GU Energy Labs Trash Brigade Makes a Difference

  GU Energy Labs takes trash, and protecting the places we play, seriously.  In recognition that its products create a fair amount of trash, the athletic nutrition company partners with TerraCycle, an upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products.   GU’s Senior Brand Experience Manager Celia Santi says, “There is nothing more deflating than seeing spent gel packets on the road or trail during a run or ride. We encourage all athletes to stash their trash, and we are excited and proud to offer our community a way to reduce all of our impacts on the beautiful places we play.”   GU’s Community Development Manager — and pro rider — Yuri Hauswald does his part to clean up, too. He, along with a dedicated crew of volunteers, has picked up litter after the Death Ride course for the past five years. And it’s not just GU packaging they find. Hauswald says, “The crews on Monitor and Carson encountered more outdoor user litter than sports nutrition and came away with piles of trash that had been left/thrown intentionally.”   Learn more about GU’s partnership with TerraCycle and sign up for the GU Trash Brigade at guenergy.com/join-the-brigade.

GU Energy Labs has partnered with TerraCycle, a highly-awarded, international upcycling and recycling company that collects performance nutrition packaging and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products. Last year, over 90lbs of nutrition packaging was removed from the course and recycled. “We hate seeing our used packets on the road or trails, and that’s why we are thrilled to partner with TerraCycle to empower both individuals and events like The Biofreeze San Francisco Marathon to keep performance nutrition trash from all brands off the streets and out of the landfill.” said Celia Santi, Senior Brand Experience Manager. Learn more about how to upcycle nutrition from all brands at www.guenergy.com/terracycle

Sunday is Earth Day, yet we all should go easy on this beautiful, bountiful planet every day. Just like in training, the little choices you make on a daily basis add up to big changes very quickly. Maybe you aren’t ready to carry re-usable cutlery in your purse like Sarah does (for realz!), but here are eight ways to be an Earth-friendly runner. (Mother Earth; mother runner)

Many people, myself included love GU’s Energy Chews (formerly known as Chomps). What they didn’t love was the packaging. By placing a number of chews inside of a large plastic bag, they tended to stick together and could be a challenge to get out of the package while riding. Now, GU is offering similar packaging to other energy brands like the Clif Bloks with all of the Chews lined up in a row. However, GU is offering them either in single serving pouches with four Chews, or in the new double serving sleeves with eight chews so you can choose based on the duration of your ride. There are also some environmental benefits from the packaging now that they can be recycled through the TerraCycle program.

It can be difficult to find a place to recycle toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, dental floss boxes, beauty product containers, No. 6 plastic Solo cups, cereal bags and granola wrappers, Emily Hopta said. But Hopta, a parent volunteer at Charleston Montessori, started a program at the private school in May 2013 that seeks to keep such items out of landfills. By the end of last year, the 45-student school had recycled more than one ton of material. “We’re a small student body, but [are] making a pretty big impact,” Hopta said. She said the school kept a running total of the recycled amount as a motivator. “The children realized they recycled the weight of a polar bear,” she said. “It’s just a fun visual.” Hopta said most of the recycled items come from the students themselves, though Charleston Montessori has partnered with local businesses to recycle their stuff, too. She said the Charleston office of the Kay Casto & Chaney law firm deposits the Solo cups from its water cooler into a bin that a family from the school collects. The school, on Charleston’s West Side, also collects the No. 6 plastic cups from Taylor Books and Edgewood Country Club in Charleston and First Presbyterian Church in Dunbar. It also takes the plastic beauty product containers from local salons. Hopta said that, in November, a friend of the school collected 63 pounds of Gu Energy Labs gel packets at the Chicago Marathon. The school also collected gel packets discarded by Charleston runners. The school partners with Trenton, New Jersey-based TerraCycle, which itself partners with various companies to recycle their waste. TerraCycle says its collection programs operate in 20 countries. The school won $500 for the Gu gel packet recycling contest, bringing the total amount raised through the program to $1,800. Hopta said $400 will go toward classroom materials, and $1,400 toward the school’s scholarship program that helps kids pay the tuition. Hopta said other companies that have rewarded the school and local charities in recognition of the recycling program are Tom’s of Maine, a personal-care products company that donated $250 to the school and 250 toothpaste tubes to Covenant House of West Virginia, a Charleston-based nonprofit that aids the homeless and others in need; and Huggies, which donated diapers to the YWCA. Lauren Taylor, TerraCycle’s global director of communications, said some products it receives are reused, but generally the items are shredded and melted down into recycled plastic and turned into pellets. “It might go into a playground, a picnic table, a park bench, anything,” Taylor said. She provided what she said were third-party reports to the Gazette-Mail that indicate that recycling such materials — including shipping costs incurred related to the recycling — has less of an environmental impact than discarding the materials. But she said the reports weren’t for publication. Jennifer McGee, a co-director of school, said parent volunteers help store materials before they’re mailed, and children at the school, who span ages 3-12, sort materials. She said the school can ship boxes of materials using free shipping labels printed from TerraCycle’s website. McGee said businesses interested in providing materials to the school can call 304-340-9000 and can visit www.terracycle.com to see what items can be recycled. Individual donations currently aren’t being accepted. Like the Kanawha County Solid Waste Authority, the school doesn’t accept glass. McGee explained that, as children gets older, the school wants to expand their sense of community from just playing with friends to, eventually, thinking globally. “We really try to get them interacting with their school community and then, eventually, the local community and beyond,” she said.  

