Alumni found company to reduce food container waste
Seeing recycling boxes and garbage cans overflowing with restaurant and fast-food containers while walking to and from Waterloo’s campus
motivated two alumni to launch a zero-waste business.
Kayli Dale and Jacquie Hutchings, who both graduated from chemical engineering in 2020, co-founded Friendlier, formerly known as A Friendlier Company, last year to help keep food packaging from ending up in landfill.
Based in Guelph, Ontario, the company sells reusable takeout containers to restaurants and prepared meal suppliers.
When food is purchased, customers are charged a nominal deposit for the containers. The deposit is automatically refunded when the packaging’s QR code is scanned using the company’s app and the containers are returned to the participating restaurant’s collection bin. Then, Friendlier sterilizes the returned containers, which are produced in Ontario and can be reused over 100 times.
With only a few local restaurants on board when the company began operating in October 2020, there are now over 60 throughout the province offering Friendlier's containers.
As COVID-19 restrictions ease and larger gatherings start up again, Dale and Hutchings plan to expand their business by offering reusable drink
cups using a similar refundable deposit system at public events.
“I’m thrilled to watch the company’s impact grow and see people excited about reducing waste,” says Dale. “Being able to demonstrate that sustainability can be profitable is also important.”
After discovering it would cost at least $30,000 to have a professional build the company’s app, Dale used the skills and knowledge she gained at Waterloo to develop it herself.
“I spent last summer learning to code and created the app,” she says. “What engineering gave us was the confidence to be able to tackle a problem like that and come up with a solution.”
* Banner photo is of chemical engineering alumni Kayli Dale, left, and Jacquie Hutchings, co-founders of Friendlier.
