In 2018, the healthy meal-kit service Sun Basket swapped out their recycled plastic box-liner material for Sealed Air TempGuard, a liner made of recycled paper sandwiched between two sheets of kraft paper. Fully curbside recyclable, even when wet, it allowed Sun Basket to reduce its box size by about 25 percent and reduce the carbon footprint of shipping, not to mention reduce the amount of plastic in their shipment. Customers were pleased. “Kudos to your packaging folks for coming up with this concept,” one couple wrote in.

It was an admirable move toward sustainability, but the truth remains: The meal-kit industry is one of many e-commerce sectors that still rely on (a frankly astonishing amount of) plastic packaging — way more pieces than you would ever bring home from the grocery store. Normally, you might purchase one glass bottle of cumin that would last you for a few years. But in a meal kit, each teaspoon of spice and each dollop of adobo sauce comes in its own piece of plastic packaging, and this pile of plastic is repeated every single night you cook up one of their pre-packaged recipes. It’s impossible to miss.

Sun Basket, despite its earnest attempts to improve its environmental footprint, still has to ship perishable food products in plastic bags. “Proteins, such as meat and fish, come to us already packed from outside vendors, who use a layered combination of polystyrene and polypropylene,” Sean Timberlake, senior content marketing manager at Sun Basket, told me via email. “This is industry standard material designed to ensure maximum food quality and safety.”

This reliance on plastic is not unique to shipping food. E-commerce retailers can easily offer up cardboard boxes with recycled content, FSC-certified tissue paper, and soy-based inks, which can all be stuffed in the recycling bin. They can tie reusable cloth ribbons or twine onto their goodies and pack their glass or metal containers in mushroom-based packing foam and starch packing peanuts that melt in water. But there’s one thing that continues to bedevil even the most sustainably minded brands: low-density, polyethylene, #4 virgin plastic film bags, known in the industry as polybags.

I’m talking about the clear ziplock or branded plastic bags that all your online orders come in, from meal kits to fashion and all the little components for toys and electronics. Although they are made from the exact same material as plastic grocery shopping bags, polybags used in shipping haven’t yet come under the same widespread public scrutiny, nor have they been subject to bans or taxes. But they are definitely a problem.

The impossibility of plastic-free and zero-waste shipping

An estimated 165 billion packages were shipped in the US in 2017, and many of them had polybags inside, protecting the garments or electronic components or buffalo steaks. Or the packages themselves were branded poly shipping bags, with poly dust bags of clothing inside. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that US residents use more than 380 billion plastic bags and wraps yearly.

This wouldn’t be such a crisis if we actually took care of our waste, but a lot of this plastic — 8 million tons a year — goes into the ocean, where researchers aren’t sure when, or even if, it will truly biodegrade. More likely it will just break into smaller and smaller toxic bits, which (despite being microscopic) are getting harder and harder for us to ignore. In December, researchers discovered that 100 percent of baby sea turtles have plastic in their stomachs. Microplastics have been found in tap water around the world, the majority of sea salt, and — on the other side of the equation — human poop.

Polybags are technically recyclable (and so are not, for example, on Nestlé’s “Negative List” of materials they plan to phase out of their packaging) and many states now mandate that grocery and convenience stores provide a bin for customers to return used plastic bags. But in the US, nothing gets recycled unless there is a business willing to purchase the recyclable material. Virgin plastic bags are so cheap, at 1 cent per bag, that old (often contaminated) ones are rumored to be worthless; they just get trashed. And that was before China stopped accepting our recyclables in 2018.

The burgeoning zero-waste movement is one response to this crisis. Adherents strive to send nothing to the landfill by reducing their purchases; recycling and composting everything they can; using and carrying reusable containers and utensils with them wherever they go; and patronizing businesses that provide package-free options. When one of these conscious consumers orders something from a supposedly sustainable brand and receives it in a polybag, it can be deeply frustrating.

”Just received an order from you and the items were wrapped in plastic bags,” a commenter responded to Everlane’s Instagram post promoting its “No New Plastic” guides.

In a 2017 survey by Packaging Digest and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, packaging professionals and brand owners said that the questions they were most asked by consumers were a) why their packaging isn’t sustainable, and b) why they have too much packaging.

Which is sort of the same thing.

Would you like a bag with that?

From my conversations with brands large and small, I gleaned that most overseas consumer product factories — and all garment factories — from tiny sewing workshops to giant 6,000-person factories, ship finished products in plastic polybags of their choosing. Because if they don’t, the goods wouldn’t make it to you in the condition that you require.

”What consumers don’t see is the flow of the garments through the supply chain,” says Dana Davis, VP of sustainability, product & business strategy at the fashion brand Mara Hoffman. Mara Hoffman garments are manufactured in the US, Peru, India, and China. “When they are finished, they need to go to a trucker, to a loading dock, to another trucker, a shipping container, and then to a trucker. There is no way around using something that is water repellent. The last thing that somebody wants to receive is a shipment of clothing that is damaged and becomes waste.”

So, if you don’t receive a polybag with your purchase, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there before, just that someone probably took it off before your goods got to you.

Even Patagonia, a company that is famously vocal about environmental issues and has been selling clothing made from recycled plastic bottles since 1993, currently ships its garments individually wrapped in polybags. Elissa Foster, Patagonia’s senior manager of product responsibility, has been diligently working on this problem since before 2014, when she published the results of Patagonia’s case study around polybags. (Spoiler alert: They’re necessary.)

“We’re a pretty big company, and we have a complicated conveyor belt system at our distribution center in Reno,” she says. “It’s literally a rollercoaster ride for the product. They go up, they go down, they go flat, and they do three-foot drops. We have to have something that protects the product.”

