difficulty in transferring existing bulk customers to a new system, but what about attracting the ones without a sustainability/price lens? There is so much more to look into.
…
Trendy retail space, a new product to design, changing customer habits - a lofty idea, maybe. Hundreds of patents already exist using key words like ‘bulk liquid dispensing,’ so this isn’t necessarily a novel idea, but I’ve connected with so many great individuals and learnt so much in the process! Researching this industry provided many insights. The biggest of which is that making the change may be uncomfortable/unknown at first, but now that I have the proper funnels to transfer this liquids to a more permanent home, I’m ready for my next order. Change is hard, we know this. But like with many things that we find difficult to adopt - a new fitness schedule, learning to paint, having a baby - the end result is often very rewarding. We should all be thinking about how we can change our daily habits to make even the smallest positive impact we can (read more, here). If you’ve been contemplating an environmental change, just try it - in the meantime I will work on BUDS 1.0.
…
