If you buy cooking oil in glass bottles, you take the empty container to the glass collection. If you choose plastic packaging, you dispose of it in the yellow garbage can. Now, there is another alternative. Bio-Company has introduced Bio Plànete cooking oils in reusable oil bottles. The Berlin-based company dotch is behind the reusable system. The system provider has developed a standardized, unbreakable reusable bottle especially for cooking oils that can be reused up to 50 times, the company says. Deposits can be returned in all 60 Bio Company stores. The deposit fee is 50 cents, which is higher than for drinks bottles.
Complex Cleaning for Reusable Bottles
The solution took a long time to develop together with the start-up dotch. “Because the main challenge was cleaning. Oils in bottles are not comparable with water-based contents,” the companys say.This is not the only reusable solution that Bio Company offers. Various reusable products have been available for years, says Anne Schill, Head of the Bio Company dry product range. For example, the PFABO – the deposit box – is also available as a reusable system in all stores. The box can be used in different sizes for loose goods in the fresh food areas such as the bakery counter or meat counter in order to avoid packaging. It costs a 5-euro deposit, which is refunded on return.
Selected stores also offer an unpackaged station where customers can fill loose goods themselves. The range here offers up to 90 products: from pasta and muesli to jelly babies. Here too, the aim is to avoid packaging and reduce waste.
Fruit and vegetables are also offered more than 90 percent unpackaged. In 2021, the “Ökobon” was introduced, the environmentally friendly alternative to conventional thermal paper. It can be disposed of with waste-paper as it is free from chemical color developers. The Bio Company also pays attention to logistics when it comes to avoiding packaging and waste: the goods are secured for transportation on the trolleys by the in-house organic wholesaler Midgard using reusable fall protection doors and reusable transport crates instead of plastic film.
“Reusable for Everything”
Bio Company had already been awarded the German Sustainability Award 2024 at the end of 2023 for its environmentally friendly commitment. In its reasoning, the German Sustainability Award Foundation stated: “Bio Company SE is a beacon in the food retail sector. Sustainable commitment has been anchored in its principles since its foundation.”
“Reusable simply makes more sense. And we finally have the solution to combine reusability and user-friendliness, deposit bottles and pourers,” says Judith Faller-Moog, founder and owner of Bio Planète. André Pietzke, Co-Managing Director of dotch, says: “Breaking bottles in order to reuse them is nonsense. Establishing reusable containers for everything is the right way forward.”
About the Company
Founded in 1999 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, the Bio Company now runs more than 60 stores, mainly in the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region. Its expertise is that it offers the largest possible proportion of regional goods in order to guarantee freshness, avoid longer transport routes and CO2, as well as to strengthen the regional economy. In 2023, it received the German Sustainability Award 2024 and the Green Buddy Award for the extensive, sustainable commitment to tackling packaging waste and solutions such as PFABO. The German Sustainability Award was presented together with the Federal Ministry for the Environment and the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce to particularly exemplary companies in their sectors.
