JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — A program to recycle energy bar wrappers is ending in a Wyoming town known for outdoor sports and elsewhere.   After four years, a recycling center in Jackson will stop taking Clif Bar wrappers.   Clif Bar offered the recycling since 2008 through a partnership with TerraCycle, a company specializing in hard-to-recycle materials.   The company collected the wrappers to be melted down into hard plastic. It donated a penny per wrapper to the American Releaf Program, which plants trees in areas affected by wildfires, mining, development and other disruption.   The program raised about $500,000 from wrappers collected at 14,500 locations, according to its website.   The program required recycling workers in Jackson to sort through and throw out everything that wasn't a foil-lined energy bar wrapper, the Jackson Hole News & Guide reports.   The center needed to collect 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of wrappers before shipping them.   Clif Bar pledges on its website to create packaging that’s 100% “reusable, recyclable, or compostable” by 2025. The company did not respond to News & Guide requests for comment.

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — A program to recycle energy bar wrappers is ending in a Wyoming town known for outdoor sports and elsewhere.   After four years, a recycling center in Jackson will stop taking Clif Bar wrappers.   Clif Bar offered the recycling since 2008 through a partnership with TerraCycle, a company specializing in hard-to-recycle materials.   The company collected the wrappers to be melted down into hard plastic. It donated a penny per wrapper to the American Releaf Program, which plants trees in areas affected by wildfires, mining, development and other disruption.   The program raised about $500,000 from wrappers collected at 14,500 locations, according to its website.   The program required recycling workers in Jackson to sort through and throw out everything that wasn't a foil-lined energy bar wrapper, the Jackson Hole News & Guide reports.   The center needed to collect 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of wrappers before shipping them.   Clif Bar pledges on its website to create packaging that’s 100% “reusable, recyclable, or compostable” by 2025. The company did not respond to News & Guide requests for comment.

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — A program to recycle energy bar wrappers is ending in a Wyoming town known for outdoor sports and elsewhere.   After four years, a recycling center in Jackson will stop taking Clif Bar wrappers.   Clif Bar offered the recycling since 2008 through a partnership with TerraCycle, a company specializing in hard-to-recycle materials.   The company collected the wrappers to be melted down into hard plastic. It donated a penny per wrapper to the American Releaf Program, which plants trees in areas affected by wildfires, mining, development and other disruption.   The program raised about $500,000 from wrappers collected at 14,500 locations, according to its website.   The program required recycling workers in Jackson to sort through and throw out everything that wasn't a foil-lined energy bar wrapper, the Jackson Hole News & Guide reports.   The center needed to collect 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of wrappers before shipping them.   Clif Bar pledges on its website to create packaging that’s 100% “reusable, recyclable, or compostable” by 2025. The company did not respond to News & Guide requests for comment.

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — A program to recycle energy bar wrappers is ending in a Wyoming town known for outdoor sports and elsewhere.   After four years, a recycling center in Jackson will stop taking Clif Bar wrappers.   Clif Bar offered the recycling since 2008 through a partnership with TerraCycle, a company specializing in hard-to-recycle materials.   The company collected the wrappers to be melted down into hard plastic. It donated a penny per wrapper to the American Releaf Program, which plants trees in areas affected by wildfires, mining, development and other disruption.   The program raised about $500,000 from wrappers collected at 14,500 locations, according to its website.   The program required recycling workers in Jackson to sort through and throw out everything that wasn't a foil-lined energy bar wrapper, the Jackson Hole News & Guide reports.   The center needed to collect 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of wrappers before shipping them.   Clif Bar pledges on its website to create packaging that’s 100% “reusable, recyclable, or compostable” by 2025. The company did not respond to News & Guide requests for comment.

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) - A program to recycle energy bar wrappers is ending in a Wyoming town known for outdoor sports and elsewhere.   After four years, a recycling center in Jackson will stop taking Clif Bar wrappers. Clif Bar offered the recycling since 2008 through a partnership with TerraCycle, a company specializing in hard-to-recycle materials. The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports the company collected the wrappers to be melted down into hard plastic. It donated a penny per wrapper to the American Releaf Program, which plants trees in areas affected by wildfires, mining, development and other disruption.   The program raised about $500,000 from wrappers collected at 14,500 locations.