Polybags truly are the best at this job. They are lightweight, effective, and cheap. Plus (and you may find this surprising) in life-cycle analyses that measure environmental impacts over the entire life of a product, plastic bags have lower greenhouse gas emissions than paper bags. But when you’re looking at what happens when your packaging lands in the ocean — dead whales, asphyxiated sea turtles — well, plastic can seem pretty evil.

What can an eco-friendly brand do?

This last consideration for the ocean is the most important for United by Blue, an outdoor apparel and camping brand that promises to remove one pound of trash from oceans and waterways for each product sold. “It’s industry standard to ship everything with polybags for quality control and reduce contamination, but it’s terrible for the environment,” says Ethan Peck, United by Blue’s PR associate. They handle this inconvenient truth by switching their e-commerce orders from the factory-standard polybags to 100 percent recycled content kraft envelopes and boxes printed with eco-friendly, VOC-free ink before they ship to customers.

When United by Blue had their own distribution center in Philadelphia, they sent the used polybags to the catch-all mail-in recycling service TerraCycle. But when they moved distribution to a professional third-party logistics service in Missouri, the distribution center didn’t follow their instructions and customers started receiving polybags in their packages. United by Blue had to issue an apology and hire additional hands to oversee the shipment process.

Now, with the glut of used polybags in the US, the waste management service that handles the fulfillment center’s recycling is warehousing polybags until they can find someone who wants to buy them.

Patagonia’s own stores and wholesale partners take the product out of the polybags, stuff the polybags into shipping cartons, and ship them back to their Nevada distribution center, where they are pressed into four-feet cubed bales and shipped to the Nevada location of Trex, which turns them into recycled decking and outdoor furniture. (It seems that Trex is the only US businessthat actually wants these things.)

But what about when you take a polybag off your order? “The direct-to-customer, that is the challenge,” Foster says. “That is the piece where we don’t know exactly what happens.”

Ideally, customers would take used e-commerce bags, along with their bread bags and grocery bags, to their local grocery store, which often has a collection point for them. In practice, they often try to stuff them in their plastic recycling bin, which gunks up the machinery at the recycling plant.

Rental brands, which have a loop of clothing going out to customers and back again, like ThredUp, For Days, and Happily Ever Borrowed, use reusable cloth packaging from a company like Returnity Innovations. But getting customers to volunteer to ship empty used packaging back for proper disposal has proved nearly impossible.

For all the above reasons, Davis, Mara Hoffman’s sustainability VP, looked into compostable bags made of plant material when Hoffman decided to turn her whole fashion collection sustainable four years ago. A top challenge was the fact that most of Mara Hoffman’s business is in wholesale, and large retailers are notoriously picky about the packaging that items arrive in. If brand products arrive in packaging that doesn’t follow the retailer’s exact rules on labeling and size — which vary from retailer to retailer — the brand will be charged a fee.

The Mara Hoffman office volunteered at a New York City composting center so they could identify any problems at the outset. “When you are working with a compostable bag, you also have to think about all the components that go onto the bag: the ink — you have to print the suffocation warnings in three languages — it needs a sticker or tape. The challenges of finding a compostable glue were crazy!” She saw in the community composting center that the fresh, beautiful dirt is filled with fruit stickers. “Imagine a big brand slapping stickers on them, and this composted dirt is full of these stickers.”

For Mara Hoffman’s swimwear line, she found compostable bags with a zip closure from an Israeli company called TIPA. The composting center verified the bags are actually backyard compostable, meaning if you put it in a compost pile, it will disappear in less than 180 days. But the minimum order was too high, so she sent out an email to every single person she knew in the industry (including me) asking if they knew any brands that would be interested in going in with them on an order. With the help of the CFDA, a few other brands onboarded the bags. Stella McCartney announced in 2017 that they were also switching to compostable bags by TIPA.

The bags, which have a shelf life of a year, are double the price of plastic polybags. “Cost has never been the thing that has stopped us from moving forward. When we made this shift [to sustainability] we knew we would be taking the hit on our end,” Davis says.

If you ask consumers, half of them will tell you that they will pay more for sustainable products, and half of them will also tell you they check product packaging before purchase to ensure the brand is committed to a positive social and environmental impact. Whether that is in fact true in practice is debatable. In that same sustainable packaging survey I mentioned before, respondents said they just can’t get consumers to pay a premium price for sustainable packaging.

It took a year of research for the team at Seed, a microbiome science company that sells a combined probiotic and prebiotic, to find a sustainable bag for sending monthly refills out to customers. “Bacteria are incredibly sensitive — to light, heat, oxygen ... even trace amounts of moisture can be degrading,” co-founder Ara Katz told me by email. They finally chose a shiny home-compostable oxygen- and moisture-protection pouch by the company Elevate, made from bio-based raw materials, housed inside a non-GMO US-grown cornstarch-foam padded mailer by Green Cell Foam. “We pay a premium for packaging, but we’re willing to make that sacrifice,” she says. She’s hoping that other brands can pick up the packaging they pioneered. Happy customers have mentioned Seed’s sustainability to other consumer brands like Warby Parker and Madewell, who have contacted Seed to learn more.

Patagonia looked at bio-based or compostable bags, but their main issue was the tendency for customers and employees alike to put compostable plastic-like products in with the regular plastic recycling. “By keeping all our bags the same, we’re not contaminating our waste stream,” Foster says. She points out that “oxo” packaging products, which claim to be biodegradable, just break down into smaller and smaller pieces in the environment. “We would not want to support those types of degradable bags.”

So, they decided on plastic polybags made with recycled content. “The way our system works is you have to scan a tag that has a barcode through the bag. So we had to work hard to identify a 100 percent recycled content bag that is clear.” (The more recycled content a bag has, the milkier it can be.) “We’ve tested all the bags, making sure they don’t have some weird content that would cause some discoloration on the product, or tear.” She says the price isn’t too much higher. They had to ask their 80-plus factories — all of which produce for multiple brands — to specially order these polybags just for them.

Starting with their Spring 2019 line, which hits stores and the website February 1, all the polybags will have somewhere from 20 percent to 50 percent certified post-consumer recycled content. Next year, they will be 100 percent post-consumer recycled content.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a solution for food companies. The FDA prohibits plastic food packaging with recycled content unless a company gets special permission.

The entire outdoor apparel industry, which serves customers especially attuned to plastic waste, has been experimenting with various approaches. There are water-soluble bags, sugar-cane bags, reusable mesh bags, and prAna even ships bag-free by rolling its apparel and tying it with raffia paper ribbon. It’s notable, however, that none of these individual experiments have been taken up by several companies, so there’s been no silver bullet found yet.

Linda Mai Phung, a long-time French-Vietnamese sustainable fashion designer, has a unique overview of all the challenges inherent in eco-friendly packaging. She co-founded an ethical streetwear/cycling label Super Vision and works out of an office above a small ethical denim factory in Ho Chi Minh that her co-founder, Marian von Rappard, owns, called Evolution3. The team at Evolution3 also acts as a middleman for mass-market brands looking to put in orders to Ho Chi Minh factories. In short, she’s involved in the entire process from beginning to end.

 

 Linda Mai Phung

 

She was so keen on using sustainable packaging that she put in an order for 10,000 (the minimum) biodegradable shipping bags made of cassava starch from Wave, a fellow Vietnamese company. Von Rappard talked to the mass-market brands Evolution3 works with, trying to convince them to go in on the order with them, but they declined. The cassava bags are 11 cents per bag, where a normal polybag is only a penny.

“What the big brands told us … is that they really needed the [pull-off closure] tape,” Phung says. Apparently, the extra steps to fold the bag and pull the biodegradable sticker from a sheet and put it on top to close the bag add up to a lot of time lost when you’re talking about thousands of pieces. And the bag is not even fully sealed, so moisture could potentially get in. When Phung asked Wave to develop a closure tape, they said they couldn’t retrofit their manufacturing machine.

Phung knows they’ll never use up the 10,000 Wave bags they ordered — the bags have a three-year shelf life. “We asked how we could keep them longer,” she says. “And they said, ‘You can wrap them in plastic.’”

TerraCycle, a Trenton-based company that specializes in finding uses for hard-to-recycle waste, is trying to remove trash from the equation altogether with a new program called “The Loop.” It’s a more advanced take on the old “milkman” idea, in which products are delivered and empty containers returned to be re-used. The Loop delivers products like toothpaste, detergent, and mayonnaise to consumers’ homes via UPS. But instead of being in their usual disposable packaging, Loop products are in re-usable containers. And the deliveries come not in a cardboard shipping box, but in a re-usable tote. When customers are done with the product, they put the empty container back in the tote and leave it on their doorstep for shipment back to TerraCycle, which sends the customer a replacement product right away. In some cases, customers can take empties back to a store instead of shipping.   The consumer also pays a small deposit for the sturdy container, which they get back if they choose not to have it refilled. TerraCycle is partnering in the experimental program with brands like Tide, Crest, Pantene, Axe, Dove, and others. Major manufacturers of consumer products, such as Unilever, are looking at the Loop as an experiment to see whether consumers will buy in to the idea.   The pilot program is launching in northern France and the New York area, including parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, this May. The company plans to expand to other cities beginning later in 2019. To sign up and shop for an initial list of 300 products, visit www.loopstore.com. TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky discussed the Loop at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this month. “As a response to the global challenge in managing waste and the opportunity to improve consumers’ experience, a group of committed global brands, retailers, and infrastructure companies, along with the World Economic Forum have come together to create a new way to more responsibly consume products,” Szaky said. “Loop will not just eliminate the idea of packaging waste, but greatly improve the product experience and the convenience in how we shop. Through Loop, consumers can now responsibly consume products in specially designed durable, reusable, or fully recyclable packaging made from materials like alloys, glass, and engineered plastics. When a consumer returns the packaging, it is refilled, or the content is reused or recycled through groundbreaking technology.” Terracycle says the Loop relies on technology developed by TerraCycle and its partners. The program is managed by TerraCycle. To participate, partner companies had to pay TerraCycle and also invent new types of container, aiming to meet TerraCycle’s goal of surviving at least 100 uses. One of the more advanced containers is Haagen-Dazs’ cream cooler, which can keep ice cream frozen for a day and a half. Although the Loop is currently a standalone website, Szaky hopes to integrate it into Amazon and get it onto store shelves. Its overseas partners include the French grocery giant Carrefour and British chain Tesco.

Plastic in and of itself isn’t to blame for the world’s waste problem. Rather, it's the way we use it. Companies send products and packaging into the world that are designed to be disposable — used just once, then thrown away — and consumers demand the convenience, accessibility and price points of single-use plastic items. Everyday examples include consumer product packaging or consumables, such as food and beverage and household goods, and disposable and single-use products, such as cleaning pads, coffee capsules and eating utensils. E-commerce is made possible with plastic, and manufacturing logistics and operations have come to depend on it. Inexpensively made, disposable plastic offers consumers the ability to purchase, use and toss, instead of repair or reuse, and at a lower cost than their durable counterparts. As a result, people own more things than ever before and easily can replace them, allowing consumers to buy again and again and again.

One (use) and done

Disposability is favored over durability in the global economy because it drives consumption. Many disposable items are lightweighted (made with less material or out of plastic instead of metal or glass), supporting mass production and increasing profits for manufacturers. The trade-off is that most examples of lightweighted and disposable items are considered unrecyclable in most consumer programs. Every step away from durable, reusable materials towards plastics and multi-compositional pouches and films effectively has cut recyclability in half. Producer efforts to instate reclamation systems and collection schemes to supplement and invest in recycling have not been developed at a comparable rate.  

Disposability is favored over durability in the global economy because it drives consumption.

Even the ubiquitous water bottle, thrown away in the United States at a rate of 60 million plastic water bottles every day,  often ends up in the garbage despite being considered recyclable.   Thus, single-use items are at best captured by well-managed disposal systems of landfilling and incineration. The rest of it ends up as litter, polluting communities where people live and contaminating the natural world. This systematic tracking of human-made material — material that cannot be absorbed by nature — on a one-way path to disposal is where plastic becomes problematic.

Who pays the cost for disposable plastics?

The linear, take-make-dispose economic model has delivered profits, created jobs and met consumers’ desire for accessible, innovative and convenient products. But it is not sustainable. Developing economies with a lack of waste management are most deeply awash in trash. That we might see more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050 is old news in light of the recent United Nations report that says we only have 12 years to steer ourselves away from climate catastrophe. It is today’s consumers, not producers of these disposable items, who bear the brunt of this waste. Making their way into marine environments, plastics never fully degrade, leaching chemicals, releasing greenhouse gases and breaking down into microplastics, which are mistaken by animals for food and thus penetrate the human food chain and water supplies.

Material of value

But again, plastic isn’t the bogeyman. While its single-use, disposable configurations lend value to businesses externalizing the environmental, social and financial costs, it has infused immense value to industry as a whole — an enabler for the packaging, construction, transportation, health care and electronics sectors. The idea that plastic, or any material for that matter, is disposable is what is causing problems. Plastic was once considered an expensive material and used to produce high-value items. Prior to World War II, products were repaired and consumables refilled in durable containers through service models such as the milkman. By the time the war ended, a matured plastics industry was freed up to create a culture of consumerism and feed a new disposable economy.  

Plastic can be made for reuse and can exist in a circular economy, as can glass, treated paper, lab-grown leather and 3D-printed produce.

Waste and disposability has been around only a bit more than 70 years. Is the world ready to go back to reusable packaging? Consumers are used to the convenience and cost of disposable, single-use packages.   Bulk and refilling stations that use reusable plastic, stainless steel and glass containers either provided by the retailer or the consumer do exist today, and they work best when consumers are incentivized to use them with discounts and promotions. But business must be on board for such systems to work. Bottle bills and container deposit schemes provide evidence that reusable, returnable packaging configurations work to change the perception that resources are disposable. Today the 10 U.S. states with bottle bills boast a 70 percent average recycling rate, compared with an overall rate of 35 percent. The challenge is that bottle bills not only are not growing but declining due to pressure from industry.

The role of business: moving the needle

Moving away from disposability and towards durability is the key to reducing waste and designing a more sustainable economy. Industry holds this key. It is the role of business to be a reflection of the needs and desires of consumers, who want access to the quality products and services they trust and, while they are at it, want to do the right thing. Companies that understand this and are able to make it easy for consumers tap into an increasingly conscious consumer base and are poised to grow and profit by doing the opposite of their counterparts stuck in the linear economy. This shift is already taking place. The biggest consumer product companies in the world have taken the initiative to lead us into a circular economy by working with TerraCycle to develop the global, first-of-its-kind shopping system called Loop. Through this service, consumers can shop for iconic and trusted brands such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, PepsiCo, the Clorox Company, The Body Shop, Preserve and more — redesigned to be smarter and waste-free. This model features durable, elegant packages owned by the brand, not the consumer, that deliver the world’s favorite products without sacrificing the convenience and affordability that make disposable products desirable, with the added value of delivery and refilling services. The aim is to make products even easier to buy and use, harkening back to the circular systems worked for us for millennia. Through Loop, consumers responsibly can consume products in specially designed durable, reusable or fully recyclable packaging made from materials such as alloys, glass and engineered plastics — plastics researched and developed to be life-resistant, beautiful and far from disposable — saving energy, resources and diverting pollution with every use. Changing perspectives around the value of our finite resources and the impact waste has on the planet can start with plastic. Plastic is valuable and worth capturing for recycling. It is useful and malleable enough to design for durability and certainly worth conserving. Plastic can be made for reuse and can exist in a circular economy, as can glass, treated paper, lab-grown leather and 3D-printed produce. Everything on this planet has value, even the human-made stuff. Consumers vote with their wallets every day for the future they want, and it’s up to companies and brands to spearhead the change they can buy into.

TerraCycle Founder and CEO Tom Szaky published his fourth book, “The Future of Packaging: From Linear to Circular,” which will be available starting Feb. 5. Additionally, Late July Snacks expanded its partnership with TerraCycle to offer free recycling for its entire snack product line.

Gavin was one of only 20 students in the United States selected to participate in Stanford’s inaugural China Scholars Program, an online course that is part of SPICE (Stanford Program on International and Cross-cultural Education). The Agnes Irwin senior is currently taking French V Honors and has earned distinctions on two national French contests. A passionate vegan, Gavin is a co-head of the upper school’s ECO board and co-founded the Sustainable Living Club. Last spring, Gavin was chosen by the AIS faculty for the George Washington University book prize for “a high school junior who embodies the George Washington drive and spirit, specifically with her academic excellence, leadership outside of the classroom, diversity of thought, and ability to put knowledge into action.” Gavin has participated in Model UN and served as an AIS tour guide to prospective families, especially for visiting Chinese families. She writes for Frenish, Agnes Irwin’s combination French/Spanish literary magazine. Q: Tell us a little about your trip to China last March on Agnes Irwin’s inaugural China exchange program, during which you and two other AIS students attended school and stayed with families in Chongqing, in addition to traveling to Beijing and Shanghai. What was the most memorable part of the trip? What was the most interesting thing you learned while over there? A: The China exchange program has been one of my favorite AIS experiences thus far. I became very close with my exchange student Zoe (张宇婷), and we still stay in contact via WeChat. Zoe’s family lives three hours from her high school, so she lives at school and typically sees her family once every two to three months. During the week, we attended classes while staying with one of Zoe’s classmates and her family, then traveled to Zoe’s family home for the weekend. My favorite part of the trip was the hospitality I received, not only from Zoe and her family, but also from her classmates and teachers. I also loved getting to see some of the essential Chinese landmarks — from Tiananmen Square in Beijing, to walking the Great Wall, to shopping in Shanghai, all of which allowed for me to have authentic interactions in the Chinese language. Q: What has been the most interesting thing you have learned through the China Scholars Program? A: During the China Scholars Program, I participated in several video conferences on a multitude of subjects, varying from the infamous one-child policy to pop culture. The subject I found most intriguing, however, was recycling in China. As an environmentalist and co-head of our school’s ECO board, I advocate for recycling, but I was never really sure what the process truly entailed. During the course, I learned about recycling farms in China where families, often with small children, perform brutal physical labor for a menial wage. The complicated process made me understand why it is so important, not only for the planet, but also for others, to reuse products as much as possible before recycling. Q: Tell us a little about the purpose of the Sustainable Living Club and some of its activities in promoting environmentally friendly initiatives and veganism. A: My greatest passion is environmentalism, specifically how diet affects the planet. After learning about the urgency of climate change, I was moved to join our school’s environmental board (ECO), which I now co-head. One of my goals this year was to establish a TerraCycle system in the school cafeterias, allowing students and faculty to recycle snack bags and drastically reducing the amount of garbage sent to the landfill. A second major focus is working with other area schools to collaborate on larger projects; we hope to participate in Earth Hour (a global movement where everyone turns off the lights for an hour to draw attention to global warming) and to organize a conference where we can talk about our ideas and help students interested in creating an environmental group at their own school do so. Although ECO does a lot, I felt like we could do more to raise awareness of the effects our everyday actions have on the planet. Thus, my friend and I created the Sustainable Living Club to promote small changes in day-to-day life — such as turning off the lights or going vegan — that will ultimately create a more environmentally friendly world. We work to promote vegan diets by fighting the negative stigma surrounding veganism. I seek to inform others about veganism, but I’m not militant about it. Most recently, we held a workshop during AIS’s CommUnity in Action Day where we talked about sustainable living with people interested in learning more. Q: What has been your favorite article that you have written for Frenish? A: I began taking French as a freshman at AIS. Since then, my language skills have progressed quite a bit. This summer, I spent a month in Rennes, France, as part of a language intensive program, attending classes at the University of Rennes 2 and completing a homestay. When I came home, my language skills had developed to the point that Agnes Irwin’s French program allowed me to skip French IV, and I am now in French V Honors. As a member of Frenish, I have had the opportunity to write articles on censorship in China, the “butter crisis” in France last fall and most recently on Michelle Obama, one of my personal role models. Q: What is your favorite course at Agnes Irwin, and why? A: My favorite AIS course is Chinese; I am now in Mandarin III Honors. The course not only immerses us in the language but also in Chinese culture as a whole. From learning and performing Tai Chi fan dance to eating moon cakes, we are always doing something new and fun that involves Chinese culture. The class is only four students, so we have become really close — since they’re juniors, I’ll miss them when I head off to college in the fall!

