Charity fundraisers around the world use plastic boxes to collect donations at events or when going door to door in a community.

These plastic boxes are regularly stored, distributed and collected from a network of donation collectors, costing the charity money that really can’t be wasted.  However, this is about to change. In the Netherlands an ingenious alternative is being tested to replace these plastic boxes with a hybrid of solid and corrugated board. 

This new donation box will enable charities simply to store a stack of pre-cut corrugated sheets with folding instructions to be assembled only when needed.  They will be distributed to collectors via post along with a sticker specifying the charity the collection is for. The logic behind the sticker stems from the fact that the 26 Dutch funds work together and pool resources to save costs.  Therefore the box needs to branded as late as possible in the chain.  The collection box is cleverly designed to be easy to construct, ergonomic, water-resistant and, most important of all, not lose any donations during transport.

The boxes have also been created to be “tamper proof”. Once used and emptied of donations, the boxes can be recycled rather than sent back to the charity for storage at the end of the campaign.  It is estimated that the 26 Dutch funds, sending a variety of plastic boxes to their 35,000 collectors over a 5-year lifetime creates 450 tons of CO2 every year.  The new corrugated box will instead release only 140 tons of CO2 and is entirely sustainable!