One of Teton County’s lesser-known recycling programs is saying sayonara.   Friday will be the last day for people to drop their Clif Bar wrappers at the recycling center. The sports bar company is ending its recycling program, which Teton County Integrated Solid Waste and Recycling has participated in for four years. Those who have gotten used to saving up their Clif packaging and foil-lined wrappers will have to find a new home for them at the end of this week.   “Everything’s going to have to go in the trash,” said Carrie Bell, Teton County Integrated Solid Waste and Recycling’s waste diversion and outreach coordinator.   Since 2008, Clif Bar has operated the program in partnership with TerraCycle, a company that specializes in recycling “hard-to-recycle materials.”   People could collect foil bar wrappers and packing materials manufactured by Clif and ship them to be melted down into hard plastic, which was used to make new recycled products. The company would donate a penny per wrapper to the American Releaf Program, which plants trees in areas affected by wildfires, pests and disease, as well as mining, development and forest clearing. The program raised $500,000 over the 12 or so years it operated, according to its website.   For the county the program was a bit of work. The recycling center needed to store about 50 pounds of wrappers before it could send them to TerraCycle. That took up a lot of storage. Shipping that quantity of wrappers happened three times in Bell’s tenure.   Recycling center workers also had to sift through the disposal box and throw out anything that wasn’t a foil-lined energy bar wrapper. Foil-lined medical waste and chip bags frequently found their way into the bin, but didn’t qualify.   “It was pretty time consuming on our end,” Bell said.   Still, she said, the program was consistent, which was a positive.   “We don’t want to open our door and close it frequently because we don’t want to send mixed messages by any means,” Bell said. “The energy bar wrapper program was great because it was a stable program for a long time.”   Now she wonders what will happen with Clif’s wrappers. One of the sustainable packaging pledges on the company’s website is to create packaging that’s 100% “reusable, recyclable, or compostable” by 2025.   Bell said she hadn’t seen much from Clif explaining how it would reach that goal. Its website is vague, and the company did not respond to the News&Guide’s requests for comment.   With the recycling program reaching its close, Bell questioned how wrappers, which will have to be thrown out for now, will affect the waste stream. If something is labeled as compostable, she said, but is not being composted, “it’s not really better than anything they had before.” And with recycling becoming more complicated, Bell wonders if creating a new formula for the wrappers would make it harder to recycle the packaging than before.   “I just want to make sure the direction they’re moving really is better than what they were doing before,” she said. “Prior to the change, these energy bar wrappers were actually being recycled and used to make more energy bar wrappers.”   Take your Clif and foil-lined bar wrappers to the Recycling Center by Friday so they can make it onto the final shipment to TerraCycle.   “Now is the time to bring them,” Bell said. After this week “they’re going to go in the trash.”  

Teton Valley Community Recycling regrets to inform recyclers who take advantage of our specialty recycling collections that one of our most popular TerraCycle recycling collections, the Clif Bar Foil Energy Bar Wrapper Recycling Program, will be closing nationwide at the end of February.   Over the past three years, TVCR, in partnership with Grand Targhee Resort has collected thousands of foil bar wrappers from community members which we send in for proper recycling. This particular TerraCycle program for “hard to recycle” waste was fully funded by CLIF Bar. The company not only paid for the processing and recycling of the material, but also shipping via UPS from our community. CLIF has decided to focus its efforts of developing fully compostable or recyclable packaging for all of their products by 2025 – no small task. We appreciate CLIF stepping up as a role model to other businesses to take responsibility for the packaging they produce. We hope more companies do the right thing and come up with better solutions for the packaging waste.   We will be replacing this collection with drawers to collect the tabs from aluminum cans (soda pop or beer tabs) to donate to the Ronald McDonald House fundraiser in Salt Lake City to help house families with children undergoing cancer treatments. This program has raised thousands of dollars already since 1997 and your old aluminum pop tabs can help.   No – Foil Energy Bar Wrappers. Yes – aluminum can tabs   Recycling opportunities are constantly fluctuating and we do our best to research and find worthwhile diversion programs that work for Teton Valley. We are sad to see this program end and we truly appreciate all of the diligent recyclers in our community who have brought us clean, sorted items to ship to the recycler. Thanks for participating. We will continue looking for package recycling options that are viable for our community and keep you updated. Follow TetonRecycling on Instagram, Facebook, or subscribe to our newsletter for regular updates. And don’t hesitate to email us with any questions or comments about waste and recycling in Teton County at tetonrecycling@gmail.com. The TVCR Foil Bar Wrapper Collection will officially be shut down on Feb. 20. Please bring all of your accumulated bar wrappers to put in the drawers at the Geo Center or at General Laundry in Victor no later than February 20. After that, all bar wrappers and foil packaging must go to the landfill, so please do not bring any more to our collection sites.

You’ve unwrapped them every time you’ve eaten a Clif Bar or other Clif products. The program was a partnership between Clif and TerraCycle. Globally, the program will end February 29 as Clif works to develop more sustainable packaging for its products.   After February 21, the collection bin at the Recycling Center will be removed. Until more is known about Clif Bar’s sustainable packaging, CLIF wrappers should be thrown in the trash.

