As 10-minute grocery delivery services like Swiggy Instamart have got popular, mountains of cloth delivery bags have accumulated in users’ homes. Many users have even taken to social media to ask companies for a way to return these bags. 

SoftBank-backed Swiggy seems to have paid heed to these customer demands and come up with a solution for its customers to return the extra Instamart bags to Swiggy delivery partners. This initiative is now live across 19 cities and will also result in extra earnings for delivery partners. 

The company has been running a pilot of this initiative for one month and noted that 3 lakh Instamart cloth bags have been reused in this period. Going forward, Swiggy is targeting 20 lakh reused bags per month by the end of the year

.The company is incentivising delivery partners who bring the bags, and has rewarded them with extra earnings. Once customers return the bag, the Swiggy delivery partner takes it to the Instamart store the next time they are there for an order. After a quality inspection, the bags are sanitised, refurbished and then actively used for future orders. 

Sharing insights from the one-month pilot run by Swiggy, the company noted that Vikram, a Swiggy Instamart customer from Gurugram, holds the record for returning the maximum bags (300). Further, Hanumanthappa T, a delivery executive from Bengaluru, has made an additional earning of Rs 1,250 in the last month by returning bags

.“You can make a difference by decluttering your house today -- get those Instamart bags out and ready to return. Help us reuse the bags, and reduce the use of more new bags. We only ask that the Instamart bags you return are clean and intact so that once sanitised, the next customer receives a bag that’s as good as new.  We are trying everyday to create awareness among our delivery executives as well,” the company said in a statement.

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