Plastic Boxes Make for Greener Moving Days

Name: ZippGo

Quick Pitch: ZippGo rents and delivers moving boxes made from 100% recycled plastic.

Genius Idea: If you’ve ever had pangs of guilt over using cardboard boxes to move, ZippGo is an alternative for you to consider.

The company provides reusable plastic boxes for anyone to use during a move. The boxes are delivered to your door and can be picked up again by ZippGo at your convenience. ZippGo’s boxes are made from 100% recycled plastic. They’re study, almost infinitely reusable and don’t require packing tape.

A package of 25 boxes runs around $120 and is marketed towards one-bedroom residential movers. For those in larger homes, the company recommends a $249 package that includes 75 boxes. Users of the service are allowed to keep the boxes for two weeks, which includes packing time, moving and unpacking.

Currently, this service is only available in the San Francisco Bay area.

Although the startup claims the service it offers is less expensive than buying cardboard boxes from a conventional moving company, we didn’t exactly find this to be true. Boxes from ZippGo are roughly twice as expensive as boxes from U-Haul, for example; with U-Haul, you don’t have to give the boxes back after two weeks, which is especially convenient if some of those boxes end up storing seasonal items in your garage.

Moreover, ZippGo only provides boxes and other supplies for packing and moving — not trucks and not moving-day assistance.

While this San Francisco-based startup is definitely onto something, we don’t see the ZippGo solution as a practical one for time-pressed and money-tight movers. It adds yet another step to an already complicated process; it’s cost-prohibitive and it requires a quick turnaround time, adding more pressure to an already stressful process. On the other hand, it might be interesting to see full-service moving companies such as U-Haul integrate plastic boxes into their offerings, perhaps through a ZippGo partnership, in a way that preserves convenience and lowers ZippGo’s prices.

What do you think of this startup’s service? Would you pay more for a set of plastic box rentals? Let us know in the comments.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: bizspark, green, moving, spark-of-genius, uhaul, zippgo

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