Onde você joga aquelas esponjas usadas e já desgastadas de lavar a louça? Em vez de jogá-las no lixo comum, você pode entregá-las para a reciclagem, para serem transformadas em outros objetos de plástico, como caixas de transporte de frutas e legumes, displays e até cones de trânsito.

Norden

The coats are beautiful, no doubt. But we also highlighted this Montreal-based brand because of the sustainable focus. Coats are made from recycled plastics. The plastics are transformed into a yarn which is then printed with FiberPrint®, a digital serial number that can calculate the number of bottles used in a single garment. The production of Norden outerwear consumes 45% less energy, 20% less water and gives off 30% less GHG emissions than virgin polyester. Which means you can feel good, while looking good. If you feel like you’ve outgrown your coat, Norden’s end-of-life program ensures that it’s repaired and resold or donated to someone in need. If the garment is damaged beyond repair, it will be sent to their partners at TerraCycle, where it will be 100% recycled.

Walmart this year gave the month of September the new designation of “Best of Baby Month,” deploying a unifying signage package, heavy digital support and a first-ever car seat trade-in event that garnered overwhelming participation.   Car Seat Trade-In   More than 4,000 Walmart locations participated in the retailer’s inaugural car seat trade-in event, a tie-in to the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association’s observance of Baby Safety Month. Consumers trading in their used car seat received a $30 store gift card intended for the purchase of another car seat or other baby items.   Adding an element of sustainability to the effort was a partnership with TerraCycle, the recycling company that took on the task of diverting each component of traditionally non-recyclable car seats from the landfill. The retailer accepted car seats from Sept. 16-21, ending the event nine days earlier than planned after quickly reaching capacity.   “We wanted to use our size and scale to create an event that offered unprecedented access to trade in an outgrown car seat for a gift card,” vice president of Walmart baby Melody Richards said in a media release.   TerraCycle chief executive officer Tom Szaky had expected to divert the plastic equivalent of some 35 million water bottles from landfills; that number had reached more than 200 million by the time the event was closed. During that time, the retailer collected more than 1 million car seats – twice as many as Target has tallied since introducing its periodic car seat trade-in program in 2016. Instead of gift cards, Target offers coupons for 20% off select baby gear in exchange for the car seats.   In Stores   Encouraging shoppers to cash in all the gift cards it doled out, Walmart outfitted pallets in Action Alley merchandising products such as Evenflo and Cosco car seats, Safety 1st walkers, Kimberly-Clark’s Huggies diapers and even an out-of-the-box crib (this one without a pallet) with “Best of Baby Month” headers and balloons.   The retailer’s Parents Choice private brand and the exclusive Hello Bello brand it rolled out earlier this year took center billing, commanding a majority of the secondary merchandising space in the baby department.   In the aisles, the retailer used the occasion to promote the Baby Registry it overhauled earlier this year by identifying “Registry must-have” items such as new wipes from Hello Bello and Edgewell Personal Care’s Playtex Diaper Genie with shelf talkers depicting a QR code linking to the retailer’s top 20 registry items. Endcap side panels also depicting the QR code presented the registry as “better than ever,” touting a complimentary welcome box of essential items from a variety of brands and other registration perks.   Online Deals   Online, Walmart extended hundreds of deals on big-ticket and everyday baby products from brands including Newell Brands’ Graco, Procter & Gamble’s Pampers and Mattel’s Fisher-Price.   The offers were corralled in a themed shop that also invited consumers to locations hosting baby events on Sept. 28 or 29. Participants got health and safety tips, and were able to interact with baby gear and nursery items through activities such as a “diaper challenge” and “stroller testing.”   Bloggers plugged both the deals and trade-in event. A feature in the retailer’s September circular promoted the trade-in incentive while showcasing car seats from manufacturers including Evenflo and other baby items including Hello Bello diapers and VTech’s video baby monitor.

    1  SPY OPTIC has announced that Joe Freitag is returning to the SPY family in the newly created role of vice president of brand, making him responsible for the guidance and alignment of SPY’s marketing and product strategy on a global level. 2  CLEARVISION OPTICAL has been named to Newsday’s list of “Best Companies to Work for in 2019.” 3  MARCOLIN GROUP and Omega SA and Longines Watch Co. Francillon Ltd., have entered into a collaboration for the design, production and distribution of OMEGA and Longines branded sunglasses and eyeglasses for men and women.   4  CHARMANT GROUP has renewed its licensing cooperation the global fashion brand ESPRIT, celebrating their silver anniversary as business partners with this 25 year association. 5  THEMA OPTICAL has announced a new recycling program in partnership with international recycling leader TerraCycle specializing in collecting and re-purposing hard-to-recycle waste through a variety of platforms, including large-scale recycling. 6  RAEN has named Globe International as its new exclusive distributor in Australia and New Zealand.  

