Greening Your Food Truck Experience

It’s a typical scenario: you head to your favorite food truck for lunch, place your order, and receive an extra guac taco in a foam, paper, or plastic container. You eat your taco and throw away your garbage, feeling good that the box is 100% recyclable. But that’s a lot of waste — a city like Portland, for example, tosses about 60,000 to-go containers into the trash every month.

That’s why Portland start-up GO Box is changing lunchtime experiences to look more like this: you give the food truck a token, and receive your taco in a reusable container. You eat your taco, drop the box off at a designated spot, and receive a token back for your next visit. GO Box has done so well at making this scenario typical in Portland, in fact, that they’re ready to expand the mission.

But they need your help in the search for new strategies to introduce reusable containers to other cities. GO Box — along with four other Portland organizations — will explain their business challenges during the Portland Impact panel at this year’s Net Impact Conference. And in an entirely new format for the conference, this local start-up will tap into the experience and creativity of conference attendees in their search for a sustainable lunch.

So get ready to become consultants for five great organizations — and help GO Box spread Portland’s food truck experience to other U.S. cities in the process.

The Net Impact Conference will be held October 27 - 29 in Portland, OR. For more information, visit the Net Impact Conference website.