Adhesives are necessary for a lot of industrial applications, but they tend to create a lot of waste too. That is why Henkel Canada Corporation has partnered with TerraCycle, an innovative company that offers recycling solution for typically non-recyclable material, to create the Adhesive Recycling Program. This program enables customers to recycle adhesive packaging from the Loctite brand – reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfills and incinerators. A simple recycling solution Henkel is the first manufacturer to offer this kind of recycling solution for its anaerobic adhesive packaging. The company aims to help customers meet their sustainability goals as they continue to use powerful and reliable Loctite products. Taking part in this program is easy. A customer buys a durable, postage-paid recycling box to collect used Loctite adhesive containers. When the box fills up, the customer sends it to TerraCycle, which recycles all the contents. Three different sizes are available: small, medium, and large. Henkel recommends placing the adhesive recycling bx in an area where workers apply and/or discard Loctite products. Only anaerobic Loctite packaging should be put into these boxes, with all bottles capped and tightly closed. When the box is full, seal the liner with the zip tie included under the box lid, and seal the top securely with packing tape. Then the box should be placed in the workplace’s designated UPS pickup area. TerraCycle recycles the adhesive packaging into new, innovative products once it received the box. The company sorts the collected waste by material type, treats the packaging cryogenically or thermally to deactivate the adhesive, and then melts the material into sheets that are then shredded and pelletized. These pellets eventually turn into new products. For a look at the Henkel Adhesive Recycling Program, watch the video below: https://youtu.be/p1rzBHRBo_s   Customers need only to contact their local Henkel distributors or Loctite industrial sales representatives to join the program. This program is just one way that Henkel demonstrates its commitment to delivering more value with a lower environmental footprint.

It’s a green shopper’s dream to curb plastic waste: Häagen-Dazs in stainless steel pints, Tropicana in glass bottles, Pantene in aluminium containers and hundreds more products all refillable and delivered to your door in what harkens back to the days of the milkman. But whereas the milkman would replenish your dairy on the spot, this pilot program, called Loop, would collect and clean your containers before scheduling the next service. Backing Loop are dozens of big name companies including PepsiCo and Nestlé, which announced their project at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in hopes that eco-conscious consumers are ready to deliver on their calls for eliminating single-use containers. New York, Paris and London will be the first cities to test the refillable brands.   But is the reusable market still too niche? How cost-effective would the rollout be and what unintended environmental impacts would need to be avoided, such as even more congested roads to keep up with delivery? More importantly — would you buy in? Call us at 866-893-5722 or comment below.   GUESTS: Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle, a recycling firm and parent company for the pilot program Loop, which will handle the delivery, returns and cleaning for a number of companies testing refillable brands; he tweets @Tom__Szaky Susan Collins, head of the Container Recycling Institute, a nonprofit focusing on research and education towards container recycling and deposit systems Kit Yarrow, consumer research psychologist, professor at Golden Gate University in San Francisco and author of “Decoding the New Consumer Mind”

A large number of global consumer companies have launched an initiative to reduce waste from packaging. Through the Loop service, companies like Unilever, Nestle and Coca Cola are planning to offer reusable packaging that is collected after use and then refilled and reused. Photo: Walk Some of the world's largest consumer companies have joined forces with the recycling company TerraCycle to launch a global shopping system for reusable packaging. The shopping system Loop has been developed to reduce the world's dependence on disposable plastic by offering circular solutions for consumer products. Through Loop, companies plan to offer consumers reusable packaging that is collected after use and then cleaned, refilled and reused. Loop was launched during the World Economic Forum's Davos Summit. Over 20 global consumer companies have been involved in financing Loop, including Procter & Gamle, Nestle, Unilever, Pepsi, Coca Cola and Body Shop. Food chains such as British Tesco and the logistics company UPS also participate in the initiative. "Loop is a long-awaited innovation that challenges companies to take a new grip on our value chains and integrate reusable product packaging as part of our work to reduce waste," says Laurent Freixe, CEO of Nestlé in the US, in a comment. According to the life cycle analyzes that Loop has carried out together with its partners, the environmental benefits of the long-lasting products show that they are better than for disposable packaging, while at the same time the waste is reduced. Loop will be launched in the spring in France and the Northeast USA. The service is expected to be launched in more countries in 2019 and 2020. A spokesperson from Loop tells Current Sustainability that so far there are plans to launch the service in the UK, Canada and Tokyo, but more markets are expected to be in the future.

