Returnable box project for YOLO

We received our new double-walled boxes for our large YOLO Compost Tumblers last week. They're very strong and, well, large! Packaging is expensive and so wasteful. When I picked up our large boxes last week, a quick chat with our box supplier gave me an idea...

The box for our large YOLO Compost Tumbler is returnable. We want the boxes back so that we can reuse each one a number of times before it is retired to compost. Every time that we send out a large YOLO Compost Tumbler, we'll include three reusable velcro straps inside the box, which will be used to secure the box and flaps. We'll arrange for our courier to collect the box from the customer to bring it back to us.

I must have looked pretty comical yesterday. In these photos you can't quite gauge how big the box is. It is 1210mm long, 800mm wide and 820mm high. It weighs 4.5kg.

For now, we're just doing the large box as returnable. My next box order for the medium tumblers will be for the double-walled version and we'll probably make these returnable too.

 As we order small quantities i.e. 20 or 30 units as opposed to minimum order quantities of 250 or more (new business cash flow challenges!), the price that we pay per box is really high. It saves us money to courier the box back to reuse. The benefits really are aligned here with saving money and being able to reuse the boxes so that we generate less waste. We also take the problem of disposing of such a large box off our customers' hands.

We are fortunate that our customers are environmentally-minded; they have embraced our returnable box project with enthusiasm and appreciation.

The first return comes back to us next week.