Sustainability start-up Cozy & Green has launched a shopping app to help Londoners live more eco-friendly lives by taking the challenge out of zero-waste shopping.

By partnering with independent stores that ethically source their products, Cozy & Green offers an easy and waste-free way for consumers to shop from refill stores in the city and have their reusable containers picked up, refilled and returned to their doors.

After uploading pictures of their containers – glass jars, food storage boxes, reusable bottles, liquid dispensers – customers can shop nearby refill stores, assign food and household items to each container and select pick-up and delivery times to suit their schedule. A Cozy & Green team member collects the containers from the customer’s home, takes them to the zero-waste store for refilling and returns the filled containers via carbon-free delivery. Customers can also buy reusable containers if needed.

“We are on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic in the grocery space,” explains Salmen Hichri, Cozy & Green co-founder. “Buying from refill stores has always been the ultimate way to reduce packaging waste, yet the inconvenience of the process meant that only sustainability advocates and pioneers were willing to adhere to this mode of shopping.

We are on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic in the grocery space

“At Cozy & Green, we are eliminating all the pain points related to the refill process and we are making zero-waste shopping simple and convenient for everyone. We invented a new way to buy grocery and household items online without producing any waste, and we built a technology platform and a fulfilment system specifically for this purpose.”

After trialling the Cozy & Green app for several months, the service has initially launched in London, with plans for expansion this year.