In a fast-paced world where convenience is currency, a continuing prominent trend in product packaging is the use of flexible plastic pouches. More consumers are choosing pouches over traditional glass, paper and metal packaging, and even rigid plastics, as global market demand is projected to rise 6.2% annually to $37.3 billion in 2018. Food is the largest and most developed market for pouch use due in great part to rising output and consumption rates worldwide. Pharma/medical and beverage are the second and third largest markets, respectively. Japan is a country that has long been ahead of the pouch packaging trend, as urbanization and a fast-paced lifestyle keep space and time at a premium in Japanese cities. The heat-resistant boil-in-a-bag (later microwavable) food delivery model addressed lifestyle needs of Japanese consumers as far back as in the 1970s, when more women were entering the workforce and convenience was compulsory. Today, Japanese pouch-meals and pre-cut single-serving vegetables and meats respond to Japan’s aging population of elders who live alone (27% are 65 or older), pioneering innovation in the consumer retail experience. Here in the U.S., consumer lifestyle trends demand increasingly convenience and portability of product, particularly in the food sector. Ease of use at home and on the go have become a requisite for driving the purchase of consumer foods. This is particularly true for Millennials, who represent about a fourth of the entire U.S. population with $200 billion in annual buying power; significantly, one in four Millennials are now parents, which not only compounds the demand for convenience, but their influence on future consumers (their children) and older generations (their parents). With less time to spare and more options than ever, consumers cite convenience as a consumer need that is increasingly addressed by the innovations offered by pouch packaging. Advancements in seal and barrier technologies for the pouches market are keeping food fresher longer at all stages of the supply chain, contributing to a longer shelf lifefor both retailers and end-users. As quality and healthfulness of convenience food products continue to increase in significance, pouch technologies allow a greater variety of these foods to be available to more consumers, geographically and economically speaking. For example, the dairy market segment, which includes yogurt (a product very much in demand), is expected to grow significantly through 2020 with the aid of these high-barrier pouches. The environmental implications of pouches in food packaging and other markets are significant. Pouches are smaller and thinner than glass, paper and metal packaging and will use 60% less plastic and be 23% lighter compared to traditional rigid packaging on average. Both the stand-up and flat variety of pouch generally have a higher product-to-package ratio than rigid packaging and require about half of the energy required to produce, cutting down on the CO2 emissions released during production and during transport; taking up less space means fewer trucks are needed, reducing fuel consumption and additional CO2 emissions. While flexible plastic pouches reduce landfill waste because they are lighter, less bulky and take up less volume than conventional packaging, it is important to note that they are not recyclable through the current waste management infrastructure. The multi-layer films from which most pouches are comprised are often made up of several different plastics, which are difficult to recycle because these components they require separating. Further, contact with food, beverage, medical and industrial substances requires additional processing so as to not contaminate recycled plastic batches. This is not to mention the numbers associated with the waste created by single-serving items.  Pouches now feature handles, zippers, easy-tear and resealable openings, spouts, straws, spoons and caps to name just a few types of the closures and fitments that make consumer food products easier to transport and use with high functionality, but make them that much more difficult to recycle due to their component parts. However, consumers do have free recycling options for their pouch waste. Companies solving for their pouch brand packaging through sponsored recycled programs with my company TerraCycle include GoGo squeeZ, GU Energy and Honest Kids, all of which make products with the on-the-go pouch configurations that are exemplars of the convenience and efficiency that pouches deliver. Innovative, sustainable solutions for packaging consumer products, from sambar to soap, lie in inventing the most efficient, environmentally sound ways to accommodate the world’s changing lifestyles. Convenient, efficient and comparatively smaller in carbon foot print than some rigid packaging, pouches of all material compositions and shapes address consumer trends while moving in a good direction for waste reduction. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and pouches continue to push enhanced functionality and convenience in excitingly fresh ways.

TerraCycle, Inc. started in 2001 when CEO and Founder Tom Szaky dropped out of Princeton University after his freshman year to sell liquefied worm poop in a reused soda bottle, for fertilizer purposes. Despite having little brand recognition and only rudimentary manufacturing operations, Szaky managed to get major big-box retailers like Walmart and The Home Depot to start testing the product in 2004. By 2006, TerraCycle's worm-poop-based plant foods were being sold nationally across the United States and Canada in Walmart, Target, The Home Depot and Whole Foods Market retail stores.

As with GU’s recent partnership with TerraCycle® to make 100% of their packaging recyclable, the new bulk packaging is designed to reduce litter: fewer packages mean less trash, less material used, and a cleaner environment. Titled GU Energy Gel 15-Serving Pouch and Roctane Energy Gel 15-Serving Pouch, the jumbo-scaled GU will debut in November 2015 in the following flavors at an MSRP of $30.00 for both Roctane and Energy Gel: • Salted Caramel Energy Gel • Strawberry Banana Energy Gel • Sea Salt Chocolate Roctane • Blueberry Pomegranate Roctane

If you’re stuck on the single serve packs but have a lingering guilty feeling about all that waste, rest easy knowing that GU will pay for Terracycle to recycle all that packaging for you. Just throw them in a box when you get home until there’s enough worth shipping, then head to their website to get a shipping label.

In a perfect world, all packages would be fully recyclable. In reality, it can be harder than expected to turn packaging into something valuable for reuse Send us your secrets, tales, tips and challenges related to making your workplace more sustainable