MIWA - the sustainable shopping solution
by Startacus Admin
MIWA is a Czech startup that's created an innovative smart tech solution to make waste-free shopping the new normal.
Although some brands are making a little more effort these days, it can still be hard to find food that isn’t wrapped up inside ten times its weight in plastic. The convenience of plastic outweighs its environmental impact for a lot of brands, and for a lot of consumers. But its negative impact on the environment is significant, as we have written about numerous times before, and it is long past time to reduce or eliminate our use of throwaway plastic.
Czech startup MIWA - short for ‘minimum waste’ - is taking another look at the supply chain to do away with this harmful single-use packaging before it is even created. Here and there, we see shops pop up with a unique style of shopping, where products are stored in big containers, and you pour out however much of it you need into your own container, and MIWA wants to make this more prevalent in local shops. Not only does this reduce waste, but it means that you can buy exactly how much you need or how much you can afford, and no more.
All you need is the reusable MIWA smart cup, which registers which product you are filling it with and then tells the companion app what to charge you, and at the end of the cup’s long life, MIWA will handle its recycling. That companion app will also use the data provided by the smart cup to tell you everything you need to know about the product, such as use-by date, nutritional information, and even recipes.
For the retailer, it is just as easy. Reusable 12-litre capsules simply slot into the provided smart shelves, and are filled with single-use, easily recycled pouches to keep the product fresh and hygienic, and MIWA again handles the recycling and the cleaning of the capsules, keeping them in constant circulation. The smart, modular shelves track stock in real time, ensuring the retailer is always ready with replacements.
Currently, MIWA is up and running in Prague, Paris, and numerous locations across Switzerland, but they are growing (with Germany locations coming soon), and we expect to see the little location map on their site full of location pins soon!
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Published on: 6th June 2022
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