Circular economy startup Humble Sustainability has partnered with LOCAD, a cloud logistics platform that enables businesses to build, expand, and sustain their e-commerce operations.
Bringing back quality secondhand items into circularity lies at the core of Humble’s sustainable philosophy. Its values are founded on sustainability, carbon footprint reduction, and the art of restoring or recycling hand-me-down goods and similar items.
The nature of their business—a first in the country—made Humble co-founders Josef Werker and Niña Mirabueno Opida search for a reliable, innovative logistics partner that could keep up with their pace and be open to the novelty of the products to be delivered.
With the partnership, LOCAD will help with the warehousing, fulfillment, and shipping requirements of Thrift, Humble’s online shop.
“Aside from LOCAD’s efficiency, speed, and reliability, we are thankful that they are essentially bringing our items back into circularity. The items we collect from businesses, they help us collect things and bring them to end-users,” Werker said.
Humble’s social enterprise elevates the concept of giving something back to everyone they collect from — whether these are large-scale enterprises getting rid of their appliances or communities removing their old furniture.
“We could resell things, upscale them into something quirky and artistic, recycle them, or break them down into usable raw materials,” Werker said.
Humble’s mission also includes changing the prevailing material mindset of habitually buying new things and then just throwing them away. The co-founders underscore the value of simplifying the concepts of sustainability and decluttering to attract and include more people to live mindfully.
Because of their distinct market and the difficulty of managing and handling used items, the Humble co-founders brought LOCAD’s expertise into play by streamlining their operations and deliveries.
“Anything that we decide to sell on Thrift is sent to LOCAD. When someone orders, we do not have to worry about the product. It gets delivered and we see a real-time, updated report,” Werker said.
LOCAD’s localized fulfillment helps Humble champion sustainability by reducing the carbon footprint often associated with e-commerce shipping.
In the near future, the Humble co-founders plan to use tech to measure quantifiable impacts like carbon footprint reduction from recycling or upcycling secondhand items.