NEW YORK, Jan. 30, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Waste360, the leading information, event, commerce and education provider to the solid waste, recycling and organics communities, today unveiled its fourth annual 40 Under 40 awards list. The program recognizes inspiring and innovative professionals under the age of 40 whose work in the waste, recycling and organics industry has made a significant contribution to the industry. The winners are involved in every part of the waste and recycling industry, including haulers, municipalities, composters, recycling professionals, policymakers and product suppliers. "The 2019 class of Waste360 40 Under 40 awards winners is filled with today's young innovators, thinkers and doers in the waste and recycling industry. Their diverse body of work has changed processes, policies and moved our industry forward," said Mark Hickey, vice president of Waste360. “We received hundreds of inspiring nominations, which demonstrates that the future of our industry is bright. We look forward to celebrating with the winners at WasteExpo this spring.” The 2019 40 Under 40 awards winners (in alphabetical order by winner) are: Josh Bartlome, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Southern Idaho Solid Waste Kelly Bray, Waste Reduction and Recycling Specialist, ReCollect Systems Meghan R. Butler, Director, Corporate Development, Recology Inc. Chris Cochran, Executive Director, ReFED Daniel M. Dodd, Chief Technology Officer, Sierra Energy Melissa Filiaggi, Manager, Recycling, Maryland Environmental Service Mark Grillo, Chief Operating Officer, Medical Waste Management, Inc. Rob Hallenbeck, Manager Corporate Venturing, Technology Scouting, Waste Management Caitlin Hitt, Senior Director of National Accounts, RiverRoad Waste Solutions, Inc./Rubicon Global John F. Howard III, Crew Supervisor, DeKalb County Sanitation Sheri Hummel, Area Safety Director, Waste Management, Northern California-Nevada Aaron Johnson, Area Vice President, Eastern Canada, Waste Management Kristin Kinder, Director of Research and Waste Stream Sustainability, Wastequip Jason Knowles, Director, Vendor Relations, Enevo Christopher Lockwood, Divisional Vice President, Waste Pro USA Ricardo Lopez, Materials Recovery Facility Manager, GreenWaste Recovery Naomi Lue, Zero Waste Supervisor, Castro Valley Sanitary District Zach Martin, Vice President of Sales, North America, Big Truck Rental Nathan Mayer, Director of Land Management Services, Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County Doug McDonald, Eastern Region Controller, Waste Connections Amanda Mejia, Government Affairs Manager, Athens Services Jeff Meyers, Chief Operating Officer, The Recycling Partnership Jennifer Wells Milner, State Recycling Coordinator, Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality James R. Mitchener, Marketing Manager, Waste Industries Daniel Moran, Senior Director Operations, Healthcare, Covanta Environmental Solutions Madelyn Morgan, Planner III, City of Austin, Austin Resource Recovery Jake Pack Jr., District Manager, WCA Waste Corporation Tania Ragland, Recycling Representative, Specialist in Food Recovery and Organics Diversion Programs, Republic Services Katie Raverty-Evans, Government Affairs Representative, Best Way Disposal Henry Retamal, Operations President, Wastequip Rebecca Rodriguez, Solid Waste Engineering Manager, Lee County Public Utilities Andrew Rumpke, East Area President, Rumpke Waste & Recycling Michelle A. Salas, President, Lady Green Miami Recycling Co. Meredith Sorensen, Strategic Communications Advisor, Harvest Energy Holdings, LLC Mike Stoeckigt, District Manager, State of Wisconsin, Advanced Disposal Services Tom Szaky, President and Chief Executive Officer, TerraCycle Travis Timmerman, National Accounts Manager, Mack Trucks, Inc. Srividhya Viswanathan, Senior Project Manager and Vice President, SCS Engineers Patrick Winters, Sales Manager, Winters Bros. Waste Systems Catherine (Kate) Wolff, President, CJD E-Cycling   Additionally, Dr. Matanya Benasher Horowitz, chief executive officer of AMP Robotics Corporation, has won the first Waste360 Innovator Award, which was created to recognize innovators and forward thinkers who often use technology to better the industry. Horowitz has used technology to help haulers, landfill operators and materials recovery facility operators reach their diversion and recovery goals. A panel of expert judges from Waste360 evaluated the nominations and consulted with an external advisor to select the finalists and winners. The winners will be honored during an awards ceremony on Tuesday, May 7 at WasteExpo, North America's largest solid waste, recycling and organics industry event, May 6-9, 2019, in Las Vegas. WasteExpo brings the key buyers and decision makers in the waste, recycling and organics industry together, making it the ideal place for Waste360 to recognize these rising stars. For more information and to register to attend WasteExpo, please visit WasteExpo.com.  

At the end of every school year, my kids' school supplies sit in their backpacks for a couple of months before eventually assimilating into our personal arsenal of craft supplies. By now, we have decent-sized bins of crayons, glue sticks, and markers — and probably about half of those markers are dried out and useless. And I'm willing to bet schools have the same problem, only on a much larger scale. So what's an eco-friendly-minded person to do? Well as it turns out, Crayola ColorCycle lets schools get rid of markers without just tossing them in the trash. According to Crayola's website, Crayola ColorCycle allows students in K-12 schools in the U.S. and Canada to collect and repurpose used Crayola markers. "ColorCycle is also a great opportunity for teachers and their students to explore eco-friendly practices," the website reads. "Specially developed standards-based lesson plans are available to enrich instruction and promote lively class discussions." In order to get the program started at their child's school, interested parents are instructed to follow four simple steps:

1. Talk to school administrators or the PTO about participating in the ColorCycle program.
2. Collect used markers in your school and count them all up.
3. Pack the markers you collected in a cardboard box and print out and attach a shipping label.
4. Then get FedEx Ground to pick up the markers — Crayola pays the shipping charges, so you don't have to worry about those

Voila! Those old, dried-out markers are repurposed into clean-burning fuel for cars and trucks. Pretty cool, huh? (Yes. The answer is yes.) And it's not just markers that you can help avoid taking up space in a landfill. According to Earth911, there is a much better place for your binders, pens, pencils, and highlighters than the landfill as well. TerraCycle — an international up-cycling company — has partnered with Staples for in-store binder recycling. Bring in that stack of used binders from years past, and for each one you'll get a $2 credit toward the purchase of a new binder. Your old binders will be up-cycled or recycled to create new products. According to Recycle Nation, TerraCycle also has a program called the Writing Instruments Brigade, in which pens, mechanical pencils, highlighters, and more are turned into plastic storage containers.

NEW YORK, Jan. 30, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Waste360, the leading information, event, commerce and education provider to the solid waste, recycling and organics communities, today unveiled its fourth annual 40 Under 40 awards list. The program recognizes inspiring and innovative professionals under the age of 40 whose work in the waste, recycling and organics industry has made a significant contribution to the industry. The winners are involved in every part of the waste and recycling industry, including haulers, municipalities, composters, recycling professionals, policymakers and product suppliers. The 2019 40 Under 40 awards winners (in alphabetical order by winner) are: "The 2019 class of Waste360 40 Under 40 awards winners is filled with today's young innovators, thinkers and doers in the waste and recycling industry. Their diverse body of work has changed processes, policies and moved our industry forward," said Mark Hickey, vice president of Waste360. “We received hundreds of inspiring nominations, which demonstrates that the future of our industry is bright. We look forward to celebrating with the winners at WasteExpo this spring.”

