Recycling is one of the easiest, most effective ways you can help the environment. Yet according to the EPA, we recycle a stagnant 34 percent of all the waste we create. In the United States, only 9 percent of plastic is recovered for recycling, and of the more than 300 million tons of new, virgin plastic produced globally per year, it is estimated that up to 129 million tons (43 percent) of the plastic used is disposed of in landfills. Approximately 10 to 20 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year. These include those dreaded microplastics, which result in an estimated $13 billion a year in losses from damage to marine ecosystems. If things don't change, we could see more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. The simple act of recycling diverts these materials from landfills and keeps them from spreading to our oceans and natural ecosystems.

How to recycle effectively (Hint: All it takes is a little research.)

Recycling all the time may seem like a tall order if you're not used to it, but participating in this regenerative, green activity is as easy as you make it. Getting acquainted with your town or city's recycling system is a good place to start. First, look into whether your municipality uses a single or multistream recycling system. Basically, this dictates whether you can put all of your recyclables (i.e., paper, glass, plastics) in one bin, or if you need to separate them. Material recovery facilities (MRFs) like to keep sorting of nonrecyclable materials and garbage to a minimum in order to prevent contamination, and every MRF is a little different. It is also important to read up on what exactly is recyclable in your area, as it varies city by city. For example, in some cities you can recycle HDPE (#2) plastic, and in others you can't. The same goes for PP (#5) plastic and juice cartons. Earth 911 is a fantastic resource for looking into what is recyclable and what isn't in your local community. You can also call your local recycling center to ask them directly. Here's what New York City's multistream system looks like, for example:

The idea of thinking about the future journey of products and packaging is being embraced by Coors Light in the U.S. as it plans to convert its old billboards into beer coolers and damaged beer kegs into BBQ grills for in-store marketing, as reported by Adweek. The brand’s environmental push will be part of it’s summer campaign “Every One Can” where TerraCycle will upcycle the discarded packaging and promotional material into items that will include a tag that reads “I used to be a billboard.” The upcycling program is just another effort from the brand under its “Climb On” umbrella campaign, by 72andSunny, which also includes TV spots that promote the brand’s sustainable contributions, like how it uses massive solar-power systems at MillerCoors’ breweries.

The next 40 days of the Christian season of Lent is a time when we sacrifice guilty pleasures like sweets, alcohol, television, shopping and social media. But, in fact, giving up these guilty pleasures is not really that painful of a sacrifice because it actually benefits us in the long run. Right?   Might I suggest something to give up for the next 40 days that is not easy, requires sacrifice and thought, and benefits the planet in the long run? This Lent, give up plastic.   (Excuse me a minute while I grab the plastic tube of lip moisturizer and freshen my dry lips. Alternative: Raw Cocoa Balm at from Rex Organics)   I know, I’ve harped on plastics since the dawning of the blog and social media. And I know exactly how challenging it is to walk away from plastics. As a matter of fact, I find myself slipping into the plastic habit because sometimes it seems like my pleas wind up in the landfill of unread words.   But I am a realist. And like many, reminders will regenerate those brain cells that will help lead me away from wasteful habits that revolve around plastics.   Why? While plastics were once the dream products for consumers, who knew that plastics would become Planet Earth’s toxic nightmare? The ubiquitous plastic bottle, for example, is something that Americans use 2.5 million every hour. And we throw away 35 billion plastic water bottles every year. Or how about the plastic baggy? We use 540 baggies or 0.84 lbs. of plastic baggies per year.   (Excuse me a minute while I mark off those statistics with my plastic pen. Alternative: Use pencils.)   Plastic grocery bags have become such visual nuisances and costly to city and county waste facilities, that many regions have banned the single-use plastic grocery bag.   Unfortunately, the effort to regionally ban single-use plastics like grocery bags has been banned in Michigan and other states. As you know, plastics are a by-product of the petroleum industry, and a highly profitable by-product. Might I dare suggest that the industry consider giving up their lobbying efforts to ban the bans for Lent?   Why? Consider that in America the average person throws away approximately 185 pounds of plastic per year. Consider that it takes between 500 to 1,000 years for the plastic to degrade, compounded by worldwide plastic waste, compounded by the fact that “plastic chemicals can be absorbed by the body—93 percent of Americans age six or older test positive for BPA (a plastic chemical),” and that “some of these compounds found in plastic have been found to alter hormones or have other potential human health effects,” compounded by the fact that “in the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments—like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day,” compounded worldwide and by the fact that “one million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually from plastic in our oceans, and 44 percent of all seabird species, 22 percent of cetaceans, all sea turtle species and a growing list of fish species have been documented with plastic in or around their bodies,” it would seem to me to be the perfect corporate sacrifice for Lent.   But I know that jobs are more important, even if we are killing off ourselves and nature.   (Excuse me while I grab a plastic clippy to pull back my hair. Alternative: Use a cotton headband.)   If I’ve guilted you into giving up single use plastic for Lent, here are some ways I’ve learned to lessen single-use plastics in my life:   Buy condiments like mustard and ketchup in glass containers. