Do you have any old PopSockets or phone cases sitting around that you no longer use? PopSockets, maker of expandable phone grips, has partnered with recycling leader TerraCycle® to create a FREE recycling program for PopSockets products and packaging, as well as ANY brand of cellular phone case.     Through the PopSockets Recycling Program, consumers can now send in the following products and packaging to be recycled for free: ●           PopGrips® ●           PopMinis® ●           PopGrip® Slide ●           PopWallet® & PopWallet+ ●           PopChains® ●           PopSockets® PopMounts® ●           PopSockets® packaging ●           Otter + Pop Phone Cases ●           PopThirst® ●           PopGrip® Lips, PopGrip® Mirror & PopGrip® AirPods Holder ●           PopStation® ●           Any brand of cellular phone case Participation in the program is easy: simply sign up on the TerraCycle program page at https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/brigades/popsockets and mail in the accepted waste using a prepaid shipping label. Once collected, the waste is broken down, separated by material and the plastics are cleaned and melted into hard plastic that can be remolded to make new recycled products. Be sure to search around the TerraCycle site, because you would be amazed to find out the things you can have recycled instead of throwing them out.  

The company has partnered with PopSockets and The Clorox Co.’s Glad business in January to launch new recycling programs.   January 21, 2020   Trenton, New Jersey-based TerraCycle has announced it has entered into new partnerships with Boulder, Colorado-based PopSockets and Oakland, California-based The Clorox Co.’s Glad business this January to launch new recycling programs.   With PopSockets, which makes expandable phone grips, mobile tech and lifestyle accessories, TerraCycle is creating a free recycling program for PopSockets products, packaging and cellphone cases, TerraCycle reports in a news release on the partnership. As an added incentive, for every shipment of PopSockets sent to TerraCycle through the PopSockets Recycling Program, collectors earn points that can be used for charity gifts or converted to cash and donated to the nonprofit, school or charitable organization of their choice.   According to a news release from TerraCycle, through the PopSockets Recycling Program, consumers can now send in the following products and packaging to be recycled for free: PopGrips, PopMinis, PopGrip Slide, PopWallet and PopWallet+, PopChains, PopSockets PopMounts, PopSockets packaging, Otter + Pop Phone Cases, PopThirst, PopGrip Lips, PopGrip Mirror and PopGrip AirPods Holder, PopStation and any brand of cellular phone case.   TerraCycle reports that people can sign up for the program on its website and mail in the accepted waste using a prepaid shipping label. Once collected, the waste is broken down, separated by material and the plastics are cleaned and melted into hard plastic that can be remolded to make new recycled products. The PopSockets Recycling Program is open to any interested individual, school, office or community organization.   “Through the free recycling program, PopSockets is offering consumers a powerful, sustainable option to divert waste from landfills,” says TerraCycle CEO and Founder Tom Szaky. “By collecting and recycling items that are typically not recyclable, consumers are given the opportunity to think twice about what is recyclable and what truly is garbage.”   Also, TerraCycle has introduced recyclable food bags are now being integrated into TerraCycle’s Loop pilot program. Through this program, consumers can order products online and then receive and recycle the bags through a reusable steel container and return pouch. The partnership with Glad gives people convenient, in-home recycling for plastic bags, TerraCycle reports in a news release on that partnership.   “Glad’s purpose is to help consumers outsmart waste,” says Drew Kozlak, brand manager for Glad. “Offering responsible consumer product solutions is just one of the ways we’re committed to sustainability, so we’re really excited to explore this option that lets you easily recycle your food bags.”   The Glad brand’s participation in Loop advances The Clorox Co.’s packaging-related environmental, social and governance goals announced in October 2019 as part of its new IGNITE corporate strategy. As a signatory to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, the company has also pledged to pilot new business models and solutions like Loop that enable consumers to refill and reuse primary packaging.

The co-founder of Superette on finding her voice, striving for something different, and the waste of cannabis packaging.   AS TOLD TO ELIZA BROOKE  

Starting Superette could not be further from my upbringing.   I grew up in a very conservative family. Very tightly regulated, very strict. A lot of rules. I didn’t learn how to ride a bike until three years ago. My conservative parents didn’t let me ride one growing up. I was basically allowed to play piano and go to school and that was it.   Entrepreneurship was definitely not in my blood. But from university onwards, I really strived to be the opposite of how I was brought up.   Before university, I didn’t travel. My family does not explore much. I ended up going to Carleton University for international business, not because I wanted to be in business but because there was a one-year exchange program. I saw that as an opportunity to travel. I wasn’t really taking my education seriously when I first started, and I just thought, Hey, I can get out of the country because of school. I used that as an excuse.   I ended up spending a year based in Shanghai, and exploring all around China, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. I got my scuba diving license in Thailand. I probably spent a month cumulatively in Indonesia. I also joined a cover band in Shanghai. I played keyboard—I grew up playing piano. We had two singers: One from Kazakhstan, and the other from the US. The guitarist was from Indonesia, the bassist was from Thailand, and the drummer was from Russia—a very international group. It was so much fun.     I gained a lot of confidence in myself through travel. People who have known me since high school or elementary school will tell you that the person I became after my year in Southeast Asia compared to the person I was prior to that—completely different.   I used to be very quiet. I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t talk to many people. I had a really thick shell, and I wasn’t really willing to open up. If I was with a group of people and someone was like, “Where do you want to go for dinner?” I would never speak up. I would never say what I wanted. But during my time in Asia, I started looking at things differently. I told myself: This is temporary. If I end up pissing someone off, I’m not going to see them again, so I’m just going to focus on what I want to do.   I learned how to take initiative. I learned how to voice my opinion. I learned how to even just recognize what it was that I wanted. I’d fallen into the habit of thinking that whatever someone else wanted was always more important. But since then, I have been a lot better at being like, nope, this is better for me, or nope, this is what I want, or this is how I actually feel about the situation. I think that’s really important when you’re working with a team or you’re building relationships that will last a lifetime.   I did venture capital for eight months after school and then moved on to do investment banking for two years. That’s when I started following the legal cannabis space, with Trudeau coming into office and really pushing cannabis forward from a regulatory standpoint across the country.   It wasn’t an industry that I had considered previously. I didn’t know too much about it, outside of personal consumption. But I thought it was something different and undefined. That’s what gets me excited: Things that are not set in stone yet, that are still very fluid. That’s when we can be creative.   When I was looking at the cannabis space back in 2016, early 2017, most companies were focused on becoming cultivators for medical purposes. I thought that was cool, but it didn’t really speak to me. I ended up meeting a company called Tokyo Smoke. They were solely focused on building a brand, and building a connection with potential customers through adjacent industries prior to legalization. I jumped on board there and helped with their corporate strategy and strategic growth. That’s where I met my co-founder, Drummond Munro.       After Tokyo Smoke was acquired, Drummond and I were both presented with great positions within the new entity. We saw it as another job. A great job, but just another job. We thought, why not take this opportunity to bet on ourselves? So we left and started Superette.   At that point, there were a lot of cannabis retail concepts that focused on being luxurious and tech-forward, that really inclined towards that premium feeling. And then there were a lot of legacy head shop-types that were geared toward experienced consumers. We wanted to create something that was a little bit more fun, a little bit more accessible, and that could bring back a human connection.   I’ll paint the picture: You’re walking outside. It’s Wellington Street West in Ottawa. And then you see Superette. It’s a white corner placement. Really, really bright. You walk in and someone’s there to greet you at the door with a smile on their face. They ask to check for your ID to make sure you’re of age and on you go. You enter a large space that’s very akin to your local corner store and there’s a menu that has a list of the current product offerings in store, plus shelves, counters, and deli spaces all showcasing cannabis, cannabis accessories, and also educational pieces.   There’s a lot going on, but it’s very organized. Cannabis can be very confusing for people—they don’t know where to begin. But we try to set up the store so that whether you’re a new user or an experienced user, you can find the section that works for you. You can talk to someone if you want to, or you can not if you don’t want to. You can also just sit down and chill.     Our goal is to make sure you are empowered as a potential customer. There’s no forcing you to buy any products. We just want you to have a good time in the store. That’s the main goal. I want you to come away from our store feeling good.   When I was working in venture capital, day in, day out, I was interacting with entrepreneurs who were doing things in undefined markets and growing really quickly and just going for it. I think that’s what planted the seed for Superette. Wherever I go, I’m always asking, how can we make things better? How can we continue to improve? And what can we change to push the envelope? I realized it was really difficult to do that in traditional industries where there are set standards and expectations.   The voices for social justice in cannabis are much stronger in the U.S., perhaps because the impact has historically been larger. But there are certain groups in Canada that are working hard to push policy forward—groups like Cannabis Amnesty. There’s a general awareness that this space has to grow collaboratively and can’t shut the door on people who made the industry what it was. I think a focus on inclusion and the recognition of legacy participants is extremely important.     Last year, we focused on launching a large corporate social responsibility campaign for 2020. We’d been dedicating community service hours to groups across Ontario, like Ottawa Food Bank and Daily Bread, but then we started thinking: how can we make this a little bit bigger?   One thing people don’t realize is how extremely wasteful cannabis packaging is. Tweed, a cannabis brand, and TerraCycle, a waste management company in Canada, recently committed to taking cannabis packaging from retailers, cleaning it, melting it down to pellets, and reusing it. We wanted to hit two birds with one stone, so we launched a commitment to match every package returned to the store for recycling with a food can donation to the Ottawa Food Bank. We do a minimum commitment of 5,000 units a month. It’s a call to action for people to be a little more aware of what they should be doing after they’re done with the product. At the same time, it provides really meaningful benefits to Ottawa.   My parents are supportive of Superette in the sense that they’ve seen the press and recognition that we’ve received. But I don’t necessarily think they are supportive of the industry I’m in. I think for them, along with a lot of people in that generation, there still is an element of education that needs to take place—to say, “Hey, this is legal and this can be a safe product for you.” There are definitely many people in this world who are more supportive of me than they are, unfortunately.   I face imposter syndrome all the time. I spent most of my career behind a computer screen, but now I’m very front-facing. There’s this persona that I have to put on. I have to be positive and act like everything is good. But I do get frustrated. I do get stressed out. But I try to look at things from a different lens: This is a new experience. This is flexing me in new directions and giving me a skill set that I didn’t have before. Let’s just explore that. Using that as a framework, I’ve been able to learn so much.