In 2020, Colgate-Palmolive will finally deliver a recyclable toothpaste container. After more than two decades of mounting concern around plastic waste and discussions about sustainable initiatives, the 213-year-old company announced it would release a fully recyclable tube under its Tom's of Main brand, with plans to convert all products to 100% recyclable packaging by 2025: “Building a future to smile about means finding new packaging solutions that are better for the planet, but until now there hasn’t been a way to make toothpaste tubes part of the recycling stream,” said Justin Skala, Chief Growth & Strategy Officer for Colgate-Palmolive, in a statement.   But is this move by Colgate too little, too late? By 2025, the focus of corporate sustainability will have shifted, evolving from the use of recyclable materials to creating circular business strategies.   While Colgate pottered with laboratory testing, the recycling market collapsed. The exchange rate between the U.S. and China made a lot of recycling unprofitable, leading a number of municipalities to stop their recycling collection altogether. With the collapse of the international market, cities like Philadelphia have had to turn to burning much of their recyclable waste.   Compounding this problem is the fact that the majority of recyclable plastics doesn’t get recycled anyway. Only 9% of plastic packaging in the U.S. is recycled, 12% is burned and the rest ends up in a landfill—or even the sea. And while Adidas creates sneakers out of Pacific Ocean plastic and Walmart’s Asda uses similar debris to pave a parking lot, these programs are just delaying the inevitable: society ultimately has to deal with that plastic when it turns up in the waste system again.   What use is a new tee made from a mix of upcycled cotton and recycled fishing nets anyway when the used product needs to be processed again? Maybe we need to stop differentiating ‘single-use' from ‘recyclable' and come to the conclusion that nearly all plastic is used once. If we can grasp this notion, then we might be able to judge how corporations offload the responsibility to efficiently recycle on our local governments, which could seem an unfair and undue burden on them and our taxes.   Some retailers are already taking matters into their own hands. “We’re working with our suppliers and packaging manufacturers, looking at alternatives to plastics,” says Karen Graley, packaging manager at U.K. grocer Waitrose,” while the CEO of REI co-op explains, “We are in the throes of an environmental crisis that threatens not only the next 81 years of REI, but the incredible outdoor places that we love.” His recent call-to-action letter reads, “Climate change is the greatest existential threat facing our co-op. I believe we do not have the luxury of calling climate change a political issue. This is a human issue. And we must act now.”   When our researchers at PSFK studied hundreds of new ideas and signals developing within the sustainability space, we identified several emerging short- and long-term trends. Over the next 12-24 months, the focus for corporate sustainability programs dealing with product waste is likely to be what is defined as the Circular Economy. Beyond that, we spotted trends around new ways to avoid waste and inefficiencies. In this article, we explore the former set of trends and share them in a framework to help you as a business executive or even a consumer to consider how to approach sustainability.   No doubt, you’ve already read stories and reports on the Circular Economy, a concept around a cycle where we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from those resources while in use, then recover and regenerate those resources at the end of their lives. By conducting pattern recognition on the latest ideas developing within this space, we identified a number of key pillars: receive, recycle, repair, refill, rent and resell. As corporations look to evolve their sustainability efforts, these six themes will guide them in developing a more holistic strategy. First we define the pillars, then explore what they look like in practice.   1. Receiving Receiving involves retailers and brands facilitating the simple return of their products and packaging at the end of what their owner thinks is their useful life. Sometimes this collection happens in the store, but at other times this gathering of used product may be more proactive. These materials are used to make new products, passed to external facilities to recycle, or end up in a landfill—which is currently the most likely result.   2. Recycling Building off of the notion of receiving, recycling concerns the reuse of materials as new products that the retailer and brand can leverage as part of their commercial business. The passing on of consumed materials to an external recycling facility or partner is not a part of this strategy.   3. Repairing Repairing involves fixing or upcycling product so that it either has a longer life or can be sold as new. This pillar includes both the servicing of products owned by customers and the repair of previously owned items.   4. Reselling Reselling concerns the creation of marketplaces that allow retailers or consumers to sell previously owned products.   5. Refilling Refilling is a system of avoiding packaging by expecting consumers to replenish the core product with their own reusable vessel. This creates efficiencies in production (mainly, bulk orders) and improves the frequency of brand-consumer interaction.   6. Renting Renting is the short-term loan of products so that they can be reused by different consumers. The items are therefore more frequently employed and not left in storage, plus there is less demand for virgin product. Pillars defined, now let’s take a closer look at how this framework for sustainability can manifest in business:

Receiving

When it comes to the ways retailers and brands are facilitating the simple return of their products and packaging, there are several tactics. Sometimes stores choose simplicity and accept returns on premise. For example, U.K. grocer Sainsbury’s is planning to accept milk and glass soda bottles as part of a drive to halve the amount of plastic packaging it uses over the next six years. Department store John Lewis is also now taking back beauty packaging, which is traditionally hard to recycle. Levi Strauss has a take-back program that sells wares to a third-party who transforms old denim into insulation for community buildings.   But how effective is that drop box by the store door? It assumes consumers will remember to carry their products into a store—when on most trips, they still forget their reusable grocery bags. Some firms are therefore incentivizing the returns: Patagonia will accept any good-condition product that is not a “next-to-skin garment” and provide a gift card for up to $100. Similarly, Canadian outdoor clothing company Arc’teryx has a new program called Rock Solid Used Gear that incentivizes customers to bring their lightly used products back to the store in exchange for a gift card valued at 20% of the item’s original retail price. IKEA Canada also allows customers to “sell back” their gently used furniture to the store and receive store credit. Adidas has a new system in the U.K. called Infinite Play that lets consumers return any branded products purchased within the past five years in exchange for a gift card and loyalty points.       Meanwhile, some companies aren’t just waiting for the shoppers to turn up; they’re going out to get their used product: H&M ran a test earlier this year in New York where it offered Lyft rides to the store for shoppers planning to deliver used product and John Lewis is sending trucks out to collect larger items in the U.K. Vogue Business says that “at a time when brands are finding it increasingly expensive to attract and retain customers, take-back programs are a way to stand out.”

Recycling

Receiving product doesn’t necessarily imply the recycling and regeneration of materials into new products for the retailer and brand to use in commercial business. There are companies developing enterprise-level strategies when it comes to the pre-recycling stage: For instance, H&M picks up clothing and shoes in more than 60 countries and sells some of the materials back to the companies who made the original clothes. The actual reprocessing of the materials into new product is burdened with challenges, not the least of which is the presence of potentially harmful constituents: The fabric from a used pair of jeans could contain formaldehyde, carcinogenic dyes, toxic heavy metals and more, which poses problem for enterprises looking to avoid including an unknown assortment of nefarious chemicals in the next generation of product. One solution to this issue is implementing new recycling processes: a startup called Evrnu breaks down used fabric into constituent molecules, enabling the isolation of any unwanted materials as well as desired ones, like pure cellulose, for repurposing.

Repairing

While used items often get shredded and returned as raw ingredients for the product, some companies are fixing, or upcycling, product so that it either has a longer life or can be sold as new.   Luxury U.K. department store Harvey Nichols now has an after-care service called The Restory that offers not only to repair and restore premium items but even “reimagine” them.  After years of criticism, Apple is finally shipping official parts to repair shops that have had to use third-party materials in the past.   Atelier & Repairs is a boutique fashion label that specializes in the remaking of old and used products. Brands like Gap and Deckers have collaborated with them to explore the repair of old hoodies and jeans to create fresh fashion that’s not made of virgin stock. At the announcement of the Gap collaboration, the brand’s Head of Adult Design, John Caruso, told reporters that the partnership with Atelier & Repairs allowed the company to reinterpret and “reimagine their classic styles, lengthening the traditional product life cycle.” California-based b-corp Dhana takes this remake concept further by upcycling a customer’s memories into a new outdoor coat, including their concert tees, Comic-Con costumes and other memorabilia into the lining.   Patagonia seems to be one of the most progressive brands in the repair and remake space, reportedly fixing 100,000 items each year in 72 repair centers globally. Some of these items are now appearing on the site of its sub-brand WornWear, which has an online presence and recently opened its first store in Denver, Colorado. WornWear doesn’t just repair and resell items: the designers also reimagine them by mixing pieces from recycled products they have. Vogue Business reports that the new line doesn’t cannibalize existing sales, but “brings in customers who are, on average, ten years younger than the typical Patagonia shopper.”      

Reselling

As products get returned, repaired or remade, we’re witnessing the creation of marketplaces that allow retailers or consumers to sell previously owned products. German online fashion retailer Zalando has been testing a second-hand store concept for women's fashion items called Zircle. The store sells used fashion items that were purchased back from customers on their Zalando Wardrobe app. One objective of the test is to understand if the company can reach new customers.   Premium U.K. department store Selfridges has been working with third parties like Vestiaire and Depop to develop shop-in-shops that resell shoppers' apparel. The Vestiaire Collective space also comes with a resale point where customers can deposit items that subsequently appear on the brand’s app for sale.   Online retail platform Farfetch recently launched Second Life, a pilot initiative that allows consumers to resell the designer bags sitting in their wardrobe. “We're on a mission to become the global platform for good in luxury fashion—empowering everyone to think, act and choose positively,” reads their site. “Services like Farfetch Second Life help our customers extend the life of the clothes they buy.”   Meanwhile, with every new purchase, fashion brand Cuyana is including a shipping label that helps consumers send unwanted clothes to reseller thredUP, who will in turn send coupons for every successful resale. “Young shoppers like pre-owned goods for their lower prices and ability to express concern for causes like sustainability,” says fashion editor Lucy McGuire. Research commissioned by thredUP reports that the total secondhand apparel market will reach $51 billion in the next 5 years and will be larger than Fast Fashion in 10 Years.