Setting out for a backpacking trip and then stuffing your bag with energy bars and freeze-dried meals wrapped in plastic is one of the best examples of cognitive dissonance in outdoor recreation. Leave No Trace has preached “pack it out,” but then what? It comes out of the backcountry only to get tossed in with the billions of tons of plastic waste sitting in landfills or getting swept into oceans.   We are trashing our planet, and nature lovers are part of the problem. So where are all the green companies doing compostable packaging for backpacking food?   It turns out that revamping packaging systems is more complicated than people in the food industry realized when they first set out to tackle the issue. Even Patagonia Provisions—one of the outdoor industry’s leaders in sustainability efforts—is struggling. “You have to consider the producer of the product, the machinery they have, the waste-management end of it, and, in the case of food, the barriers the packages provide to keep the food safe,” says Birgit Cameron, Patagonia Provisions’ managing director.   Ever since Patagonia Provisions launched its fruit bars in 2015, it’s been working toward a compostable wrapper. The company is currently on the fourth iteration, and there are still problems. One issue is that the compostable film is just different enough from traditional wrappers that it slows down the manufacturer’s packaging equipment. “The texture and thickness work differently on the machines,” says Cameron. It doesn’t slip as seamlessly through the production line, and that means it takes longer to package the bars, which means the manufacturer has to charge more—since the process is holding up that production line. And price is important: sustainable food should not just be for the rich.   Then there are the other problems. When Kate Flynn left corporate America in 2017 to start Sun and Swell Foods, a snack-food company based in Santa Barbara, California, a big part of her goal was to run a responsible business. She formed Sun and Swell as a B Corp and signed on with 1% for the Planet, an organization of companies that have pledged to donate at least 1 percent of annual sales to environmental nonprofits. “But we were still contributing to the problem of single-use plastics,” she says. “About once a month, I’d  do these really aggressive Google searches, trying to find a solution.” Finally, TIPA Corp, a company based in Israel specializing in compostable packaging, popped up in her search results.   In March of 2019, Flynn committed to all-compostable packaging, intending to have her entire line wrapped in the material by the end of the year. That hasn’t happened. “What we learned is that there are so many more complexities than we ever knew. People think it just costs more, but really that’s the least of the concerns,” she says.   Sun and Swell’s biggest issue has been the life span of the wrappers. TIPA guarantees them for nine months. “But that’s [from] when it comes off the line at the printer. Our experience is that it has been a little less than nine months,” Flynn says. The packages have a little transparent window on them, and as the packages age, the window starts to get milky and look funky. Then, of course, customers are hesitant to buy them. “It turns into a food-waste issue,” she says.   And this is the thing about plastic that makes the whole debate so complicated: it’s been hugely helpful in reducing our global food waste—another massive driver of global emissions. Take, for example, grapes. When they’re packaged in plastic bags, their shelf life is 120 days. Left loose, their shelf life would be ten days. Until we can change our system so we’re more reliant on local food, plastic will be a necessary evil.     There’s also the fact that sealing up food is one great way to ensure that it is safe. When Ashley Lance started her vegan, eco-conscious backpacking meal business Fernweh Food Company last year, she really wanted it to be zero-waste. But Lance’s local USDA officer, who helped her get her products certified as safe to sell, wasn’t convinced that zero-waste sales could ever get the regulatory thumbs-up. “For the USDA to sign off on it, it has to be in an airtight, waterproof container,” she says. For local orders, she stores her company’s food in jars. But because jars are heavy and breakable, shipping them doesn’t make much sense for smaller companies like Lance’s.   Her work-around is shipping each item in reusable muslin bags. Those bags are then sealed into a compostable outer package, which satisfied the USDA. It’s not quite zero waste, but it’s as close as Lance feels she’s going to get with the current regulations. Of course, users can’t make their meals directly in the bags—they’ll need a pot. But Lance says most of her customers see that as a feature, not a bug. On the trail, she dumps her dinner into a reusable silicone bag and adds hot water. She keeps one for sweet things and one for savory in her pack. At the end of her trips, she has almost no plastic garbage to unload.   The fact that small companies like Fernweh and Sun and Swell are devoting themselves to this mission is great, but we really need systematic change. One current problem with compostable packaging is that “compostable” is a nebulous term. Things that compost quickly in an industrial system may take months in your backyard compost pile. And a lot of cities don’t offer compost pickup at all, so these wrappers just sit in landfills. “We have a waste system set up. The problem is that it isn’t quite working,” says Cameron.   Patagonia Provisions is actively looking at whether it can use its Tin Shed Ventures—the company’s venture-capital fund—to kick-start a system purpose-built for compostable wrappers. This might include building industrial composting facilities and encouraging manufacturers to invest in machines that seal compostable packages just as fast as plastic ones. “Like anything we do, being in a system fully so we can work on it to figure out how to change it is sort of what we’re up to,” says Cameron. And because Patagonia Provisions is large, it may be able to create a lucrative market for entrepreneurs making more eco-friendly packaging. “What often happens is that people start to adopt what we find,” she says.   In the meantime, a handful of outdoor brands are engaging with a recycling company called TerraCycle. Brands pay TerraCycle to collect and recycle wrappers and other hard-to-recycle stuff. Right now, Backpacker’s Pantry, Clif Bar, Gu, and Mountain House all participate. TerraCycle will send individual consumers an envelope that they can use to return their wrappers. Those become recycled plastic pellets, which can be melted down and reused. While this is definitely better than packaging going to a landfill, it’s not a perfect system, since it takes energy to melt and ship them. Still, it’s a good step for companies who want to move toward zero waste but are hesitant—or unable—to jump completely in.   But let’s hope that more companies adapt and move toward zero-waste practices sooner rather than later, so we can start enjoying our meals in the mountains without a side of guilt.