BERLIN – Berlin will soon join the growing number of municipalities working to reduce pollution through cigarette butt recycling.   Thanks to a grant, the town has purchased 20 cigarette butt disposal canisters that could be installed as soon as this week. As they’re emptied, butts will be sent to TerraCycle, a company that offers free recycling.   “The beauty of it, it’s not your average butt collector,” said Ivy Wells, the town’s economic and community development director. “There’s a very easy cannister to unlock. We put them in a bag and box and mail them to TerraCycle. They recycle them.”   According to Wells, she applied for a Main Street Improvement grant from the Department of Housing and Community Development in May. She asked for funding to allow the town to buy new trash cans and recycling receptacles as well as butt disposal containers. The town learned it had received a $10,000 grant for the project in the fall.   Wells said the butt containers first caught her eye at a Main Street conference she attended.   “I met the manufacturer and learned about them,” she said.   Cigarette butt recycling has also been in the news, as Ocean City began efforts to collect and recycle butts in 2019. While Berlin doesn’t host the number of people Ocean City does, Wells said there was still a butt pollution problem. Prior to applying for the grant, she walked through town and photographed areas where cigarette butts tended to pile up. Those are the places she plans to have staff install the disposal canisters. Her department and the town’s public works team will coordinate efforts to ensure the canisters are emptied as needed.   “We will make sure it’s done,” she said.   Once the butts are collected, they’ll be mailed to TerraCycle, which provides free shipping and donates a dollar to the Keep America Beautiful Cigarette Litter Prevention Program for every pound of discarded cigarettes collected. According to the company’s website, waste collected through the program is recycled into a variety of industrial products while any remaining tobacco is recycled as compost.   As far as the new trash cans and recycling receptacles, Wells said they were currently under production. The stone colored cans will feature an embedded Berlin logo—the same one found on the town’s wayfinding signs.   “The town logo on these is embedded so it takes longer to produce them,” she said, adding that they’d be installed once they arrived.

