Go Box launches for the Portland food cart set

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Laura Weiss, founder of Go Box, offers cartivores a more sustainable take-out option.

After a year of work and a test run that presented a few kinks, a service that aims to cut down on waste from Portland's popular food carts launched this week.

Go Box offers reusable clamshell containers — similar to the disposable plastic ones used by many carts — for a one-time fee to the customer of $8.50.

Carts pay a monthly subscription fee to offer the service, which provides drop-off locations downtown for dirty boxes, which are then washed and returned to participating carts. Customers get a token when they drop off their dirty box, good for another reusable container at their next cart visit.

"It's a new system," said Laura Weiss, Go Box's founder. "It's something that nobody's ever done before so there are a lot of questions."

Weiss, who's been working on Go Box for a year, originally planned to have the drop sites be automatic vending machines, but she learned during a pilot launch last fall that it wasn't as easy as it seemed.

"I took away the machine for now," she said. "It's a lot more difficult to make it work properly than I'd expected."

The drop boxes are lidded bamboo containers with a nylon bag liner. Go Box retrieves the dirty boxes, gets them professionally washed and returns them to the carts. In an added Portland twist, pickup and delivery is all done by bike.

Weiss has invested $20,000 to get the business off the ground.

So far, the Go Box services is available at six participating carts and there are two downtown drop boxes.

Weiss is in the process of signing on corporate sponsors who want to offer in-office drop boxes for their cartivore employees.

Go Box will also be offering its service at Pickathon, a green indie music festival held in Happy Valley in August.

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