We have completely forgotten our youthful intentions to respect our environment! Because yes, more than 30 years ago, we were already talking about climate problems, overconsumption of meat, pollution. We closed our eyes and rushed through life, caught up in the consumer society, seduced by advertising, attracted by big travels, big cars, a big house with cupboards and fridges always filled to the brim!
A full life and 5 children later, the awareness of the need to repair arises in 2016! But fix what?
Waste, overconsumption, pollution of a half-life. What were we going to leave to our children? How could we pretend nothing had happened? How could we rely solely on them, the generation that would change everything, without doing anything? This was unacceptable to us!
First of all, brainstorming with the children: perhaps our shared experiences could give rise to a sustainable project? At the same time, a complete transformation of our way of living is taking place. Step by step, room by room, zero waste is settling in, upsetting the naysayers, giving fun, bringing a lot of satisfaction, freeing up time and doing good to the wallet.
At the end of 2017, we finally gave ourselves some time to reflect and left our respective jobs. We are naturally wondering about the foundations of a sober and fulfilling life: how to resist over-consumption and fads? How can we share our experiences and have a meaningful impact on the future?
In spring 2018, we are starting to work on the project of an online shop for sustainable and ethical products with the intention of simplifying everyone's life, transforming the disposable into sustainable, bringing back the deposit-refund system and therefore the reusable. We believe that the deposit-refund system, the reusable, is the future!
On March 1, 2019, KissPlanet is launched with 800 sustainable alternatives to disposable products, ecological care and cleaning products and reproducible organic seeds. The first customers create a buzz! We have worked hard to limit the impact of every aspect of our business.
Our packaging is made of recycled cardboard and we reuse packaging from our suppliers, our service providers are the most environmentally friendly in the world, the postman delivers our parcels with the mail, our electricity is green. To enable everyone to make an informed choice, we inform and communicate fully and reliably about each product, its producer, the manufacturing processes and the overall carbon (CO2) impact, we believe that full transparency is the key. We choose products based on their usefulness, sustainability and environmental impact. We focus on essential products.
From the beginning, it also seemed important to us to act even further, to contribute with more impact. We needed more leverage and to devote part of our income to even bigger projects. We looked for NGOs that do good for the planet, that share the same convictions and interests as us. We discovered 1% for the Planet hrough products we knew. The idea is strong: systematically give back 1% of our income to support projects in favour of the environment. Simple and effective, perfect for us! Because we believe that planting trees is the most effective way to capture carbon from the atmosphere, we chose the Belgian NGO WeForest, which is active in forest restoration, as our first project. Today, it only takes 3 orders to plant a tree and every day the contribution of KISSPLANET and its community of users is growing.
In March 2020, we are expanding our range to include organic and healthy food products. These are staple foods for everyday cooking: flour, sugar, pasta, rice, cereals and pulses. At the same time, Covid arrived and we were locked down for the first time. We are trying to meet the growing demand for a complete basket: we offer canned vegetables, some ready meals, healthy snacks, soups and baby food, all organic. In the meantime, we are working on the delivery of bulk products, looking for containers adapted to many constraints: transport, ergonomics, ease of return, maintenance, resistance and weight. The environmental impact of the entire life cycle of the packaging is taken into account.
October 2020, here we are! We start with 80 dry food products, in bulk bags. The bags have a deposit, are delivered to your home and are easy to return to us in the pre-addressed and stamped fabric envelope included in the package. In November 2020, we are expanding the concept to include solid cleaning and hygiene products. We are proud to work with special needs companies in Belgium to produce our bags and boxes. The bags travel throughout Belgium, France and Germany. Thousands of single-use packages are thus avoided, and our bags and envelopes are very resistant, almost indestructible. We are rapidly expanding our range following the positive feedback from the first adventurous customers who put their trust in us. Our solutions can always be improved and the feedback is important to us. In the spring of 2021, we offer 250 items in bulk. Each order is prepared at the time of delivery in compliance with impeccable hygiene conditions and full traceability. This is really the first time that one can order bulk products online, without disposable packaging!
At that moment, it became obvious to us that it is possible to make buying without packaging as simple as buying with packaging. This is our goal.
Customers who don't have a bulk shop near them, who don't want to fill their containers themselves, who find the maintenance of the bags too much of a hassle, or who were already buying online also have a solution. They can now buy most of their products without disposable packaging and significantly reduce their waste and the impact on their wallet in the long run!
Nothing is impossible, it just takes to work on the problems, to look for collaborations, to think outside the box and the solution often comes from challenging habits. Interaction creates stimuli, and that is what our clients bring to us.
We want to remove all obstacles to a more sustainable way of consuming, to facilitate and simplify.
Tomorrow KissPlanet will make waste-free consumption THE simple solution for everyone!
Sober shopping without packaging will be easier than filling up sorting, landfill and incineration centres.
...A world without rubbish