FLORENCE TAY
Co-founder, UnPackt
Food waste is a problem in Singapore. According to the National Environment Agency, it accounts for about 11 percent of the total waste generated in our country. Last year, that amounted to 665,000 tonnes of discarded food. The upside is that food waste is starting to fall, and we have food rescue organisations and businesses the likes of UnPackt to thank for it. For co-founder Florence Tay, the spark that started UnPackt, a packaging-free bulk food store, is a problem all of us face: We often don’t finish the pre-packaged and portioned foods we buy, from fruits and vegetables to spices and cereals, before they start going stale and we have to throw them out, resulting in food waste. For Tay, it has not been easy trying to convince people that the BYO jar-and-bottle concept is affordable. The 39-year-old says that “there’s always a misconception that zero-waste store shopping is expensive. However, it’s very practical to purchase just the food amount you need, as you will never again need to pay for the [excess] food that will expire and need to be thrown away.” Three years after its founding, UnPackt has made some headway with Singaporeans. “After learning about consumers’ demands, we have increased our product variety to about five times more than our initial start,” Tay shares. “It’s important we procure based on local demand so as to avoid generating food waste as a business, [in terms of] unsold or excess inventory. We have also tied up with other food suppliers to provide fresh produce—food surplus or ugly foods in Singapore—to make things more convenient for our customers.”