É esse o conceito de consumo consciente que Tom Szaky, fundador e CEO da empresa americana TerraCycle, está vendendo para grandes varejistas de vários países.

Goodbye, cardboard boxes and daily deliveries. Retailers are turning to reusable packaging and consolidated drop-offs to combat climate change.

An Amazon employee scans a package at a fulfillment center in Kegworth, U.K., last October. Corrugated box shipments rose 9 percent at the onset of the pandemic as Americans stocked up on household paper, cleaning supplies and food, and have remained elevated ever since. (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg) By Abha Bhattarai   The pandemic set off a surge in online shopping — and with it an avalanche of cardboard boxes and home deliveries. Now a crop of start-ups is focused on making e-commerce more sustainable by reimagining the disposable box, delivery conventions and mailing schedules. One such service, Olive, being rolled out Wednesday by Jet.com co-founder Nathan Faust, is partnering with more than 100 major retailers, including Anthropologie, Paige, Ray-Ban and UGG, to consolidate home deliveries in reusable tote bags that are dropped off once a week. Other newcomers, meanwhile, offer reusable plastic mailing boxes, compostable packaging and algae-ink shipping labels. The efforts are part of a larger shift within the retail industry to eliminate single-use cardboard and plastic as consumers increasingly weigh the environmental impacts of fast and easy shipping. Brands such as Clorox, Haagen Dazs and Seventh Generation are moving toward glass, aluminum and stainless steel packaging that can be returned, cleaned and refilled for subsequent uses, with the help of Loop, a program introduced two years ago at the World Economic Forum. Sustainability experts say much of the pollution associated with online shopping occurs during “last mile” delivery, that final stretch from warehouse to doorstep. But they say packaging is perhaps an easier — and more tangible — problem to solve. Consumers’ increased reliance on online shopping during the pandemic also put a spotlight on discarded cardboard piling up in recycling bins across the country. Corrugated box shipments rose 9 percent early in the pandemic as Americans stocked up on household paper, cleaning supplies and food, and they have remained elevated in the months since, according to industry data. “There are trade-offs to shopping online and in stores,” said Scott Matthews, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has been studying the environmental effects of retail practices since the early 2000s. “But packaging will always be a problem that needs to be addressed.” Faust got the idea for Olive while he was taking out the trash one night. “After 30 minutes of breaking down boxes and multiple trips down the driveway, it dawned on me that this is crazy,” said Faust, 41, who co-founded Jet.com and five years ago sold it to Walmart for $3.3 billion. “Twenty-five years into online shopping, and this is what status quo delivery looks like.” He came up with a blueprint for a company that would not only reduce the amount of waste being shipped to customers’ homes but also streamline deliveries so that orders from multiple retailers are dropped off in a batch, instead of piecemeal. More than 100 apparel retailers — including Anthropologie, Finish Line, Ralph Lauren and Saks Fifth Avenue — have signed on for the service, which is backed by venture capital. “The real power comes in the last mile to the consumer’s doorstep, where so much of the emissions in the post-purchase supply chain come from, largely because it’s an average of one box per stop on the delivery route,” Faust said. “That’s where we have the biggest impact.”   Shoppers buy items as they normally would, using the company’s app or a Google Chrome plugin. When it’s time to check out, Olive has the order routed to one of its two warehouses, in Southern California or northern New Jersey. From there, workers unpack individual orders, recycle packing materials and place items in a reusable bag that is delivered once a week. The service’s benefits, Faust says, are twofold: It ensures more packaging materials are recycled properly at Olive’s facilities while eliminating multiple delivery trips throughout the week. To return an item, the shopper places it back in the shipping tote for the U.S. Postal Service to pick up. Consumers can also collapse the bag and mail it back to Olive. The service is free for consumers; Olive makes money by taking a roughly 10 percent share of each retail order. Faust says consumers are willing to wait a few extra days for their orders if it means dealing with less waste, though analysts say that could be a difficult proposition given that services such as Amazon Prime have conditioned shoppers to expect just about anything to arrive within a day or two.   To that end, Faust says he is focused on apparel orders, which tend to be fragmented because consumers buy from a range of sites, all with their own delivery timetables and conventions. The segment also has the highest return rates in e-commerce, making it a particularly good fit for reusable packaging. “With apparel, there aren’t preconceived notions of when should some things how up like there is when you shop on Amazon,” he said, adding that the company plans to eventually expand into other categories, such as cosmetics, and add more advanced tracking and delivery information. “Even when you’re buying from the same retailer, one shirt might come right away. Another might take a week. Waiting an extra two or three days for us to bring everything to you — we think the majority of customers will prefer to take that delay for waste-free delivery and doorstep returns.” The more efficient online shopping becomes, the better environmental option it becomes to in-store shopping, said Matthews of Carnegie Mellon.   Delivery trucks can make more concentrated deliveries instead of boomeranging around town, he said, resulting in lower greenhouse gas emissions. Plus, a delivery truck that makes dozens of stops an hour is more efficient than individual shoppers driving to several stores for a handful of items at a time, he said. Retailers have also become more careful about packaging and box size, which has helped curtail waste. Amazon, which accounts for nearly 40 percent of the country’s online sales, said it has reduced packaging by 33 percent since 2015, eliminating more than 900,000 tons of packaging material, equivalent to 1.6 billion shipping boxes. (Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.) “Twenty years ago, if you ordered a book, it’d arrive in a big box with [Styrofoam] peanuts or bubble wrap,” Matthews said. “Nowadays it comes in very streamlined packaging, maybe even in a padded envelope, which means you don’t fill up trucks as fast.” When the pandemic hit last year, high-end shoe company Charix moved all of its business online. Sales boomed sixfold — but so did returns and exchanges. “We quickly realized e-commerce is very different from traditional retail,” said Suley Ozbey, who founded the D.C.-based company in 2015. “We’d get shoes back in boxes that we couldn’t use again, and it was piling up,” he said. “Our neighbors were complaining that we were taking up all of the dumpsters and we felt like, oh no, we’re throwing many good boxes.” He began looking for alternatives and found Boox, which offers brightly colored reusable plastic mailing boxes with a velcro-like fastener and don’t require packing tape. Ozbey pays about $2 per Boox, versus about 75 cents for a cardboard box, but said the investment has been worthwhile. Each plastic container can be used up to a dozen times before it’s recycled.   “There’s no clutter, there’s no trash,” he said. Boox, started six months ago by restauranteur-turned-entrepreneur Matthew Semmelhack, sells its reusable plastic mailing boxes to more than 30 specialty retailers, including Ren Skincare, Boyish Jeans and Curio Spice Co. It is nearing 50,000 shipments a month, with half of those boxes being returned by consumers. “The folding cardboard box was invented 120 years ago and hasn’t changed much since then,” said Semmelhack, 38, who lives in Petaluma, Calif. “But the way we receive packages and products has changed wildly over the last 10 or 20 years. And now with the pandemic, the number of products coming to our door has skyrocketed.” Each box can be reused about a dozen times, he said. Once returned, they’re quarantined for a week then cleaned using organic soap and water before being redeployed for more deliveries. Once the box is done for good, Semmelhack said the company works with a manufacturer that can break down the corrugated polypropylene into plastic flakes and be turned into more boxes more efficiently than cardboard recycling. Customers can return or exchange their products in the same box, or they can flatten it into an envelope and return it by mail to Boox for reuse. “The grand vision is to never throw a box away and never make a new one,” Semmelhack said. “But first we need to show that behavioral change is possible.”

