Plastic boxes help feed the homeless

When the UK entered lockdown in March, food donations across the country went down dramatically as people stockpiled through fears of shortages and some supermarkets entirely removed their food donation boxes from the shop floor.

With food banks across the country more desperate than ever for donations, The Pret Foundation has been working tirelessly, reliant on its durable plastic boxes to help keep up supply.

Explaining how the boxes are being put to good use, Isabel Bradbury, Food Donations Coordinator for The Pret Foundation, said: “Every night a fleet of our charity vans collect surplus food donations from our shops in London and deliver the food to over a hundred partner charities across the city.

“At closing time, our Pret team members pack any surplus food neatly into our plastic boxes, which are then left in the fridge for our drivers to collect. Our drivers collect these boxes filled with food donations overnight, leaving an empty box with the shop, and deliver them to one of our partner charities, where they retrieve any empty boxes.

“Our plastic boxes are in constant rotation between our shops, vans and partner charities so it’s important that they’re of the very highest quality.”

The Pret Foundation ordered 820 plastic folding boxes – the GoFold 64320S – which comes in grey as standard with a solid base and side walls and hand holes for easy lifting. Measuring 600mm (L) x 400mm (W) x 320mm (H), these boxes offer a generous storage capacity of 59 litres, making them the ideal size for Pret’s charity runs.

Goplasticpallets.com branded the boxes with The Pret Foundation along with its registered charity number and supplied barcoded labels allowing Pret to record the Product Code, Supplier Name and Pack Size.

Isabel continued: “It’s been great to have both branded and foldable boxes as this helps our shops, charities and delivery drivers to store them efficiently and differentiate them from other delivery boxes. 

“The team at Goplasticpallets.com have been helpful throughout and we are glad we chose to use their durable and fit for purpose boxes for our charity deliveries.” 

For more information, visit www.goplasticpallets.com