Waste-free Event Din­ing

Zestii’s and Kamupak’s joint tri­al: Reusable food con­tain­ers at The Irish Fes­ti­val of Oulu

In the local and sus­tain­able food sup­pli­er Zestii’s and deposit food and drink con­tain­er man­u­fac­tur­er Kamupak’s joint tri­al, gig atten­dees got to try out waste-free event din­ing where the food con­tain­ers were returned after use. The tri­al received a warm recep­tion and the con­tain­er return worked well when the solu­tion was announced at the event and before it.

Inno­va­tion Tri­al

The local­ly craft­ed cui­sine by Zesti­i’s chefs with immi­grant back­grounds was served in The Irish Fes­ti­val of Oulu’s gig night on Kamupak’s return­able food and drink con­tain­ers. Styl­ish mar­ket­ing mate­r­i­al was designed and cre­at­ed for the event that was used to inform the atten­dees about the return­able con­tain­ers at the event as well as before and after it. The artists and fes­ti­val orga­niz­ers were also served snacks in Kamupak’s con­tain­ers back­stage.

Dur­ing the tri­al it was impor­tant to inform clear­ly that the con­tain­ers are reusable and the cus­tomers are expect­ed to return them and not toss them. The tri­al fund­ing was effi­cient­ly used for the cre­ation of new mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als that high­light­ed the mat­ter suf­fi­cient­ly. Though Zeesti and Kamu­pak were quite unknown to the gig atten­dees, their tri­al was wel­comed with open arms.

Results

Dur­ing the event, the cus­tomers were told about Kamupak’s con­tain­ers oral­ly and with visu­al mate­ri­als pre­pared for the event. Zeesti did not charge deposits from the cus­tomers dur­ing the tri­al.

Dur­ing the event, 98 % of box­es, 94 % of bowls and 87,5 % of cups were returned after use. Most of the cus­tomers under­stood the nature of Kamupak’s sys­tem and it got very pos­i­tive feed­back. In the sur­vey orga­nized after the event, 100 % told that they par­tic­i­pat­ed in the tri­al hap­pi­ly and viewed it as a pos­i­tive chance to par­tic­i­pate in orga­niz­ing events in a more sus­tain­able way, even if the ser­vice would be sub­ject to a deposit charge. The mes­sag­ing on social media also reached peo­ple well.

Kamupak’s con­tain­er recy­cling will have an even big­ger impact when more sell­ers dis­trib­ute their con­tain­ers at events.

Briefly

• The tri­al was orga­nized by Zestii and Kamu­pak.
• The event was the Cúig band’s gig at The Irish Fes­ti­val of Oulu for 200 cus­tomers at Cul­tur­al Cen­tre Valve on Octo­ber 15, 2022.
• A Pop up stall sold deli­cious local food from reusable con­tain­ers and shared infor­ma­tion about Zestii and Kamupak’s con­tain­ers. With the help of good mes­sag­ing, most of the rerturn­able con­tain­ers were returned even with­out the use of deposit charges.