By Jim Johnson
SENIOR STAFF REPORTER
Published: July 15, 2014 4:31 pm ET
Updated: July 15, 2014 4:36 pm ET
Image By: Reusable Packaging Association
A pair of companies are being recognized for their “measurable and significant cost and environmental savings” by the Reusable Packaging Association.
Full Belly Farm of Guinda, Calif., is a certified organic farm in California that won the Excellence in Reusable Packaging Award for businesses with less than $25 million in annual sales.
The farm replaced 8,330 waxed cardboard boxes with 2,000 reusable plastic totes with attached lids last summer.
The totes are used for weekly delivery of produce to families and returned for reuse the following week, RPA said.
Svenska Retursystem of Stockholm, Sweden, earned the award for business with sales of more than $25 million.
“The company led a program to establish a common pooling system for more than 200 food producers in Sweden and food manufacturers throughout Europe that export their goods to the Swedish trade,” the RPA said.
Products for grocery stores are delivered in standardized plastic crates and pallets. Reusable crates have been used nearly 1 billion times since the program started in 2001, RPA reported. | 
