Thanks for the question.
This is a program we've been working on as an organization in partnership with some leading grocery retailers for the better part of about two years now. I'm pleased to say that we are anticipating a launch in Ottawa. The pilot project will be focused in the city of Ottawa initially, tested and perfected, and then expanded across the country.
What makes this reuse experiment or pilot unique is that it has a collaborative approach. I spoke in my comments about our role as an organization in bringing otherwise competing entities together around a common good and a common interest, and this is exactly what we've done with the reuse project.
We worked with three grocers—Walmart Canada, Metro, and Sobeys and Farm Boy together under the Empire group—to identify a common set of reuse containers they can utilize in-store. They have autonomy in terms of decisions about where in-store they want to use those. In a place-based way, working with the City of Ottawa.... I might say that we were also funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada to run this pilot. With the support of all of these entities, we've worked and identified a catchment area in Ottawa where we'll be deploying these containers at six grocery locations. In fact, we have gone door to door at neighbouring restaurants to see if they want to share in the pilot. At this date, as of today, 11 of them have confirmed.
What we're trying to do is build a critical mass and provide containers as a service as opposed to containers as an asset. Each of the participating entities, be they grocers or restaurants, will share in the container use, the washing and sanitization services, the deployment of the containers and the logistics of moving them about in the system. As I mentioned, the launch date is October 17. I'm very much looking forward to seeing all of you with one of our reuse containers in your hands for lunch.
We'll be running the pilot for 12 months, collecting all of the data—both in terms of costs and environmental and social benefits as well as job creation—testing the existing ecosystem of service providers, and then growing the businesses in Ottawa and diversifying their services by onboarding them into this pilot.