COVID-19 has uncovered countless vulnerabilities in our society. One major vulnerability is our food system. Our global food system is dominated by single-use, pre-packaged products.  Pre-packaged products go through complex supply chains with many touchpoints. Manufacturers and distribution workers directly interact with products several times before reaching a store. At the store level, employees interact with every item in a store an average of 3 times per day for stocking and rotation. Above this, the average shopper touches twice as many items as they actually purchase. 

SmartBins, a Capitola based technology company, believes the core of how we buy and sell food and everyday essential products is flawed.  SmartBins is re-thinking the way products are sold making shopping safe with new product delivery systems. 

At the store level, SmartBins has 1 touchpoint. The dispenser handle. This reduces possible contamination by several points throughout the distribution chain and at the retail store level. SmartBins reduces the need to sanitize thousands of individual packages throughout a store to just a few dispenser handles. 

“We cannot eliminate all possible contamination points, but we can limit them to a few identifiable and actionable places,” says David Conway, founder of SmartBins. “It's unrealistic to sanitize billions if not trillions of pre-packaged products across the country and the world but, a few dispensers handles, doable.” 

You may see SmartBins dispensers in Santa Cruz in the near future.

Filoli Market is partnering with SmartBins to open a low-waste store in Santa Cruz County. Filoli is designed around a new concept of low-waste and sanitary shopping. To learn more about Filoli you can visit their website filoli.com or reach out at info@filoli.com

Stay tuned for more!