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This article first appeared in our ‘Love is all we need’ issue of My Green Pod Magazine, published on 14 February 2022. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Main image: credit Richard Ponter
According to LocoSoco Group plc, over the next 10 years sustainability will become a multi-trillion pound industry.
The eco-friendly product delivery company has already noticed some of the world’s biggest brands and companies switching to eco friendly and sustainable alternatives due to a change in consumer buying habits – and says it’s only a matter of time before the others follow suit.
‘Consumers are looking for alternatives’, says James Perry, LocoSoco’s founder and CEO. ‘They are moving away from damaging products and towards choices that are healthier both for themselves and for the environment.’
James is supporting the shift from both sides, fulfilling the consumer demand for eco products while giving a platform to the rising number of products with purpose. ‘We currently work with over 500 independent retailers across the UK, and have sold to hundreds of businesses, 19 councils and some corporates’, he says.
LocoSoco delivers everything from food, snacks and drinks to cleaning products, refill stations and health and hygiene products, plus own-brand and safety products.
‘We look for products and services that are independent, have clear sustainability goals and are about more than just shifting product’, James explains. ‘We also look at companies we can help become more sustainable by sharing best practice between brands. The key is that they are working towards sustainability and contributing to more then one Sustainable Development Goal.’
During the pandemic LocoSoco put refill stations into around 300 communities, which is equivalent to 150,000 refill bottles of cleaning product and around 400,000 refillable bottles of hand sanitiser.
‘LocoSoco means Local Social’, James tells us. ‘It has always been about making change at a local level and giving communities the tools to take on local economic and environmental challenges.’
James feels strongly that creating a new shared wealth distribution model will help communities take charge and do their bit while being fairly rewarded for their involvement.
LocoSoco works with the pillars of a community – including its shops, schools, places of worship and sports clubs – to facilitate a new way of shopping that is both local, sustainable and online. At the same time households and businesses are encouraged to transition to sustainable products and support their communities.
‘There is a huge opportunity to create shared wealth from the transition to sustainable alternatives’, James says. ‘It helps us to prop up the assets that bind our communities together while providing access to affordable, high-quality products, services and technologies to the millions of households and businesses in the UK.’
LocoSoco has launched MyEco.Site to allow communities to promote, sell and profit from the transition to sustainable alternatives.
‘This service is free to community organisations’, James says. ‘It provides a personalised webshop and LocoSoco takes care of the distribution, splitting the profits 50/50 with the community organisation.’
James has based his model on a typical village, with one shop, one school, one place of worship, one pub and 500 houses.
‘The average household spends £30,000 per year and a village spends £15m’, James reveals; ‘how much of that could be spent through local, shared-wealth community assets? I believe it could be around £5m, which could add over £500,000 of profit to a community-owned company. What each community could then achieve is what we’re working to find out.’
As James scales LocoSoco and continues to work with community leaders around the country, he is helping to bring positive change to the way we shop, the businesses we support and the communities we live in.
‘With all the products and technologies that are coming to market, we need an efficient and economically viable way to get them into communities’, James says. LocoSoco could be just the way to do it.
498 refills of plant-based cleaning products – an eco enterprise in a box!
A professional-quality natural cleaning product for your bathroom.
These cleaning products come in the UK’s first recycled plastic bottles and ‘work as well as their nasty competitors’.
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