• Josh Bartlome, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Southern Idaho Solid Waste
• Kelly Bray, Waste Reduction and Recycling Specialist, ReCollect Systems
• Meghan R. Butler, Director, Corporate Development, Recology Inc.
• Chris Cochran, Executive Director, ReFED
• Daniel M. Dodd, Chief Technology Officer, Sierra Energy
• Melissa Filiaggi, Manager, Recycling, Maryland Environmental Service
• Mark Grillo, Chief Operating Officer, Medical Waste Management, Inc.
• Rob Hallenbeck, Manager Corporate Venturing, Technology Scouting, Waste Management
• Caitlin Hitt, Senior Director of National Accounts, RiverRoad Waste Solutions, Inc./Rubicon Global
• John F. Howard III, Crew Supervisor, DeKalb County Sanitation
• Sheri Hummel, Area Safety Director, Waste Management, Northern California-Nevada
• Aaron Johnson, Area Vice President, Eastern Canada, Waste Management
• Kristin Kinder, Director of Research and Waste Stream Sustainability, Wastequip
• Jason Knowles, Director, Vendor Relations, Enevo
• Christopher Lockwood, Divisional Vice President, Waste Pro USA
• Ricardo Lopez, Materials Recovery Facility Manager, GreenWaste Recovery
• Naomi Lue, Zero Waste Supervisor, Castro Valley Sanitary District
• Zach Martin, Vice President of Sales, North America, Big Truck Rental
• Nathan Mayer, Director of Land Management Services, Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County
• Doug McDonald, Eastern Region Controller, Waste Connections
• Amanda Mejia, Government Affairs Manager, Athens Services
• Jeff Meyers, Chief Operating Officer, The Recycling Partnership
• Jennifer Wells Milner, State Recycling Coordinator, Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality
• James R. Mitchener, Marketing Manager, Waste Industries
• Daniel Moran, Senior Director Operations, Healthcare, Covanta Environmental Solutions
• Madelyn Morgan, Planner III, City of Austin, Austin Resource Recovery
• Jake Pack Jr., District Manager, WCA Waste Corporation
• Tania Ragland, Recycling Representative, Specialist in Food Recovery and Organics Diversion Programs, Republic Services
• Katie Raverty-Evans, Government Affairs Representative, Best Way Disposal
• Henry Retamal, Operations President, Wastequip
• Rebecca Rodriguez, Solid Waste Engineering Manager, Lee County Public Utilities
• Andrew Rumpke, East Area President, Rumpke Waste & Recycling
• Michelle A. Salas, President, Lady Green Miami Recycling Co.
• Meredith Sorensen, Strategic Communications Advisor, Harvest Energy Holdings, LLC
• Mike Stoeckigt, District Manager, State of Wisconsin, Advanced Disposal Services
• Tom Szaky, President and Chief Executive Officer, TerraCycle
• Travis Timmerman, National Accounts Manager, Mack Trucks, Inc.
• Srividhya Viswanathan, Senior Project Manager and Vice President, SCS Engineers
• Patrick Winters, Sales Manager, Winters Bros. Waste Systems
• ·         Catherine (Kate) Wolff, President, CJD E-Cycling

Additionally, Dr. Matanya Benasher Horowitz, chief executive officer of AMP Robotics Corporation, has won the first Waste360 Innovator Award, which was created to recognize innovators and forward thinkers who often use technology to better the industry. Horowitz has used technology to help haulers, landfill operators and materials recovery facility operators reach their diversion and recovery goals. A panel of expert judges from Waste360 evaluated the nominations and consulted with an external advisor to select the finalists and winners. The winners will be honored during an awards ceremony on Tuesday, May 7 at WasteExpo, North America's largest solid waste, recycling and organics industry event, May 6-9, 2019, in Las Vegas. WasteExpo brings the key buyers and decision makers in the waste, recycling and organics industry together, making it the ideal place for Waste360 to recognize these rising stars. For more information and to register to attend WasteExpo, please visit WasteExpo.com.  

All this talk of decluttering, tidying up, downsizing, living with less, minimalism -- whatever you call it, we're in an era of scaling back and reevaluating our belongings. But what about when you have kids? More specifically, how do you thin out your closets/attic/under bed when you're pregnant or planning on being pregnant with a second (third, fourth...) child? Most of us subscribe to the hand-me-down philosophy of reusing clothes and items from one child to the next. So, do you just keep everything? All 32 pairs of baby socks? The bouncy seat your first baby hated? What about the car seat? I'm going to help you answer those questions and more with this list of baby gear sorting suggestions of what to keep, what to donate, and what to throw away, recycle, or upcycle.

