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Toronto-Danforth MP Julie Dabrusin, parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change and parliamentary secretary to the minister of energy and natural resources, said she was excited to make the trip to ���߲ݴ�ýto see the new facility.

“I love that it opens up the possibilities,” Dabrusin said.

She said working on banning single-use plastics brings up many questions. People want to know how they are going to get their coffee, for instance.

“I love that we have an example right here in the community showing how we are going to do it,” she said.

Friendlier now has reusable coffee cups with lids, as well as other food containers in different shapes and sizes, and Dabrusin said they are being used in businesses near her in Toronto.

���߲ݴ�ýMP Lloyd Longfield was also there for the ribbon-cutting and open house, and said he was very proud of the Friendlier team and what they have accomplished since 2019.

“I get super stoked when I see this going on,” he said.

He said Friendlier was “a small business with some big ideas at the right time,” and commended the founders’ passion and ability to make connections. Longfield said the social and environmental benefits of their work is going to change lives.

And all the hard work of co-founders Jacquie Hutchings and Kayli Dale has certainly changed their lives. The pair was named in Forbes 30 Under 30 last year for social impact.

“This is just the beginning for us,” said Hutchings. “We have a long way to go, but we want to make sure that we are taking time to celebrate every moment so that it continues to be exciting, and we continue to have energy.”

The two founders, who studied chemical engineering at the University of Waterloo, said they got their inspiration while studying abroad in their third year of school.

“We lived in Sweden, where there was this concept of conscious consumerism, and people really actually cared about the impact they were making on the environment,” said Hutchings.

They wanted to make it easier for North Americans to reuse packaging, and she said they set out on a mission to do so.

Hutchings said every time they met someone when they were travelling, and told them they were Canadian, they would comment on how friendly Canadians were.

“We are proudly Canadian, and we want to be friendlier to the environment with every choice that we make,” she said.

They started Friendlier by collecting containers themselves. They would bike around carrying bags of containers and take them to the University of ���߲ݴ�ýto wash them. Soon they were able to buy their own containers and rent a room to use for washing. They also entered a partnership with , a project of ���߲ݴ�ýCommunity Health Centre.

Now, they have their own facility, and more than 200 locations use their containers and services. They also have 55 people on their team across Canada, and Hutchings said they were recognized as a top employer in ���߲ݴ�ýand Wellington County.

Dale said partners like helped them to work across different sectors and they have seen immense growth in the past year.

“We basically doubled our revenue and sales,” she said. “We hit the big milestone of one million containers reused, which was huge, and we’re almost at two already, a couple of months later.”

She said they have raised $7.9 million in investor funding.

“It’s so exciting to see that cascade into the impact we’re creating,” Dale said.

So far, Friendlier has prevented 312,433 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions, 107,864 kg of plastic waste and saved 14,877,784 litres of water and counting.

They have facilities in ���߲ݴ�ýand Ottawa and are launching in Vancouver.

“Our goal is to create North America’s leading reuse solution, by closing the loop between make and dispose and really becoming the household name for reuse,” Dale said.

For more about Friendlier, including how and where to get and return their packaging, visit .