All About Trash in Rhode Island

Tray Chic

A North Kingstown company offers a sustainable solution to single-serve dining waste across the globe. By Casey Nilsson

Courtesy of OZZI.

We know this to be true: Single-use products are a waste. Even the ones that feign sustainability — we see you, compostable containers spilling from the trash can — aren’t fooling anybody.

But the single-use industry has a dirty little secret, says Tom Wright of OZZI. “It’s very expensive. It’s unsustainable, financially.”

In 2013, Wright, a native Rhode Islander, left his post as dean and senior vice president of Johnson and Wales’ culinary school to launch a restaurant consulting business. There, he learned just how much single-use dining products were eating up his clients’ budgets. Along with a former partner, Bill Andreozzi, he wondered: Is there a better way, both for the bottom line and the planet? After gathering empirical data and partnering with manufacturers across the country, OZZI (pronounced oh-zee, after Andreozzi) was born.

The company is built around a line of O2Go reusable serveware — containers, plates, cups, utensils made in Oregon — and a built-in-Rhode Island, no-contact patented OZZI Machine that collects the used serveware and keeps track of it, too, via tokens or users’ digital identification numbers. Each piece of serveware can be washed by dining services up to 1,000 times. At the end of the products’ lifetime, they’re recycled back into more #5 plastic O2Go containers, which are NSF International-approved for food safety.

Wright recalls attending a conference where an Air Forcewoman stopped by his booth to learn more about the system, which costs around $22,000 for a 1,000-piece program and machine. The woman brought OZZI back to her base in Boise, Idaho, where it paid for itself in eight months.

“One container costs less than $5, and it never costs a customer a penny once they’ve made the initial investment,” says Wright. “It eliminates all of the purchasing.”

To date, the OZZI system is in forty-two states and seven countries, and clients include Disney, BP, Exxon and, here in Rhode Island, the Rhode Island School of Design, Moses Brown School and, in the fall, Providence College. In early 2020, Truckee, California, launched a town-wide OZZI program where diners could pick up takeout in an O2Go container from one restaurant and return it to another. Wright expects California’s single-use plastic ban, which goes into effect in 2024, could also drive interest to OZZI.

And in 2021 — amid a global pandemic with more to-go food service than ever, yet more consumer interest in sustainability — OZZI is positioned for additional growth.

“We were first. We were cool before it was in vogue to be sustainability-minded,” he says. “In the next twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six months, there will be a real desire of the restaurants for alternatives, for a few reasons: the food transports better, you can reheat them, it doesn’t absorb moisture.”

Wright speaks passionately about what comes next: new designs; new packaging that’s marine biodegradable; a line of washable, natural fiber bags to transport the containers. Other developments on the horizon — ware-washing partnerships involving artificial intelligence; big corporate contracts with nondisclosure agreements — only reaffirm his commitment to changing how we eat. ”

“It’s coming. It’s undeniable,” he says. “It has to, if we’re going to save this planet.” planetozzi.com