Hello Takeout, Buh-bye Trash

While walking to my University classes in the heart of downtown Toronto, I will always find three things: iconic buildings, a lot of pigeons, and any type of takeout food my heart desires. Between my classes, I enjoy grabbing a quesadilla — or perhaps a slice of pizza, or even maybe just a coffee — as do many of my peers. There’s just one issue: every takeout container and coffee cup will end up straight in the trash. In fact, it is not uncommon to see the trash bins that line the city streets overflowing with fast-food containers. It is difficult to ignore all of this single-use waste, straining the already thin reservoir of our resources. 

When friends Kayli Smith and Jacquie Hutchings graduated from the University of Waterloo, they noticed the same thing: an immense amount of food packaging littering the streets. “We saw this issue that just kept coming up in our lives,” Hutchings remarks, “and it really got us angry that it is so common for people to just do single use packaging, every time they eat a meal.” In 2019, the pair came up with a simple solution to reduce waste from single-use packaging that benefits businesses, consumers, and our planet. Meet Friendlier: a hub for reusable takeout containers across Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta, in which Friendlier supplies businesses with their reusable takeout containers to serve customers, in place of disposables. Their tag line? “Because the planet isn’t single-use.”

Hutchings emphasized that simplicity has always been at the heart of Friendlier from the beginning. “We’ve always been on a mission to make reuse as easy as single use packaging and make it quite simple,” Hutchings says. Here’s how it works: businesses order containers; serve their food and drinks in the containers; and Friendlier picks them up; cleans them at local facilities in Ottawa, Guelph, and Vancouver; and restocks the containers on a regular basis. Consumers simply pay a small deposit of $0.50-1.00, take the containers, cups, etc., and when they’re done, they return it to a Friendlier collection location, and receive their deposit back. 

More than 200 businesses across Ontario trust Friendlier’s sustainable solution, including Skip the Dishes, Scotiabank, Farmboy, and my school, Toronto Metropolitan University (check out the list of locations). It is easy, straightforward, and effective. The numbers speak for themselves: since starting six years ago, “we’ve reused 2.8 million packages, which is equal to about 470,000 kg of greenhouse gas emissions that’s avoided,” says Hutchings.  “We’re also saving a lot of waste, equal to about 162,000 kg of waste that’s diverted and kept in circulation instead of going into a landfill, and about 22 million litres of water.” Friendlier has been so successful that it earned Kayli Smith and Jacquie Hutchings a spot in Forbes 2023 30 under 30 list. 

This widespread reuse program is trusted by over 200 businesses across Ontario alone, because Friendlier makes it easy and accessible for consumers and businesses, while keeping costs competitive with single-use containers. It is a choice that everyone can feel good about without sacrificing the convenience of takeout food. Friendlier brings us one step closer to a more sustainable world. 

Read about the Beach Solar Laundromat, another Toronto business that’s thriving while cutting waste.