Refilling

Retailers and service providers are also providing more ways to refill and restock certain products. U.K. grocer Waitrose has launched trials of its Unpacked system to gauge shoppers’ reactions to packaging-free food and drink options including the use of refills. They encourage shoppers to not only bring along reusable shopping bags but also their containers for filling up with the products during their Unpacked shop. The containers can be any material, size, shape or weight, but if shoppers don’t have anything to hand at home, they're welcome to buy bags/containers in store. Waitrose even encourages customers to bring their own coffee cup to enjoy a brew in the aisles.         In London, The Body Shop now offers a product refill station, while at Bleach London shoppers can buy glass bottles filled with their favorite shampoo and conditioner, then return for refills. To track the growing number of zero-waste/refill stores in the U.K. capital, an advertising agency created the Useless London online map.   On U.S. college campuses, rather than selling new bottles of water, The Coca-Cola Company has been trialling PureFill refill stations. In Sydney, the vegan online retailer Flora&Fauna has a new brick-and-mortar store that offers refills of zero-waste goods.   NYC's fast-casual chain Dig is testing a closed-loop dishware program where restaurant goers receive a reusable bowl and lid with the expectation that they return with it every time they visit the brand's Washington Square Park outpost.   Similar to a pattern observed with receiving, this refill service is not only taking place in the store, but also in the home. Terracycle has been a pioneer in the recycling movement: its Loop system delivers everything in a returnable container. Brands like P&G and retailers like Krueger have partnered with Loop, now letting shoppers enjoy an array of package-free products, including Crest oral rinse, Tide laundry detergent and even Haaen Dazs ice-cream. “The response has been overwhelmingly positive. It's phenomenal how many people have signed up for it,” said Loop co-founder Tom Skazy to PSFK. “Consumers understand that there's a garbage problem. While some prioritize the environmental aspect, others really like the design aspect, and some really like the convenience aspect. When you put all that together, it's a pretty big ecosystem of benefits.”

Renting

And finally, brands are also exploring the short-term loan of products so that they can be reused by different consumers. Some of this has been pioneered in the luxury fashion space for a few years now (think services like Rent the Runway), but there are signs of more mainstream options. H&M, for example, has launched its first clothing rental service at a newly refurbished store in Stockholm, following similar efforts by Banana Republic, Urban Outfitters and Ann Taylor Loft. Levi’s is exploring the space through a partnership with Rent The Runway. “For this crowd, consignment sites like thredUP and Poshmark, as well as the rental services, offer a lower-cost way to keep the ‘Gram fresh without hoarding clothes,” writes Ankita Rao in an article entitled ‘Clothes Are Canceled’ on Vice.com.   Rental goes well beyond apparel—IKEA is renting furniture, Lego has the service Netbricks for the rental of its little plastic building blocks—but fashion is where the groundswell is. According to research by GlobalData, the U.S. garment rental market was worth $1 billion in 2018, less than 1% of the total apparel market, but it also grew 24% in that year compared to 5% for the wider clothing market. Different ways to rent, like P2P platforms, are cropping up in the clothing rental space as well: Wardrobe is a just-launched sharing network operating out of local dry cleaners in Manhattan, letting members borrow high-end, designer and even vintage pieces from each other's closets and solving for the common issues around renting like convenience and value.       As retailers evolve beyond the classic Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra to embrace the six pillars described above, they ultimately are moving toward enabling closed-loop systems, embedding sustainability into their business model in a way that merges seamlessness and customer satisfaction with avoidance of waste creation in the first place and repurposing of original materials. This focus is not without good incentive: consumers are a driving factor in the push for true sustainability, wielding their spending power with retailers effecting the changes they want to see. Nielsen found that 81% of surveyed consumers think companies should support improving the environment (this sentiment was particularly strong among millennials and Gen Z), while 50% of CPG growth between 2013 and 2018 came from sustainability-marketed products.   Based on these signals, what could the future look like? A zero-waste restaurant in Brooklyn may give us a glimpse. Mettā re-opened earlier this fall in Fort Greene, partnering with regional farmers to secure ingredients from the source at their peak, concentrating on eco-friendly transportation and preservation methods, and curbing water waste wherever possible. Further, the business purchases electricity from 100% renewable sources, and offsets the 75% of its carbon footprint generated from food production by buying sequestration initiatives, which harness or avoid releasing an equivalent+ amount of carbon into the environment, according to the company's website.       While perhaps a more extreme example, Mettā's viability proves that businesses are taking the next generation of sustainability seriously, moving beyond the ineffectiveness of recycling into an era of inherent sustainability and investing in thoughtful strategies to enable consumption without destruction.   But why should businesses really bother about what a restauranteur is creating in Brooklyn or a grocery store is doing in London? Maybe because a massive population of young, militant people are emerging as potential consumers, who know things can be different and are determined to make them better. They have Greta Thunberg and now there are activists like Feroz Aziz. These passionate minds have better and faster communications tools than your social listening platform can offer and can amass faster than your staff can fire-drill. Moreover, there is infinitely more of them than there are of you, so businesses need to align to a new framework for sustainability and retool for a new set of practices.