Cécile Arnoux fait partie du Sourire de Laly, une association à but non lucratif située à Mornant et qui soutient les enfants handicapés. Invitée du Grand Direct ce mercredi 17 février, elle explique la mise en place d'une collecte de brosses à dents et de tubes de dentifrices vides.

Située à Mornant, l’association le Sourire de Laly aide trois enfants en particulier : Joris, Nolan et Laly. Cécile Arnoux est la maman de Laly, une petite fille de 8 ans atteinte du syndrome de RETT.

Seja uma voz que educa os consumidores e torna mais fácil para eles contribuir por meio de interações com sua marca. O Loop da TerraCycle é um bom exemplo de como tornar conveniente um estilo de vida sem desperdício. Ele fornece aos consumidores entrega gratuita de marcas familiares e produtos de empresas como P&G e Unilever.

Iniciativa engaja empregados da Aurora Alimentos para desafio sustentável. A unidade que arrecadar a maior quantidade de materiais será premiada com R$ 5 mil

TRENTON, N.J.—As companies move into 2021 and set new corporate goals for the year and beyond, the question on the lips of environmentally aware executives is, “How do you set sustainability goals that benefit the health and future of both the business and its customers without breaking the bank?” To help establish, implement, and meet these new sustainability targets—all within the corporate budget, TerraCycle Regulated Waste (TCRW), a commercial recycling solution provider that specializes in the collection and repurposing of complex regulated waste streams, has announced the new BulkPak Recycling Program. This new system allows companies the freedom of bulk freight recycling, with the convenience and affordability of the return-by-mail EasyPak service. Designed as an all-in-one, mixed pallet solution for numerous regulated waste streams. Customers simply select the EasyPak box assortment that best suits their needs and TCRW places all the required supplies on a pallet and ships it. Within seventy-two hours of ordering companies can provide a fully compliant regulated waste recycling program that allows for simple set-up, collection and storage. When full simply contact TCRW for fast, convenient pick-up. The following BulkPak Programs are now available:

