Alner
The reusable alternative to single-use plastic sachets and pouches in Indonesia’s warungs and waste banks
Why Reusable Packaging?
Indonesia produces 6.8m tons of plastic waste per year, with only about 10% of it being recycled. Around 4.8m tonnes are mismanaged and single use flexibles such as sachets and pouches represent ~76% of the mismanaged waste. Single-use flexibles are hard to recycle because they are small, hard to collect, and they contain many layers of materials that are difficult to separate. Consequently, these materials are leaking into and polluting our environment.
We build Alner (formerly Koinpack), Indonesia’s first returnable and reusable packaging system provider for consumer goods such as detergent, shampoo, and food products based on a reward model to replace single use flexibles.
How Alner solves the single-use sachet crisis
The reuse system will be fully integrated with existing brands selling fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs), as follows:
- Alner supplies reusable packaging to FMCGs.
- FMCGs fills their products in Alner packaging.
- Customers buy the finished goods from our community-based points of sale (PoS) such as waste banks, warung stores, and peer-to-peer sellers or directly from Alner via online platforms. If they buy through a PoS, the packaging will be scanned by the PoS using the Alner app to keep it tracked digitally.
- Customers use their products and return the empty packaging to the same PoS they bought from or be swapped during the next purchase if they buy directly from Alner.
- Customers receive a cashback on the next purchase for their returning habit. The cashback ranges from $0.08-0.65/packaging returned, depending on its size (100 ml to 5 litres).
- Alner collects the empty packaging at the PoS as well as restocking, clean, and provide them again to the FMCGs.
As a result, the system is completely closed, there is no plastic waste/leakage, while the consumer’s experience has become better and the brand can maintain their current business model and operations.
Venture builder:
Bintang Ekananda
Website:
Location
Jakarta
Status
Active, Scale-Up
Impact
Scaling Reuse for Impact Investment Alner’s success has demonstrated its great scaling potential. Since 2020, Alner has expanded to 60+ PoS in Greater Jakarta and to online channels. Alner has sold 40,000+ products to 2,500+ customers and avoided 400,000+ flexibles. Our potential has already caught the eye of FMCGs that see the opportunity in this model. Collaboration is now ongoing with 3 FMCGs. More partnerships are coming – and working with FMCGs serves to prove that our model is viable and scalable. By 2024, Alner aims to work with >1,500 PoS, sell 2m products, and avoid 200m single use flexibles. On top of that, recently Alner won the first ADB Innovation Hub’s Healthy Oceans Technology Innovation Challenge (TIC).
Awards and Partners
- Winner of AIS Innovation Challenge 2020
- Winner of iF Social Impact Prize 2021
- Country Star of The Alibaba Cloud x at KrAsia Global Startup Accelerator Indonesia Demo Day 2021
- Winner ADB Innovation Hub’s Healthy Oceans Technology Innovation Challenge (TIC)
- Selected Venture for IKEA Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program 2021
- Winner P&G Startup Innovation Challenge 2020
- Brand partner with Pureco, Wipro, Barco.
- NGO Partner with Yayasan Rumah Pelangi and Gerakan Diet Kantong Plastik (GIDKP)
Learnings from our partners
A research paper using Alner as a case study in learning and understanding more about the benefits and impacts of Reuse: