Cerca de 40% de todo o resíduo sólido urbano é despejado em locais inadequados no Brasil. Isso representa mais de 80 mil toneladas de material em locais com potencial de poluição ambiental (Abrelpe). A preocupação com os resíduos apareceu de maneira clara nos projetos inscritos na 37ª edição do Prêmio ECO. Para além daqueles que estão transformando lixo em matéria-prima, encontramos também a responsabilidade daqueles com os recursos naturais, como uso responsável de água e proteção do solo.

How one company is working to eliminate the very idea of waste   Since 2001, where most of us have seen trash, Tom Szaky has seen potential. From cigarette butts to coffee capsules, Tom set out to recycle the hard-to-recycle products we use. His company, TerraCycle, offers everything from free recycling programs to industrial waste solutions. “But we can’t recycle our way out of the waste crisis,” Eric Rosen, publicist for TerraCycle said. “And [Tom] is the first to say if TerraCycle didn’t exist — or couldn’t exist — he’d be thrilled.” In other words, he would love to see a world where we produced zero waste to begin with. That’s where TerraCycle’s latest venture, Loop, comes in. “The next thing to do was to attack waste at the root cause,” Eric said. “If the economics are good, we can recycle virtually anything. But that’s not going to solve the problem.”   “The next step was to create a circular economy where there’s virtually no waste.” Loop was announced at the World Economic Forum in January 2019, proposing a new model of consumption whereby people can get their favorite home goods, cosmetics, and food products through a sustainable, circular system of pick-up and drop-off using reusable containers. It took off from there. “We immediately had thousands upon thousands of people who went to the website and were waitlisted,” Eric said. “So we knew right away that there was a clamoring for this. And we’ve continued to see that as we grow.” The company launched its pilot program that summer, beginning in Paris on May 14 and New York the following week. “We launched in a handful of states as a pilot,” Eric said. “We could not keep up with the number of requests coming in, like ‘When are you coming to our state?’ Certainly, the waste crisis, sustainability, and climate change are in the news, so people are well aware. There’s a sense now that they want to do something about it.” Loop already has a cleaning facility in Pennsylvania and a warehouse in New Jersey, which made New York a logical place to start. As the company scales, it selects cities within a 24-hour delivery range of both a cleaning facility and a warehouse, particularly for the frozen goods it provides. “We’ll add warehouses and cleaning facilities as we go, but that’s how the places were chosen,” Eric added. Loop will launch in the UK at the end of March, Toronto in June, and Japan towards the end of the year. Next will be Australia in 2021.       Customers receive their orders in a reusable tote and request a pick-up once items are empty. They’re then cleaned and refilled. Photos: Loop   The price of a Loop good is comparable to a regular one, plus a deposit for the packaging. Since it’s reusable, it becomes valuable. Take shampoo, for example. Before, you bought shampoo for its contents; once the bottle was empty, you would toss it. “In this instance, now the company owns the package and the package is an asset,” Eric said. “Customers put a deposit down on each pack. When that pack comes back, the deposit is returned to the consumer.” This deposit essentially sits in an account. You can opt to let it remain there as you continue to buy products through Loop; or, once you’re done, you can request the deposit back.   The brand owns the package, so they want that package back. This inherently makes the process a circular one, removing waste from the equation. While Loop is currently e-commerce only, “we will be in-store at some point in 2020 in the United States,” Eric explained. With retail partners like Kroger and Walgreens stateside, Carrefour in Paris and Loblaws in Canada, you might find a Loop aisle at a grocer near you. “The process will work virtually the same,” Eric said. “You’ll be able to bring your shipping tote into the store, where there will be an aisle with all the Loop products and packaging.” You shop, pay for the product, and bring it home, as you would any other pet food or ice cream pint. Then, as soon as you finish the pack, you bring it back. That store would then send it back to Loop to be cleaned, sanitized, refilled, and shipped back out to another consumer. In many ways, Loop seems like the future. But it draws on our current thinking and behavior — and a model that dates back to the 1950s. “When you finish your normal plastic shampoo, consumers are pretty accustomed at this point to dropping it in the blue bin. Now, as opposed to dropping that in that bin, you just drop it back into shipping tote.”   “We don’t want to change behavior. That becomes a much harder proposition.” Loop isn’t the first to discover the effectiveness of the pick-up/drop-off model. Remember the milkman? “We were seeing that model up until the 1950s when all of a sudden we turned to all of this disposable packaging for convenience. Obviously we’ve created so much waste that it’s no longer effective.   “The idea behind Loop is exactly that: it’s the milkman model where the brand owns the pack and we come collect it, sanitize it, and fill it again.” But instead of homogenous glass bottles, companies are investing in containers you want to show off. “One of the things we’re finding is that people appreciate and want these packs because they’re so pretty. Like the Pantene bottles: people want to leave them on a counter.” Loop has very specific specs companies need to adhere to when creating packaging. Aesthetics is “not a requirement, but it certainly is playing a role in how these are being designed.” Most importantly, they need to be durable, cleanable, and circular (by having an end-of-life solution). “It’s not necessarily material,” Eric said. “Plastic is not necessarily the demon, it’s the single-use that’s the problem. So these packs have to be durable.” “Häagen-Dazs, which has made an absolutely beautiful pack, had a whole R&D team develop it. We have designers at Loop who can help develop the packaging, but, depending on the size of the company, some are big enough to do it on their own.” Just how durable these containers are varies from company to company. “Obviously these containers are going to get banged up,” Eric said. “And it’s up to the company to determine when they want to take them out of circulation. When that time comes, the containers themselves are recyclable. They’ll be turned back into themselves by TerraCycle.” Eric said the company is working on a public-facing Life-Cycle Assessment, which will highlight the environmental benefits of these containers—transportation costs included—as opposed to single-use packaging that most often ends up in landfills. Ultimately, the dream would be to have a whole store filled with reusable product containers. “We would create an entirely circular economy,” he said. “There would be absolutely no waste. That is the ultimate goal.” TerraCycle’s next project with this goal in mind? ReDyper, a partnership in which parents send in soiled Dyper diapers to TerraCycle’s facility for composting. It was announced this week.  

Did you know the fashion and textile industry is the second largest polluter in the world, comparable with oil and coal? Climate change and fast fashion are not a good look, and we can’t afford to continue adding garments to the heavily increasing amount of fashion waste.   There’s no need to throw your old clothes in the garbage. Try one of these eco-friendly alternatives instead.   Donate   Many places in the city will take gently worn clothing off your hands, and they make it easy to do. You can drop clothes off directly at thrift stores or, if you happen to be near one, place bags inside specially marked clothing donation bins. If you’re bringing items in person, keep in mind that thrift stores have their own policies in place regarding acceptable articles of clothing.   In addition to traditional outlets, such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army, various for-profit organizations, like Levi’s and H&M, encourage customers to bring back their old clothes—from any brand—to be reused or recycled.     The city and the GTA are home to local consignment shops interested in reselling your garments. Alongside brick and mortar shops are designer resale websites, like Poshmark and The Real Real, who make it easy to sell your previously loved clothes while giving you the chance to cash in on the side.   Similar to thrift store policies, consignment shops have their list of clothes, shoes, and accessories for resale. Not every consignment shop is a “general” one accepting any and all types of clothing. The store may cater to a niche market, such as menswear, luxury goods, or kids’ items. Designer Swap, a high end consignment shop, is one example of this kind of shop. We specialize in reselling discount designer clothing!  

 

Repurpose

  Those jeans you’ve worn through can be cropped into a cute pair of jean shorts. Your old t-shirts make for great workout tops. Cleaning rags are former shirts cut up and set them aside for this purpose.   You can even get really crafty, repurposing sweaters into coffee cozies and flannel shirts into scarves. From button-up pillowcases to sweater hats, there’s no shortage of ideas for turning old clothes into something new. All you need to do is channel your inner seamstress.     One gal’s old dress is another gal’s new dress, or so the saying goes. Host a clothing swap with your girlfriends, asking everyone to bring preloved garments they no longer wear.   This girls’ night in can be as casual or formal as you like, depending on the number of invitees and location of the swap. All you really need is your clothes, your friends, and yourself. Communicate with guests ahead of time so they know what to bring, providing a “guideline” of acceptable items if necessary and, if a lot of friends are invited, a limit as to how many items each person can take.   Set up shop with clothing racks and hangers, and if you have the space, a table for everyone to peruse the items. You never know what you’ll find, and anything left over can be recycled or donated.     We’ve mentioned you can recycle old clothes—a seemingly impossible thought—for those truly ratty items that can’t be given new life. Holey socks and stained shirts with nowhere else to go can be recycled! Places like Bra Recycling, Canadian Textile Recycling, TerraCycle, and Soles 4 Souls are just a few examples of stores who accept items that have nowhere else to go.   Be sure to review recycling clothing companies ahead of time to confirm your old clothes are going where the company says they do, and that the items you’re dropping off will be accepted.  

Parents are putting their babies’ dirty diapers in the mailbox … for the sake of the environment.  Subscription-based baby-care company Dyper, which introduced their biodegrade bamboo diaper in 2018, has partnered with waste-management company TerraCycle to launch ReDyper, a mail-in diaper-composting service for all Dyper customers.  Just store your baby’s soiled Dyper diapers until there’s enough to fill up the provided box — specially designed per the United Nations’ hazmat standards — then download and print a mailing label from their website and ship your crap, so to speak, to TerraCycle. Then, it’s off to various centralized composting facilities across the country.   It may sound like nasty business, but the alternative is much worse, says Dyper president Bruce Miller, who called diaper waste statistics “staggering,” as more than 20 billion diapers fill landfills in the U.S. alone, each year.  “I think this has been the Holy Grail for a lot of disposable diaper companies,” Miller said.  “But no one at this point really has closed the loop” by commercializing the diaper-composting process.   Made primarily from bamboo and free of chlorine, perfumes, phthalates, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and other unsustainable or potentially harmful materials, Dyper’s content manager Taylor Shearer said their diapers are “already technically compostable” — at least, for the customers who can manage the time- and space-consuming chore, or have access to  a local composting facility. Their website also advises homesteaders to avoid composting diapers filled with fecal matter, to prevent the spread of bacteria and other pathogens.  Shearer explains that the new service is aimed at “customers that live in the cities [and] large apartment buildings that don’t have that access,” as well as those who hope to process baby’s poo, too.

If you’ve ever spent much time around a baby, you know they go through a ton of diapers. And all those disposable diapers end up getting thrown away and take up a lot of space in landfills across the country. But now some parents are mailing their babies’ diapers off to be composted and it’s all to help save the planet.   Subscription-based baby care company Dyper makes a biodegradable bamboo diaper and teamed up with waste-management company TerraCycle to come up with a more eco-friendly solution than trashing used diapers. They launched ReDyper, a mail-in diaper composting service for Dyper customers. Once parents have enough soiled Dyper diapers to fill the provided box - which is specially designed per the United Nations’ hazmat standards - they print a mailing label and send them off to centralized composting facilities around the U.S. Now these Dyper diapers are “already technically compostable,” since they’re made from bamboo and don’t contain unsustainable and potentially harmful materials found in some other diapers, including chlorine, perfumes, and PVC. But since most moms and dads don’t have time, space, or access to a composting facility to handle this kind of messy stuff, the service makes it easy to be eco-friendly. These composted diapers will never be used to fertilize the food we eat, ReDyper’s compost is used for the wildflowers growing on highway medians. And if this help keep more diapers from adding to the 20-billion that end up in U.S. landfills each year, we’re all better off.

Disposable diapers, though a blessing for convenience, have been a blight on the environment; in the United States alone, an average of 20 billion disposable diapers are tossed into the trash annually, and they take about 500 years to decompose. Now parents have another option: shipping their baby’s dirty diapers off to be composted—as long as they get them from diaper subscription company Dyper.   Dyper has teamed up with TerraCycle to launch its ReDyper program, through which subscribers can send back their soiled Dyper diapers in provided bags and specially designed boxes that meet United Nations HazMat shipping standards. When the box is full, parents can download a prepaid shipping label from the TerraCycle website, ship it away, and the diapers will end up at TerraCycle distribution centers, then industrial composting facilities that TerraCycle partners with, and ultimately, be turned into compost used for things like vegetation on highway medians.   The ReDyper program is a new addition to Dyper’s subscription model, which first launched in 2018 and offers at-home delivery of bamboo diapers without chlorine, latex, alcohol, perfumes, PVC, lotions, and the chemicals tributyltin, or phthalates. They’re also free of ink, as they don’t have any patterns printed on them.   Since its start, Dyper has said its bamboo diapers can be composted at home—as long as they don’t contain any fecal matter, and you don’t use that compost for food gardens. After speaking with parents, however, Dyper realized this isn’t really feasible for all parents, especially those living in apartments with no access to compost.   With the new ReDyper program, the brand hopes to have found an easy way for people to start composting dirty diapers.  