• Universal Waste Program BulkPak—Designed for customers who want a fully compliant universal waste program. The pallet contains a starter kit with supplies along with prepaid freight shipping for a wide range of universal waste items including e-waste, fluorescent lights, batteries, and more.
• Lighting Retrofit Project BulkPak—Designed with busy contractors or facility managers in mind, this package offers a convenient solution for recycling lighting waste generated during LED conversion projects.
• Property Management BulkPak—Best suited for facilities with a goal of being “Waste Free.” This package offers recycling solutions for typically unrecyclable items that cannot be processed by municipal recycling centers, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) waste, coffee pods, cups, lids and stirrers, etc.
• BulkPak for Safety—Perfect for any business operating during the COVID-19 pandemic and looking for a recycling solution for PPE waste. Items collected include protective gloves, masks, and safety equipment.

“The new BulkPak Recycling program is a great opportunity for businesses to start 2021 on the right foot,” said Kevin Flynn, Global Vice President of TerraCycle Operations and Director of TerraCycle Regulated Waste. “Designed to meet and exceed the needs of busy managers and business owners, BulkPak gives them the power to implement a customized and streamlined recycling program so they can meet their sustainability goals without any of the high costs or headaches.” TerraCycle Regulated Waste created the EasyPak and BulkPak programs to help businesses facilitate the effective and compliant management of regulated, universal, and hazardous waste. All EasyPak boxes are UN-compliant and are sealed while in transit, limiting any possibility of contamination. Additionally, for added convenience, the EasyPak containers are available for purchase through a reorder subscription program ensuring that property managers are never left without a solution to their universal waste. To learn about TerraCycle Regulated Waste, visit www.lamprecycling.com.

The most common critique of luxury beauty is that we’re just “paying for the packaging”. The cream or lotion inside, so we’ve been told, is but a sliver of the total cost, and the inflated markup is thanks to the sophisticated pumps, nozzles and spatulas that dispense the product. Which is why the past few years have given rise to brands that have done away with the bells and whistles of traditional beauty packaging, offering potent formulations for a fraction of the price. This, combined with increased competition from independent disruptors, and growing demand for sustainability, has provoked a beauty packaging arms race between the world’s cosmetics giants. And in an industry that’s projected to grow to £131bn by 2025, there’s plenty at stake. Brands are increasingly keen to offer options to offset their plastic use – Deciem, Caudalie and L’Occitane all have in-store drop-offs in partnership with TerraCycle, which specialises in hard-to-recycle packaging and materials. And all accept recyclables from any beauty brand, not just their own.

As shopping from home grows, packaging waste is piling up. Loop offers an alternative: a delivery service for food and home goods that picks up used product packaging, then cleans and reuses it to eliminate trash. Earth911 talks with Heather Crawford, global vice president of marketing and e-commerce at Loop, about the company’s expansion into Canada. Loop now offers service in the U.S., U.K., and France. Its Loop Tote bag is dropped off and picked up by FedEx, and it will soon offer in-store Tote exchanges at Kroger, Walgreens, and Canada’s Loblaws locations. Crawford shares how Loop, which was launched by specialty recycling company TerraCycle, designs reusable packaging that can be repeatedly cleaned and refilled with products in order to reduce post-consumer waste. We also discuss the sustainability of online shopping and how, at scale, it can be more efficient than traditional bricks-and-mortar retail shopping. Loop is partnering with several grocery and drugstore chains to introduce in-store Tote pick-up and drop-off services. Both at-home and retail services are essential to reaching consumers who want to remove single-use packaging from their shopping list. Loop currently offers hundreds of product options and is expanding its partnerships with food and personal care brands to introduce more reusable product packaging. Take a few minutes to learn more at the U.S. Loop store, Canadian store, U.K. store, or the French store.

Loop launches online supermarket in partnership with Loblaws and big food brands Emily Chung, Alice Hopton, Tashauna Reid

  Loop, an online store selling well-known food brands in reusable, returnable containers, has partnered with Loblaws to put sustainably packaged groceries to the test in Canada. 2:07     An online store has launched in Ontario selling groceries and household items from Loblaws in containers it will take back and refill — a test of whether Canadian consumers are ready to change their habits. Industry-watchers say it is breaking ground for reusable packaging. The store, called Loop, launched in Canada on Feb. 1, in partnership with supermarket giant Loblaws, and offers items like milk, oats, ice cream and toothpaste for delivery in most of Ontario. Loop is already operating in the continental U.S., the U.K and France. Included so far are some products from well-known brands such as PC sauces and oils, Häagen-Dazs ice cream, Heinz ketchup, Chipits chocolate chips and Ocean Spray cranberries. "The goal is really validating that this is something the Canadian public is interested in," said Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of Loop and its parent company TerraCycle. Unlike existing small no-waste retailers, they want to offer "your favourite product at your favourite retailer in a reusable and convenient manner." The involvement of a huge retailer makes the launch notable in terms of scale and who it will reach, said Tima Bansal, Canada Research Chair in business sustainability at Western University in London, Ont. "I think it's at the scale that's needed to create the change in the community in Canada more generally," she said.

