Kayel Lewis lives in Prince Edward Island(PEI), Canada. In 2020, she adopted her dog Exi from Spain through an agency called Extraordinary Galgos and Podencos.

Galgos and podencos are ancient breeds of Spanish hunting dogs. Like racing greyhounds in the U.S., when their owners see them as having outlived their usefulness in the field or on the track, they often are given up for adoption — or in the case of the Spanish dogs, abandoned on the streets.

Coming from Spain, Exi did not have much hair on him and couldn’t keep himself warm in PEI, where 6/12 months are cold.

As a thrift shopper, Kayel decided to alter a vintage human sweater for him.

She enjoyed doing that and decided to turn it into a small business. That’s how Hand-Me-Down Hound was born.

Now she does it for other pets too! Kayel picks out, measures, up-cycles and packs them herself.

You can check it out here

Hand-me-down Hound

Moving onto this week’s content. So today, we have👇🏽

• A startup that’s making sustainable choices more effortless

• Another startup that’s on a mission to make reuse mainstream

• Some good news

• Can I cover your story?

☑️ This US-based startup is making sustainable choices more effortless

It comes at a cost…Online ordering and delivery have made everything so convenient. Ran out of kitchen towels? Need hand soap immediately? With a few clicks, you can order these and within a few hours, the products would be delivered to your doorstep. Packed in plastic and secured in a carton box. You throw the packaging away in a recycling bin but most of them eventually ends up in landfills, rivers, and oceans.

A low-waste alternative…Classmates Alexander Torrey and Byungwoo Ko decided to do something about this. At The Rounds, they deliver and refill everyday staples in reusable containers on their fleet of e-bikes. Household basics, personal care products, pantry staples- all of them are delivered to your doorstep without any packaging waste.

• Customers place an order as they do on other retailer sites. The Rounds delivers those goods in reusable containers via their electric bikes.

• When a user is done, The Rounds picks the packaging up again, rinses it and repeats the process.

• It also uses predictive technology to estimate when a user might need a refill, eliminating the need to order.

Some numbers…They currently operate in 3 US cities. Apart from delivering the usual stuff, they have also partnered up with local favourites that are more sustainable. Subscribers of the service pay $6 per month and they don’t have to pay any additional delivery or service fees. The Rounds has estimated that this saves an average of 50 pounds of package waste from each home every year.

💚This UK-based startup is on a mission to make reuse mainstream

Another convenient option…The packaging revolution has made lunch on the go easier to manage. Whether you’re at an event or in the office canteen, you pick it up in a container, eat it, and throw the container away. But this throwaway culture has created a massive problem. In the UK alone, this generates 11 billion pieces of packaging waste!

Another bunch of classmates…London-based startup junee is tackling this via a reusable system that makes reuse as easy as single-use. Classmates Caroline and Mary saw this problem firsthand and leveraged their past experience in sustainability, operations and logistics to launch junee. It offers reusable container services to workplaces, venues, and events. Here’s how it works-

• junee’s reusable containers are available at the workplace, venues, food markets, festivals or events.

• People consume the food and drinks in them and then drop the used containers in junee bins located at the venue afterwards.

• junee then collects, cleans and restocks the containers for reuse again and again.

Some deets…Their containers are made from Polypropylene(higher chances of getting recycled) and their plates are made from 100% recycled plastic. Every time a reusable container is used, it saves somewhere between 150-500 g of CO2.

😹 Some Good News

🛢️ Thank you, next: New Mexico denies over 200 new oil and gas drilling permits

0️⃣ No bills: Near $0 electricity bills in this French village thanks to wind and solar energy

🌊 Oceanbnb: Airbnb's CEO Joe Gebbia donates $25 million to The Ocean Cleanup

Shoutout to Aakanksha for making this punny

🔦Can I cover your story?

If you’re a brand that has planet Earth as a stakeholder, here are a few ways in which I can help you-

1. Cover your story in the newsletter and in a LinkedIn post. It’s completely FREE!

2. Help you with your long-form content- newsletters, blogs and articles

I'm interested

Thanks for reading today’s edition. If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to write to me by replying to this email.

Have a great weekend and see you next week😊