Woola’s circular future: the pilot project

No innovative product is perfect from the beginning. We see our product and business model development as improvements and dreams spread over a long period of time, split between different stages on the timeline. 

Today, our main goal is to reduce the demand for petroleum-based bubble wrap. We do this by providing an alternative that is better from the environmental and societal aspect — and winning a growing part of the market currently led by bubble wrap. But, that is only a part of the master plan. 

Moving from better to far better means shifting from the linear (take-make-use-dispose) to the circular (grow-make-use-restore) pattern. Shortly said, we want to make sure the resources once taken from nature will be used again and again, as many times as possible.

Circular packaging

Currently, crazy amounts of packaging waste never make it to the recycling systems and eventually pollute the environment. Only 2% of plastic packaging is kept within the closed loop and recycled into a material of the same or similar quality.

As the demand for packaging is growing, so are the mountains of single-use packaging waste. Therefore we have to rethink the whole system. Moving from linear to circular packaging systems is one of the solutions to the growing problem.

Setting up Woola’s returns system

There is currently no accessible circular system for wool, meaning the Woola packaging being shipped out today will either end up in a landfill, in the best-case scenario, get reused or recycled. 

We want to create a returns system in the markets we’re active in that lets people return the wool packaging. This way, the material stays in the production loop.

The packaging that is returned in good condition can be reused after we do quality control and, if needed, fix them. The more damaged ones will be shredded into tiny pieces and mixed with the raw material, so they can become new packaging once again.

The pilot project

We’re doing a test run of the idea in collaboration with Kaubamaja, the leading department store in Estonia. We’ve placed Woola’s Returns Boxes in Kaubamaja’s department stores (in Tallinn and Tartu).

This means people in Estonia can return the Wool Envelopes, by bringing the envelopes to one of the boxes.

Through this pilot project, we have learned that approximately 80% of the returned packaging is in such good shape that it does not need any processing to be used again.

The circular future of Woola packaging

We’re looking to expand the Woola returns program in our target markets, such as France and the UK. All it takes is placing a compact box in your retail locations, and we’ll make sure customers know they can return Woola packaging to those boxes. Get in touch if you’d like to work with us on this!

Additionally, a number of our customers are running internal circular packaging pilots with Woola packaging. Some of these customers use Woola in their internal supply chains, e.g. when shipping their products from manufacturing to retail stores. Others ship extra Woola packaging to their customers so they can return products for repairs or maintenance.

Once these pilots have concluded, we’ll be sure to share some case studies in our channels. Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram to stay tuned!