Prepping for Your Next Baby: Sort and Declutter Your Baby Stuff

Maternity clothes - KEEP most Just like you would do with your regular clothes, sort through your maternity stash. Considering your budget and means, you may not be able to get rid of items simply because they don't "spark joy," but at the very least, donate items you know you will not wear; mend or clean items you love that are ripped or stained; and for items that can't be donated or repaired, upcycle into kitchen/garage rags or recycle with a program like the fabrics and clothing box from Terracycle. Books - KEEP some Pregnancy books, birth books, parenting books, relationship books, baby books, kids' books. So. Many. Books. It's so easy to get attached to a collection of books. Often, the collection as a whole represents more than the feeling a particular book brings. When it comes to your reference books (pregnancy, parenting, etc.), keep those you think you will go back to for information or advice. I have lots of pregnancy books, but truly, there's only about two I referenced again and again. As for baby and kids' books, keep those that are sentimental or at least enjoyable/valuable and in decent shape. If any book is falling apart, missing pages, or chewed on, get rid of it. You may be able to recycle the book with your regular recycling bin. Call your recycling provider to find out for sure. If you have books in good condition that you don't want to keep, donate them to a local thrift store, library, coffee shop, or doctor's office. Baby/kid clothes - SORT In an ideal world, when your older child(ren) outgrew their clothes, you diligently boxed them away, labeled and sorted so that only the items in good condition were kept. Ahem. Reality check? Clothes tossed haphazardly at the top of your child's closet, in stacks falling over, good clothes, bad clothes, and everything in between. So give yourself some time and space and start sorting. Keep the items that are in good shape or those that you can clean or repair (and you actually will clean or repair). If you have 25 of the same size and item, like baby pants size 3-6 months, keep less than 10 of your favorites. Donate the rest (as long as they're in wearable/good shape). Clothing not repairable or wearable can be upcycled or recycled. Car seat - CHECK Car seats are vital to your child's safety, which is why it's vital to check the safety of your car seat before you reuse it. There are a few key things to check on a car seat before it's deemed safe. If a car seat has NOT been in a crash, is NOT expired, is NOT missing parts, has NOT been recalled, and the straps have NOT been cleaned with harsh chemicals like bleach, then it is safe to reuse, as long as the seat meets your child's height and weight needs. Learn more about reusing car seats. Carriers - CHECK, KEEP some If you ended up with a box-full of baby carriers, slings, and wraps, then it's a good idea to go through them and first, check for safety. Look for worn spots, rips, broken pieces/buckles. If they can safely be repaired, do so. If not, recycle or upcycle as necessary. Then, decide which carriers you want to keep for your next baby. Keeping between 1-3 carriers is reasonable, as certain carriers can be used more easily in different situations, and also, the carriers that worked best for your last baby may not for this baby. It's good to have a couple of options. Cribs and bassinets - CHECK, KEEP Baby beds aren't cheap! In most cases, it's a good idea to keep and reuse baby beds. Of course, the most important first step is to check your item for safety -- look for damage, structural wear/weakness, and search for any recalls. You can enter your item into this recall finder at Parents.com or in the CPSC database. Furniture - KEEP most Unless the furniture is being used by an older child, it's almost always a sound idea to keep it and reuse it! If there are pieces that are broken or not very functional, consider repair and donation if it's in your budget to buy different items. Pacifiers and nipples - TOSS/RECYCLE Pacifiers and bottle nipples are mostly made of silicone or rubber, both of which break down after time, use, and exposure to heat. It's best to toss these out and buy new for your next baby. Unfortunately, at the time of this post, I could not find a service that would recycle silicone at the consumer level. Bottles - KEEP Bottles can be safely reused after sterilizing. Of course, if you own 55 bottles, you might just want to consider paring down your collection. Do keep a variety of bottle types, however, as different babies seem to have their own preferences. Breast pump - CHECK Depending on the kind of breast pump you own, you can either safely reuse it with new tubing or not safely reuse it. Learn more with this quick explanation on Pumpables. Blankets, burp rags, bibs - KEEP some These items tend to get the messiest -- and stay that way. If you have loads, keep the ones that are in the best shape, and assign the rest to rags. For blankets, aim to keep at least five. For burp cloths, keep at least 10. And bibs, keep a variety in different sizes (drool bibs vs. food bibs). Stroller - KEEP Few people get rid of their strollers, and for good reason -- they're expensive and useful! Of course, it's important to check the function and safety of your stroller to make sure it's in good working order. You should also make sure it hasn't been recalled. Diaper bags - KEEP maybe Did you like your diaper bag? Is it still in good shape? Then keep it! Even if your diaper bag is dirty or the strap is broken, it can often be cleaned (with a little elbow grease) and repaired. If you're handy, you can easily repair a rip. If a piece is missing, look up the company and see if you can reorder. Or, take it to a purse/shoe/belt repair shop near you. If you plan on getting a new bag, clean up your old one and donate it to a shelter that serves parents and children. Cloth diapers - KEEP most One of the best advantages to cloth diapers is the ability to reuse them for future children! In most cases, cloth diapers can either cleaned, repaired, and reused. Towels and wash cloths - KEEP some I don't know about you, but I ended up with a boatload of baby towels and wash cloths. And they hardly ever got dirty or worn to the point of not being usable. So, go ahead and keep these items, but consider keeping only what you need, which is around 5 or less towels and wash cloths. Creams, lotions, ointments, soaps - TOSS mostly Most of these items have an expiration date. If you're having children close together, there's a chance your item will still be usable, but more often than not, it's expired. Throw it out, recycle or reuse the container, and buy new. Medicine - TOSS Most medicine expires within a year. Check the expiration, throw it out if it's beyond, or if the expiration date is not visible. Baby swing, bouncer, high chair, jumper - CHECK You never know what a baby will take to. In my experience, most babies have their "favorite" item. If you have multiple options for seating/entertainment, keep them. Of course, check for safety and recalls. Make sure straps are intact and the items are free from cracks and broken or loose pieces. Toys - CHECK, SORT Babies need very few toys. Parents often end up with way more than anyone needs or wants. Go through your old toys and keep a small sampling of the ones that are in the best shape and were "favorites." Look for any loose or broken parts, and recycle or throw away any toys that cannot be safely used by your child or donated to another child.