10. CAR SEATS

This one may seem strange, but considering the heavy plastic, textiles, and metal that go into car seats, it only makes sense that (at least some parts) can and should be recycled.   How to recycle car seats:   Various states have recycling programs where you can drop off car seats to be recycled.   Walmart has also partnered with the company TerraCycle to hold car seat recycling events; Target has also hosted its own events. Both companies say they plan to continue.   The carseat manufacturer Clek has its own recycling program.   Where to recycle car seats:   You can drop off your car seat at a local donation point, but the website Recycle Your Car Seat reports that there are still very few of these in the US and Canada.   Is there a cost to recycle car seats?   May vary by location.  

9. TOOTHBRUSHES

  Before it becomes trash, consider which toothbrush you purchase. You can look for one made with materials that are recycled, or renewable (like bamboo). But even if you get a standard plastic toothbrush, these can be recycled, too.   How to recycle toothbrushes:   You can mail toothbrushes to TerraCycle, thanks to a partnership with Colgate. But the company asks for at least 5 pounds' worth (that's about 100 toothbrushes, reports Recycle Nation) per shipment, so you will need to save up your old brushes first.   Your dentist may also have their own toothbrush collection program, so it's worth asking next time you are in.   Where to recycle toothbrushes:   Your dentist's office or a local drop-off point are your best bets — or mail them in to TerraCycle with free shipping.   Is there a cost to recycle toothbrushes?   No.  

8. POTS AND PANS

 

If it is made of metal, then most cookware can be recycled. But your regular curbside pickup may not take these items.         How to recycle pots and pans:   Recycle these along with other scrap metal, which is collected locally. Importantly, you need to first remove nonstick coating, reports the website Pots and Pans.   So you might need to dig around and find a recycler that can do that for you.   Where to recycle pots and pans:   The website Earth911 has a search function for all sorts of different materials. Look up scrap metal to see where you can bring pots and pans locally, or whether your local garbage pickup will take these items. (Mine does, it turns out.)   Is there a cost to recycle pots and pans?   Some drop-off and pickup programs are free, but depending on where you live, there may be charges (or taxes).  

7. SNEAKERS

When your running shoes have completed their last mile, they can find another life as rubber track, turf fields, playground materials, and other athletic equipment.   How to recycle sneakers:   Drop them off at a location run by Soles 4 Souls, or a participating Nike store.   Where to recycle sneakers:   Both organization websites (linked above) have a tool to help you locate the closest drop-off point to you. You can also mail your shoes to Soles 4 Souls with free shipping.   Is there a cost to recycle sneakers?   No.  

6. CLOTHING (AND OTHER TEXTILES)

Donating or selling clothes are great ways to get rid of stuff you no longer wear. But items too well-loved to be worn still have use, too.   How to recycle clothing:   You can deposit old clothes and fabrics at a drop-off box or center near you.   Where to recycle clothing:   The American Textile Recycling Service has drop-off bins nationwide. You can contact them to find the one closest to your home.   Check local recycling programs and farmers' markets, too. Some of them have a regular drop-off station.   You can also mail clothes and fabrics to TerraCycle, for a price.   Is there a cost to recycle clothing?   Drop-off is free, but TerraCycle has a fee based on the size of the box of clothes you send in.  

5. EYEGLASSES

After they go out of style, or your prescription changes, bring your glasses to be recycled.   How to recycle glasses:   Bring used glasses to eyeglass stores or charities that accept them.   Where to recycle glasses:   You can bring old glasses to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, as well as glasses stores, like Lenscrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears, and BJ's, reports Pocket Sense.   Is there a cost to recycle glasses?   No.  

4. SHAVING RAZORS

You cannot put your old razors in the recycling bin, but these disposable items are made with dense materials that can be broken down and reused.   How to recycle razors:   The company TerraCycle partnered with Gillette to start a recycling program.   Where to recycle razors:   You can drop used razors at a point near you (TerraCycle has a map of locations), or ship them to TerraCycle.   Is there a cost to recycle razors?   Yes, you have to pay for shipping if you mail in the razors to TerraCycle.  