The maker of the expandable phone grips barnacled to many people's smart phones has partnered with a waste management company to launch a national recycling program.   The PopSockets Recycling Program allows consumers to mail products to TerraCycle centers to earn points that can be used for charity gifts or converted to cash and donated to the non-profit, school or charitable organization of their choice, according to a news release.   The program accepts any brand of cell phone case, as well as all Popsockets products and packaging.   David Barnett, CEO and founder of Boulder-based PopSockets, said his company's mission is to create positive impact.   "That means taking responsibility for our products at every stage of their lifecycle," he said in a news release.   Once collected, products will be broken down and separated by material to be cleaned and melted into hard plastic usable for new recycled products.   Those interested may sign up at bit.ly/PopSocketsRecycling to receive a prepaid shipping label. 

There are three main options for decluttering your beauty collection the eco-friendly way — reselling, donating and recycling:   We have all the answers.   Where to Re-Sell Unwanted Beauty Products"Recommerce" has all but taken over the fashion industry, and the second-hand shopping trend is extending its influence into the beauty space, too; with sites like Poshmark, eBay and Glambot all allowing beauty products to be bought and sold via online platforms.   If all else fails, check out Reddit: The community content platform boasts Skincare Exchange and Makeup Exchange pages with tens of thousands of users, where you can share any item, new or used, with community members who may be willing to buy or swap products.   Share Your Beauty, an offshoot of the Family to Family organization, launched in 2014 with the help of beauty influencer Lara Eurdolian of Pretty Connected. The initiative distributes unopened, unused beauty and personal care products to "homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters and foster care agencies," according to Pam Koner, the Executive Director of Family to Family. The organization works directly with skin-care, makeup and hair-care brands, as well as industry influencers, to collect excess product; but it also accepts donations from the general public. "Individual donors can ship their beauty products to us or leave them at a drop off point in New York City," explains Koner.   The easiest option? Check in with local homeless and women's shelters in your area to see if they accept personal care drop-offs, and make a philanthropic pit-stop on your next lunch break.   As far as packaging goes, recycling is key. "Each year, more than 120 billion units of packaging contribute to one quarter of landfill waste, much of it produced by the global cosmetics industry," says Gina Herrera, the U.S. Director of Brand Partnerships at TerraCycle. "The complex plastics of squeeze tubes, cream tubs, eyeliner and mascara wands, body wash bottles and powder compacts can take over 400 years to break down in a landfill." That's exactly why TerraCycle exists. The national recycling program accepts virtually all makeup, skin-care and hair-care packaging — from bottles to pumps to trigger heads — and makes sure each piece gets recycled through the proper channels.

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.

PopSockets, maker of expandable phone grips, mobile tech, and lifestyle accessories has partnered with international recycling leader TerraCycle® to create a free recycling program for PopSockets products and packaging, as well as any brand of cellular phone case. As an added incentive, for every shipment of PopSockets waste sent to TerraCycle through the PopSockets Recycling Program, collectors earn points that can be used for charity gifts or converted to cash and donated to the non-profit, school or charitable organization of their choice.   “PopSockets’ mission is to create positive impact, and that means taking responsibility for our products at every stage of their lifecycle,” said David Barnett, PopSockets Founder and CEO. “Leveraging TerraCycle’s expertise, we’re aiming to recycle even more products than we create. We invite customers to recycle PopSockets merchandise and all cell phone cases through our PopSockets Recycling Program.”   Through the PopSockets Recycling Program, consumers can now send in the following products and packaging to be recycled for free:  

• PopGrips®
• PopMinis®
• PopGrip® Slide
• PopWallet® & PopWallet+
• PopChains®
• PopSockets® PopMounts®
• PopSockets® packaging
• Otter + Pop Phone Cases
• PopThirst®
• PopGrip® Lips, PopGrip® Mirror & PopGrip® AirPods Holder
• PopStation®
• Any brand of cellular phone case

  “Through the free recycling program, PopSockets is offering consumers a powerful, sustainable option to divert waste from landfills,” said TerraCycle CEO and Founder, Tom Szaky. “By collecting and recycling items that are typically not recyclable, consumers are given the opportunity to think twice about what is recyclable and what truly is garbage.”