TerraCycle has long been known for its creative, though niche, approach to the recycling industry. Now it's on track to try and upend the whole model.

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW), armed with an initial funding commitment of $1bn, has the potential to be a game changer for the polymers industry. No longer is it enough to educate the public on how plastic is fantastic – keeping food safe and fresh, lightweighting vehicles for fuel economy, and providing value and convenience for the masses. The industry finally recognises it’s time to act now to address the immediate problem of plastic waste in the environment and particularly in our oceans. Longer term, a big part of the solution will be recycling technology – improving the mechanical recycling we have today, and also developing chemical recycling which uses catalysts to transform waste plastics into useful chemical building blocks. The alliance will indeed invest in these new processes and technologies. But importantly, funds will go into the immediate heart of the problem, targeting clean-up, and waste collection and management near key rivers in South and Southeast Asia, where much of the leakage occurs. The alliance cites a 2017 study by the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ and the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences estimating that 90% of river borne plastic waste comes from 10 major rivers – eight in Asia, and two in Africa while 60% of the plastic waste in the ocean can be sourced to five countries in Southeast Asia. TACKLING POLLUTION AT THE SOURCE Here, clean-up is key to solving the immediate problem. It must be tackled at the source. “You’re going to see cities and rivers be the focus of a lot of the initial work of the alliance,” said Jim Fitterling, CEO of Dow, in a discussion of the alliance’s launch. Along these key rivers, people often use them or streams that lead into the rivers as a convenient way to dispose of household waste. And monsoons and floods can also take plastic waste from mismanaged landfills out to the ocean, Fitterling noted. “If we can tackle that at the source, we can stem that tide. And then we can start to develop the circular economy that brings, not only value from the plastic, but also social value to make people’s lives better,” he said. One of the key partners of the alliance is non-profit Renew Oceans, which will initially focus on the Ganges River in India. “It is estimated [the Ganges] contributes 1.2bn lb of plastic waste to the oceans each year, and there are 400m residents that live [in the area],” said Priyanka Bakaya, CEO and founder of Renew Oceans. Practically, this involves building fences to collect plastic waste as it flows down rivers, and most importantly, paying waste pickers to collect the plastic. “Once they see the value in those plastics, we’ll see less of those plastics in the environment,” said Bakaya. In one of Renew Ocean’s models, mobile stations are set up to collect unrecyclable plastics, to convert them into fuels such as diesel. Waste pickers receive compensation directly tied to the fuel generated from the plastic waste. If the Renew Oceans project in the Ganges is successful, it can be scaled to other regions of the world. DAVOS DISCUSSION The is widely being discussed at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland. In a panel discussion, participants suggested that packaging should be designed with the future in mind and that the recycling issue was tied to the lack of effective waste management as well as product design. “It all comes down to the economics of waste,” said Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of post-consumer waste firm TerraCycle. “Consumers want things that are convenient and affordable.” COST OF DOING BUSINESS For the global polymers sector, which faces the threat of reduced long-term growth amid regulatory and consumer backlash, the success of the alliance will be critical. Chemical and plastics producers, among others in the coalition, committed to spend over $1bn, with a goal of boosting this to $1.5bn in five years to address the problem in a multi-pronged approach, including new technologies, processes and infrastructure, and education. And the challenge will be ongoing. No different than ensuring safety in operations, producers simply must view this as a cost of doing business.

O prêmio reforça que sustentabilidade e a rentabilidade podem andar juntas, como demonstram  a lista de 130 finalistas e os vencedores nas 17 categorias.

How fast can YOU restring your guitar? Premier Guitar and sponsors Fender, D'Addario Playback and Robert Keeley Engineering are joining forces to find the fastest guitar stringer in the West with PG's String Slinger 2018 competition. The D'Addario Playback program is an industry-wide string recycling initiative, powered by TerraCycle, to reward players for recycling any brand of strings.

Last summer, UPS and TerraCycle offered proof that similar plans could work, as the companies announced they had successfully diverted 40 million pounds of waste from landfills due to their partnership.