There’s no shortage of scary statistics about how much trash Americans produce (over 4 pounds per person, per day), how big our carbon footprint is (more than triple the world average) or how little of our plastic actually gets recycled (9% — yikes).   If you’re like me, these stats make you feel two things — a strong desire to do something about it and an overwhelming fear of having no idea where to start.   Changing your family’s routine to “go green” seems even more daunting when you’re a parent.   Shuttling kids to and from school, activities and grandma’s house is most efficient in a car — a big one, at that. Feeding them on the go is easiest via yogurt tubes and squeeze pouches. And don’t get me started on food waste — no matter what I put on my kids’ dinner plates, only a fraction of it will be eaten before I hear the inevitable: “Am I done yet?”   So what’s a modern family to do? Change nothing, because it won’t matter anyway? Or go full-bore and build a tiny house on an island in the Mississippi?   The answer, luckily, falls somewhere in the middle. Today’s zero-waste movement isn’t about fitting a year’s worth of trash into a Mason jar. It’s about taking small steps to become a more conscious consumer in ways that work for you and your family.   “Do what you can within your budget and let go of what you can’t,” said Kristina Mattson, a registered nurse, mom of three and co-founder of the Zero Waste Saint Paul advocacy group. “If you get hung up on the ‘cant’s,’ it can get really overwhelming. Pick two or three things and build upon that.”   A helpful tool for reframing your thinking around zero waste is the “5 Rs.” In addition to the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” mantra we all grew up with, zero waste adds two more: Refuse (resist our culture’s call to buy newly manufactured things) and Rot (compost).   With that in mind, here are some realistic and impactful tips from local zero-waste experts on how to make your life — and our planet — a little greener.   Who knows? You may instill habits and values in your kids to last a lifetime.  

Sustainable shopping

  Kate Marnach, a former clinical engineer living in Maple Grove, became interested in zero waste when she started having kids.   Frustrated by how hard it was to find plastic-free items locally, she and friend Amber Haukedahl, a conservation biologist, took matters into their own hands and opened Tare Market in Minneapolis this past spring.   Minnesota’s first zero-waste market, pictured below, Tare is a one-stop shop for anyone looking to live more sustainably. The store sells bulk foods, cleaning and bath products, including many items that can’t be found elsewhere.   “We’ve done the work for you to find products that are as close to zero waste as possible,” said Marnach, whose kids are now 7, 4 and 2.   If you’re new to this type of shopping, don’t feel intimidated: “We’re here to help and walk you through the process.”   The store also hosts regular classes on topics such as composting, mending and transitioning your home to zero waste.   Co-ops, such as the Wedge in Minneapolis or Mississippi Markets in St. Paul, also make sustainable shopping easier by sourcing local and organic products, and offering a wide variety of foods in bulk.   Contrary to popular belief, co-ops aren’t always more expensive: Bulk foods often cost less than packaged ones; members get additional discounts and coupons; and many accept SNAP and WIC, making them accessible to low-income families.   If you don’t have a co-op nearby, Marnach recommends Fresh Thyme and Whole Foods for their bulk sections.   And, if you’re being mindful of the products you’re buying — and the packaging — Mattson said traditional grocery stores such as Cub, Lunds & Byerlys and Kowalski’s, which all have bulk sections, can be good options, too.   Even Target, she said, has recycling programs and a sustainability mission: “They’re really moving toward being mindful of waste through the whole supply chain.”  