3. CDS AND DVDS

In the age of music and movie streaming, your aging CD and DVD collection is doing little more than sitting there, gathering dust and nostalgia.   When you are ready to clear them out, you can recycle them.   How to recycle CDs:   The CD Recycling Center of America takes your old CDs and DVDs, shreds them, and turns them into polycarbonate resin to make new stuff.   Where to recycle CDs:   You can mail old discs to the CD Recycling Center with free shipping (their website has a label you can print).   Is there a cost to recycle CDs?   No cost, but the CD Recycling Center asks people to make a small donation  

2. WINE CORKS

After you pop (and drain) that bottle, you can recycle the glass easily enough. But the cork can go somewhere other than the trash can, too.   First, a suggestion: There are tons of ways to upcycle corks around your home (Last Bottle has some sweet ideas). Of course, the wine will likely keep flowing after you have made all the cheese-knife handles and tiny planters you need.     Here's how to recycle the rest:   How to recycle wine corks:   Synthetic wine corks — and screw caps, if you are classy — can be recycled along with your usual household pickup, according to the website Wine Spectator.   For natural, old-school cork, however, you need to find a drop-off point, or mail them in.   Where to recycle wine corks:   The website ReCork has a tool that lets you search by zip code for a drop-off location near you.   If you prefer not to make the trek, you can also mail corks to Cork Club   Is there a cost to recycle wine corks?   No.

BICYCLES

  If you're getting a new set of wheels, don't let the old one go to waste — or worse, rust.   How to recycle bicycles:   Bike shops often have recycling programs that either use your old parts, or refurbish your bike.   If your bike is still rideable, you can bring it to a local charity and give it a second life with someone who needs it.   Where to recycle bicycles:   You may need to look at the local level here, searching your own area for drop-off points. There aren't a ton of national options.   If you live in the Washington, DC area, New York, and Illinois, the organization Bikes for the World has drop-off points.   Is there a cost to recycle bicycles?   The price of being green may vary based on where you live.

Que tal fazer uma faxina nos armários e ainda concorrer a um ano de material escolar? Colete instrumentos de escrita usados e deposite-os nos pontos de entrega localizados nas entradas do Edifício Sede, Fórum Criminal e Cível da Capital. Se preferir, destine ao Núcleo Socioambiental, sala A308, no Prédio Sede.

Take, make, use, dispose. For decades, this has been the standard approach to production and consumption. Companies take raw materials and transform them into products, which are purchased by consumers, who ultimately toss them out, creating waste. But as warnings about climate change and environmental degradation grow ever louder, people are starting to challenge the sustainability of this model. Many business leaders and governments — including China, Japan, and the U.K.—argue that we should ditch this linear system in favor of a so-called circular economy of take, make, use, reuse, and reuse again and again.

What’s wrong with the linear economy?

It often leads to a system that is inefficient, costly, and depletes natural resources. The mining of commodities from gold to coal can spoil ecosystems and disrupt nearby communities. Making steel from ore requires a large amount of energy, which produces Earth-warming carbon dioxide. A byproduct of the linear model is material waste, which takes up space and may include contaminants. Trash ends up in undesirable places. The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch is only the most well-known example of global-scale plastic pollution. Yet products like steel and plastic can be reused, refurbished and recycled to capture untapped value. A totally circular economy—with no waste and no new materials at all—is likely impossible to achieve, but squeezing the maximum waste out of the system could curtail use of new resources.

Sounds like recycling. How’s it different?

The two ideas are connected, but they’re not the same. The phrase “circular economy” pops up in the work of a few resource economists dating back at least to the 1980s. Its use in recent years has come to connote an approach that’s more systemic and ambitious than recycling. For example, to maintain quality, plastic bottle makers need to blend recycled plastic with virgin material. Instead, a truly circular economy would involve no new material inputs at all, reducing emissions, waste, and eventually costs. Some industries are already coming close to this—almost all of a car can be reclaimed, for example. But some have far to go—97% of the materials used to make clothing are brand new, and 73% of these products are incinerated or put into a landfill. This isn’t a totally new idea—the slogan “make do and mend” was popularized during World War II to encourage as little waste as possible.

Is anyone skeptical?

Yes. Making a production cycle fully self-sufficient is virtually impossible. Some new input will always be necessary, and some waste will always be created. Recycling paper over and over, for example, produces paper of increasingly low quality. Also, building a circular economy can entail high upfront costs, requiring investment to redesign products and switch to recycled materials. The U.K. estimates the cost of shifting to a circular economy to be about 3% of gross domestic product. The expense can feed concerns that companies will go for quick fixes rather longer-term sustainable practices.

What is feasible?

