Next Chance: 100% eco-friendly gift packaging
Tons and tons of wrapping paper and gift bags are thrown away every Christmas. While some goes for recycling, the metallic wrapping paper, sprouts and duct tape don't. In order to reduce our footprint during the feast of little Jesus, the Quebec company Next Chance has been offering fabric packaging for two years.
According to the most recent statistics from Zero Waste Canada, 540,000 tonnes of wrapping paper and gift bags are thrown away by Canadians each year, reads a press release from Next Chance. .
Making a loved one happy is good, but doing it without polluting the planet is even better! This is why the co-founders of this company located in Longueuil, Gabrielle Huppé and Maude Girard, design textile packaging made of fabrics rescued from local companies.
“Our business model is really based on the circular economy, explains Gabrielle Huppé, joined by Métro. We contact designers, manufacturers, big-box companies here in Quebec.”
A second life
The objective is therefore to give a second life to new, rejected, unsold or unused fabrics, in order to prevent them from ending up in the garbage or shredding.
For their gift packaging, the company favors natural materials such as cotton, but also uses polyester. On the other hand, it avoids more stretchy or very slippery textiles.
We do gift wrapping and our objective is to reproduce the paper of traditional packaging.
Geneviève Huppé, co-founder of Next Chance
In other words, the spandex, we forget that. However, the Next Chance co-founders offer other solutions to their partners for the textiles they cannot use.
Another particularity is that as Next Chance does not dye itself the fabrics used, the choice of colors are in a way imposed on it by its partners.
“We are proud of this constraint, maintains the co-founder. It gives limited editions and people like that, because it creates novelty and these are products that are unique.
Photo: Courtesy, Next Chance
An enhanced offer
After two years, Next Chance has enhanced its offer by adding products such as Christmas decoration items, gift bags, wine bottle bags, and Advent calendars. This last item seems to have been very successful since stocks are already sold out.
“We launched a limited quantity to test the product, and in the end, it turned out to be a really popular product, so we're going to bring out [the advent calendar] next year with probably other patterns and color variations,” she says, saying she's very happy with this success.
An advent calendar offering pockets large enough to hold a Kinder Surprise or even a candle, adds the co-founder of the company.
According to Gabrielle Huppé, nearly 80% of their customers take gift wrapping to reuse it, but also, sometimes leaves it to the recipient of the present when the latter promises to reuse it.
In addition to online purchases, around fifteen points of sale in Quebec offers the company's products, including the Boutique l’Escale verte in Ahuntsic-Cartierville and the general store ecological ral Terre à Soi located in Hochelaga and as well as in Tétreaultville.