Secondhand channels

  Beyond groceries, shopping secondhand is an awesome way to cut down on waste. You won’t be requiring a manufacturing plant to create and ship something new from overseas — and you’ll skip the plastics/bags/ties, Styrofoam and cardboard boxes used not just for the basic packaging and display, but also for the copious amounts of packing and shipping needed if you order online.   Mattson recommends social media marketplaces such as local buy/sell/trade groups on Facebook, thrift stores and hand-me-downs from friends. Keep the driving to a minimum when buying or selling by using NextDoor, which can be limited to your immediate neighborhood.   Add to that baby-gear resale events, more than a dozen locations of Once Upon a Child in Minnesota and Little Free Libraries everywhere you turn — plus actual libraries. In Richfield, the Minneapolis Toy Library rents out toys for an annual fee.   You may start to wonder why you ever bought anything brand new.   Whether you’re shopping at Tare or Target, always remember to bring your own bags. Opting for paper over plastic won’t do much good: It actually takes more resources to produce a paper bag than a plastic one. Get in the habit of keeping your bags by the back door or in your car so you never leave home without them.  

Eco-conscious eating

  A lot of zero waste is about packaging, yes. And the trend of reusable straws and water bottles — and those amazing refill fountains at schools and airports — have helped.   But what we eat and drink has a much larger impact than what it comes in.   According to the research journal Science, our global food system accounts for a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, with food packaging making up only 5% of that total. Animal products, especially beef, lamb, farmed crustaceans and cheese, have the biggest footprint, followed by pork, farmed fish, poultry and eggs.   If you’re not ready to go vegan or vegetarian, that’s OK. Cutting out red meat, even once or twice a week, can make a big difference. Trade cheeseburgers for well-seasoned turkey or wild rice patties, and you might not even miss the beef and cheddar; or you might check out plant-based Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers/Beyond Sausage options sold in grocery stores and at Burger King, White Castle, Carls Jr., Dunkin’ and more.   Eating local is another beneficial and — thanks to the abundance of local farms and eco-conscious restaurants in Minnesota — easy choice to make.   Many local restaurants — such as Birchwood Cafe, Brasa, French Meadow, Keg and Case Market, Kieran’s Kitchen, Wise Acre Eatery and dozens of others — pride themselves on sourcing local and organic ingredients, even growing their own food on rooftops and nearby farms.   Being a locavore can be a way to connect to local farmers, too: In summer, you can bring the whole family to one of Birchwood’s “Crop Mobs” for a day of real farm work at Riverbend Farm in Delano (pictured at left). Every July, you can tour local farms as part of the annual, self-guided Co-op Farm Tour, too. Many local farms open to the public to offer everything from strawberries in the spring to apples in the fall.   Farmers markets are also plentiful in Minnesota, with more than 75 in the metro area alone. The selection changes every week based on what’s in season, so you can be sure it’s fresh, local and virtually packaging-free.   In July and August, check out Tiny Diner’s farmers market on Thursday nights, with kid-friendly themes including baby goat day and chicken poop bingo.   If you like to cook, you can take it a step further and sign up for a CSA (community supported agriculture) share, which creates a direct connection between your family and the farmers who grow the food you’ll get to enjoy all season long.   Growing your own veggies is another fun way to teach your kids where food comes from — and it doesn’t get more local than your own backyard! Kids are more apt to eat food they grow, too. (They love ripping the veggies right off the plants.)   Winter is an ideal time to plan a garden, too, thanks to colorful, dreamy seed catalogs that go out in January — just the thing for winter-weary souls. Check out four perfect projects for kids (including three edibles) at mnparent.com/gardening-with-kids.  

Disposing of it all

  If you want to make a huge difference with a small amount of effort, Mattson has the answer: Start composting.   Most metro-area counties offer free drop-off sites, compost bins and bags, and even curbside pickup in some cities. In addition to food scraps, you can compost literally hundreds of things this way, including paper towels, tissues, greasy pizza boxes, pet hair and so much more. Composting in your backyard — or even indoors with red wriggler worms! — is another option.   You may have read that China stopped taking recyclables from other countries last year, forcing some American cities to cut back on or even discontinue their recycling services.   Lucky for us, Minnesota sorts most of its recycling locally, which means that as long as you’re recycling correctly, your paper, plastic, glass and aluminum shouldn’t end up in a landfill.   Many local businesses, in fact, use some of the state’s recyclables for their manufacturing, such as By the Yard furniture in Jordan (HDPE plastic), Spectro Alloys in Rosemount (aluminum) and Rock Tenn in St. Paul (paper and cardboard), among others.   The U.S. has dealt with the 2018 changes in China by stockpiling valuable recyclables and by turning to other countries that are accepting imported materials.   But quality matters more than ever, making contamination a bigger issue. And that’s where American households come into play.   Some common recycling mistakes people make are putting plastic bags in their curbside recycling bins (take those to your grocery store drop-off) and trying to recycle black plastic, Styrofoam and other items that have recycling symbols, but aren’t accepted by your local hauler.   Take 10 minutes to review what’s accepted on your county or city’s website; most have handy guides you can print out and hang on the fridge for the whole family to reference.   A lot of other packaging, including food wrappers and personal care and cleaning product bottles, can be recycled through TerraCycle, which offers free recycling for a variety of mainstream brands: Find local drop-off sites on the company’s website or ship your items — such as GoGo squeeZ apple sauce pouches and Febreez cans — for free.   Loop — a new e-commerce platform — is offering zero-waste packaging options for popular products from P&G, Unilever, Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca Cola and many others. It’s not available in the Twin Cities yet, but it allows consumers to get products ranging from Haagen Dazs ice cream to Pantene shampoo in durable, reusable containers that can be returned for cleaning and refill.   (You can sign up for the global waiting list at loopstore.com.)   When it comes to bigger things like electronics, furniture, clothes, toys and more, look for city- and county-sponsored recycling events and other special collections, like Target’s semiannual car seat trade-in.  