A more circular supply chain. This can mean changing to recycled materials, extending the life-cycle of a product and improving recovery at the end of its life. New Jersey-based TerraCycle has launched the “Loop” initiative, a collaboration with household names such as Nestle to provide common products—ice-cream for example—in packaging that can be returned and refilled. There is a multinational push by General Motors, BMW, and Toyota to create an aftermarket for used electric car batteries, which can be used for chilling beer at 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan or banking solar energy in Cameroon. And New York startup Rent the Runway offers designer dress hire for events like weddings and galas, allowing clients to dodge one-wear purchases, while earning the company a $1 billion valuation.

What are governments doing?

They’re trying to push consumers and producers toward a more circular economy. The German government offers grants to design products that have a lower environmental impact or are cheap to repair. In Chile, the government said it will aim to make all plastic reusable. The Netherlands is investing $40 million in a special fund that will start financing deforestation-free agriculture, to be matched by a donation from Rabobank Group. The European Commission has a circular economy action plan, which includes transforming the way plastic products are produced and recycled. It’s also part of China’s five-year plan.

A significant number of consumers are influenced by sustainability concerns when deciding what to buy. And they’re embracing the concept of a circular economy—as long as it’s convenient. Those are some of the findings of a recent report called Learning from Consumers: How shifting demands are shaping companies’ circular economy transition from the financial services firm ING. The research, conducted by Longitude, a division of the Financial Times Group, surveyed 15,000 consumers in 11 countries across Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America during the second half of 2019. The focus was on fashion, food and electronics sectors. “A lot more people feel empowered to stop buying something because of its environmental impact,” says Anne van Riel, ING’s head of sustainable finance Americas. At the same time, however, “Many consumers might not know what a circular economy is and the broader relevance in their lives,” she says. The research defined circular economy practices as encompassing reducing the amount of resources used, recycling and reusing them in different ways. The research was done in two steps. One was determining whether sustainability questions are changing consumers’ buying habits. The next was an assessment of whether consumers are taking real circular economy-related actions, like recycling or renting clothing. For the first part, the research found that 83% of consumers believe their behaviors and purchasing choice can have a positive impact on addressing global environmental challenges. Some 59% are influenced by a product’s environmental impact when they decide what to buy. Also more consumers say environmental impact is a highly important factor in their purchasing behavior than is the brand name. And 38% have boycotted food brands because of perceived bad environmental practices. Among 18-24 year olds, it’s 47%.   Barriers But that doesn’t mean consumers are all in on circular models. In fact, the research shows that most of them are perfectly willing to take the necessary steps, as long as they’re convenient. For example, 41% think renting clothes would require a lot more effort and 36% say time is a barrier to repairing devices. Those aren’t the only barriers. There’s the problem of a lack of awareness about how to participate in circular behaviors. For example, only 21% think companies provide detailed information on the overall environmental impact of products. And, of course, also important is the matter of cost. About 54% of consumers choose low-cost fast-fashion clothing over pricier, more durable apparel. As you might expect, decision-making pertaining to environmental and circular economy concerns come up more often for consumers buying apparel and food vs. electronics. But, in any case, the bottom line, according to van Riel, is convenience and cost. “If you make it easy for people, they’ll do it,” she says. “The bigger the inconvenience, the harder it will become to act on it.” Thus, if consumers have to walk 20 blocks to return clothes, they’ll be less likely to repeat that behavior than if the apparel is picked up from their home. She points to recycling pioneer TerraCycle’s Loop initiative as a good example. Its circular shopping system packages products in refillable containers; customers put the empty receptacles in a Loop tote on their doorstep that is picked up by a delivery service, cleaned and returned. Three Types of Consumers The research also grouped consumers into three circular economy-related categories. “Circular champions” prioritize sustainability, but they need better information. They’re the folks who, say, compost at home; “Circular sympathizers” are concerned about the issue, but they’re only likely to adopt new behaviors that don’t significantly disrupt their existing lifestyles. In other words, they’ll buy second-hand clothes because they’re cheaper; and “Circular non-engagers”, which also is the largest group, are less engaged and need non-environmental incentives to change their M.O. Circular practices range from to what extent consumers are influenced by sustainability factors when buying things to whether consumers are adopting reusable food and drinks containers or buying and selling items in second-hand clothing and electronics markets. The research is the third in a series of circular economy-related reports from ING. Previous studies examined how companies are using sustainable financial strategies. That was followed by research into corporate awareness of circular economy issues. “For the third, we decided to go the other way and look at consumer awareness and if they’re making different buying decisions,” says van Riel.