How it works for customers

Szaky likens Loop to the reusable bottle system for beer in Canada "but expanding it to any product that wants to play in the [North American] ecosystem." The ultimate goal, he said, is to give people a greener way to consume that limits the amount of mining and farming needed to produce packaging. "This allows us to greatly reduce the need to extract new materials, which is the biggest drain on our environment.   Nestle's stainless steel Häagan Dazs ice cream container designed for use with Loop cost a million dollars to develop, said Loop's founder. Customers have to pay a $5 deposit on the reusable container. (Chris Crane/TerraCycle/The Associated Press) Loopstore.ca currently lists just 98 products, although many are sold out or "coming soon." As with other online grocery stores, customers fill their virtual shopping cart, but in addition to the cost of the item itself, they pay a deposit for its container. That can range from 50 cents for glass President's Choice salsa jars like the ones that are normally at the supermarket to $5 for a stainless steel Häagen-Dazs ice cream tub. The items are delivered to a customer's home by courier FedEx for a $25 fee, although the fee is waived for orders over $50. Once you've spooned out all the salsa or ice cream or squeezed out all the toothpaste, the container doesn't go in the recycling bin. Instead, you toss them into the tote bag they came in — even if they're dented or damaged — and they get picked up.   When customers have emptied the reusable containers, they are supposed to put them back in the Loop tote for pick up, cleaning and refilling. (Kraft Heinz Canada/The Canadian Press) "What we're trying to achieve with Loop ... is similar to your recycling bin," Szaky said. "Your recycling bin doesn't care where you bought the package you're putting into it. It just cares that it is recyclable. And that's incredibly convenient." In the future, Loop hopes to also sell products in reusable packaging in their own section or aisle in the supermarket to "make reuse as easy as absolutely possible," Szaky said. And he expects customers will also be able to return the containers to participating stores.

How it works for manufacturers, retailers

It's Loop's job to manage the waste, Szaky said. All the used containers are sent to a facility where they get sorted, cleaned, and sent back to manufacturers who refill them. Manufacturers are required to design packaging that can be expected to survive being filled and refilled at least 10 times. "And if it one day breaks … then the materials have to be recyclable back into that same package," Szaky said.   Burger King plans to launch reusable packaging through Loop later this year, as does Tim Hortons. (Burger King/REUTERS) He noted that making the switch to reusable packaging isn't easy for manufacturers, who have to make big adjustments to their entire production process. "It's creating a blend of brand new supply chain on a product-by-product, country-by-country basis. So it is a behemoth task." For example, for Nestlé, developing a new Häagen-Dazs ice cream tub was "about a million dollar project — just that one package," Szaky said. But he added that 15 of the world's largest retailers and 100 major consumer product companies have signed up, and Nestlé has even invested in Loop. "The world's biggest organizations … are taking it very seriously," he said.   In France, where Loop launched earlier, products are also available in stores. For Canada, that is expected to come later. (Loop) In Canada, Loblaws is currently Loop's exclusive partner, but Tim Hortons and Burger King are expected to join later this year. For now, Szaky said, they want to make sure the packaging and products are what people want before scaling up to other retailers and provinces.

'The scale that's needed to create the change'

While a handful of small, zero-waste grocery stores have opened up across the country in recent years, up until now there haven't been any reusable packaging initiatives like this involving large grocery chains and food manufacturers. What's innovative with Loop, said Bansal, is that the would-be waste is moving back through the industrial production cycle. "That's really new. And at that scale, I think we can start to see changes in consumer behaviour." However, she noted there will be challenges, as consumers need to pay the deposits and form new habits. And she thinks change will come slowly. But eventually, she predicts consumers will start to demand reusable packaging. "I think what makes me really excited about the Loblaw-Loop partnership is that it's coming from industry," she added. "I have more hope with this than if it were a government-imposed solution." Laura Yates, a plastics campaigner with Greenpeace Canada, also thinks Loop is a positive development. "It's exactly the type of reuse and refill model that we need," she said. "It's really wonderful that big-name companies that have the resources to invest in developing this type of product delivery system are doing so." She added that once the system is proven, she thinks smaller companies will be able to get funding to develop similar systems. However, she said ultimately, reusable containers can't just be optional for those products. "If they truly want to commit and be a part of moving forward to real solutions, these options need to replace their product lines that are in single use containers and packaging.”