Greener ways to get around

  Nearly 60% of car trips in America are 5 miles or fewer, and transportation is now Minnesota’s biggest source of carbon emissions. If you don’t have access to public transit, driving may be the only way to get where you need to go.   But just like rethinking your shopping and eating habits, changing how you get around can be approached one step at a time.   Think about everywhere you go in a typical week — work, school, the grocery store, church, the gym, other errands. Use Google Maps to see if any of those trips could be done on foot, bike or public transportation.   If not, try combining multiple errands into one trip or carpooling with a friend or coworker to cut down on your daily mileage.   While adults tend to focus on getting from point A to point B in the fastest way possible, Julia Curran, who lives car free in Minneapolis, encourages people to remember how fun it was to walk, bike or ride the train as a kid.   If your kids are anything like mine, the light rail ride to Target Field is often more fun than the game itself. Erica Wacker lives in St. Paul with her husband and two boys. Her household is celebrating its one-year compostiversary. Follow her journey in eco-friendly living at climate52.com.  

In the current era, many initiatives are put forward to reduce pollution as much as possible. Concerned about its environment, the Toothbox also wants to be part of the change by adopting responsible behaviors as for the reduction of the waste. For example, the company recently joined the TerraCycle program, a world leader in recycling waste that is generally considered non-recyclable.   In fact, each of the Alma, Chicoutimi, Jonquière and Roberval branches is now equipped with a "Zero Waste" box for the recycling of oral care waste. The Toothbox therefore offers you to bring all your empty packaging of toothpaste tubes, your old toothbrushes, old prostheses, as well as floss containers. The boxes will then be sent to TerraCycle for waste management and processing.   About Terracycle  All the waste that would ordinarily be incinerated and sent to a landfill, TerraCycle recycles it and transcycle it. The program also aims to give new life to waste by creating new products that can be used with materials that would simply have ended up in the trash. As a result, a lot of waste is converted into plastic pellets that can be used to make benches, picnic tables and even playgrounds.    Recycle everything  All waste received is mechanically and manually separated into fiber categories (such as wood and film-coated paper), fabrics, metals, plastic and other materials. Subsequently, the resulting fibers will be hydrotransformed to separate the coatings, such as wax and plastic. Once the fibers are separated, they will be recycled into new paper products or composted if recycling is not feasible. The resulting plastics will be recycled into plastic polymers. Fabrics will be separated for reuse, recycling or upcycling. Flexible and rigid plastics undergo extrusion and granulation to mold into various recycled plastic products. Other materials, such as glass or rubbers, will be recycled appropriately for this category of waste.   This is an initiative that aims once again to make the world smile!   To learn more about the program, visit www.terracycle.com.  

