Chef Turned Entrepreneur is Tackling Single-Use Plastic Waste - One Meal at a Time

Philadelphia, PA, March 12, 2020 --(PR.com)-- Grab-and-go prepared foods, quick service restaurants and vending services have long catered to the busy professional, parent or student looking for convenience. Yet, that convenience has come at a cost - in the form of packaging waste.

According to National Geographic “40 percent of plastic produced is packaging, used just once and then discarded.” That plastic winds up in landfills, in oceans and in our food.

Troubled by the amount of packaging and food waste the restaurant industry was generating, Chef Jared Cannon created Simply Good Jars in November of 2017. He set out to change the way people think about consumption - from the kind of food they eat, to the package it comes in - and to how it serves the community.

Simply Good Jars brings fresh, healthy and delicious meals to offices, hospitals, hotels and universities through a fleet of smart RFID enabled, self-service fridges; making healthy food more accessible in places when people are pressed for time and often left with choices that are unhealthy, laden with preservatives and minimally satisfying. The jars are also available in grab-and-go cases in select retail locations.

The company’s signature Return for Reuse program is in place everywhere the jars are sold. When finished with their meal, people return jars in the designated bins near the fridge and they are put back into production. Eliminating the need for single use packaging. For each jar returned, Simply Good Jars also donates a meal to someone in need.

To date, Simply Good Jars has donated more than 35.280 meals and has diverted 5,311 lbs of single-use plastic from landfills. A recent social impact projection audit has Simply Good Jars on track to divert 3,692,000 lbs of waste from landfills and to donate more than 18,000,000 meals over the course of the next five years.

“We set out with an ambitious goal and are blown away by the adoption of our return for reuse program. With a consistent 70 % return rate, it’s clear that people want a solution; and we’re proud to empower communities to better themselves by simply encouraging better choices that lead to better impact for all.” - Jared Cannon