At this time of year, many beauty retailers are focused on enticing consumers with festive gift sets: sumptuous samplers with a selection of bottles, jars and tubes, packed in cases that are often glittery, golden or shiny.   This holiday season, however, stores and brands have an additional and growing concern: the vast environmental footprint that these indulgent kits inevitably occupy.   Some companies have improved their packaging’s ecological stamp by, for example, opting for ink made from soy instead of petroleum.   But creating appeal that also is environmentally responsible can be a challenge, and there is little room for error in this vital season, which last year generated almost $6 billion in sales of prestige beauty products in the United States alone, according to the NPD Group, a market research organization. The fourth quarter is especially crucial for prestige fragrances, constituting almost 45 percent of annual sales. “The biggest tension is the tension between what drives sales in this industry and what is good for the environment,” said Tom Szaky, chief executive of TerraCycle, a recycling company that says it works with hundreds of brands in 21 countries. “Many times, those are not copacetic.”         Some brands have designed Holiday 2019 packaging that is comparatively earth-friendly but that still looks and feels indulgent.   L’Occitane en Provence, for example, quietly made most of its seasonal sets with corrugated cardboard, a move that saved 22 tons of paper in comparison with the more solid version sold last year, according to Corinne Fugier-Garrel, the brand’s director of packaging conception development.   The external size of some sets is smaller than last year’s versions, although they still hold a similar selection of similarly sized products — which saved nine more tons of paper, she said. And gold detailing, which can make recycling impossible, was laminated with a thin layer of aluminum to allow recycling.   Like many brands, L’Occitane has had success over the last few years with its beauty Advent calendar, the traditional German countdown to Christmas adapted to hide small products behind dated doors.   The complex structure of most beauty brands’ calendars and the packaging of their contents typically are not very environmentally sound. This year L’Occitane made the interior compartments of one of its two Advents ($64) from recycled PET — or polyethylene terephthalate; the sections of the more lavish version ($99) are made of recycled paper. Both materials are recyclable.   ASOS, the British online retailer, has changed the environmental footprint of its men’s and women’s Advent calendars, which are stocked with items from multiple beauty brands. This year the products come in compostable paper boxes, printed with soy ink in spunky patterns like animal prints and polka dots, and arranged in a sturdy, sustainably sourced cork box. That box is recyclable, but it has a nonholiday feel well suited for storing things year-round.       Kiehl’s, the American heritage line now owned by L’Oréal, also produced an Advent calendar exclusively for Selfridges that seems destined for reuse: a heavy, long piece of organic cotton with 12 pocket-like compartments that might in the future hold socks rather than minis of the company’s Ultra Facial Cream and Amino Acid Shampoo. (The large bag it comes in, however, is intended for disposal: It is made of a mix of recycled paper and wild flower seeds that can be planted in soil.) Priced at 125 pounds ($161), the store’s initial stock briskly sold out. The brand is also offering a conventional Advent ($90) with wider distribution; its paper can be recycled.   Liberty London’s multibrand Advent calendar looks more traditional, printed with a version of the brand’s William Morris Strawberry Thief pattern.   This year’s iteration of the popular item — 15 percent of the stock, each one priced at £215, was sold in the first five minutes it became available — is fully recyclable, with internal drawers made of recycled cardboard, except for a magnet closure that can be snipped off.   Still, exterior packaging is only one element of gift sets. In multibrand samplers, only some of the lotions, creams and makeup items use environmentally minded ingredients.   And then there are the sample-size bottles and tubes that are a mainstay of holiday beauty sets. Although many brands claim that even their smallest containers are recyclable — and, strictly speaking, some are — Mr. Szaky says containers smaller than the average stick of deodorant are typically passed over by recyclers as less profitable to process.       “Many times, companies are communicating technical recyclability versus practical recyclability,” Mr. Szaky said.   “I don’t think it’s mal intent,” he added. “People aren’t trying to lie to you — they just don’t know the facts, and that could create false statements without the malice.”   Additionally, commonplace components in beauty packaging — like black plastic and colored glass — generally cannot be recycled, Mr. Szaky said.   Even well-intentioned retailers can find it a challenge to compile environmentally responsible brands for holiday beauty kits.   “Where we can, we always will try to be as sustainable as possible,” said Emily Bell, who oversees beauty buying at Liberty London. “However, some of the brands that are in there aren’t quite there yet in terms of being able to say that they’re 100 percent recyclable.”   Some of this season’s sets have a less flashy look than might be expected for the holidays. Three multibrand gift sets from Credo Beauty, which calls itself “the largest clean beauty store on the planet,” are packaged in a muted pastel box that is more restrained than jolly. And Floral Street, a London-based fragrance line, is offering 10-milliliter bottles of its scents in a gem-shaped paper package that resembles a tree ornament; it is colorful, but without the shine and brightness of conventional coated paper and petroleum-based ink.     “People will get used to that,” said Michelle Feeney, Floral Street’s founder. “The new generation now, for them trendy is thrift shopping and mixing it with something else. I’m feeling like there’s a whole generation that doesn’t want the shininess. I think brands will be forced to change by the consumer if they don’t try to lead the way themselves.”   Shoppers’ tendencies, are, of course, in part driving these shifts. “There’s definitely interest in the ingredients, in the products themselves being green, and along with that comes the concept of sustainability,” said Lauren Goodsitt, global beauty analyst at Mintel, a London-based marketing research company.   Ms. Goodsitt predicted that, although sustainable goods can cost more to make, more brands will offer them over the next five to 10 years.   “It’s a real commitment,” she said. “When you’re going to make that move for recyclable materials, if you’re switching out the types of plastics that you’re using, it’s definitely an investment for the brands. As consumers start to demand that this change is made, I think that we’ll see more and more brands making that shift.”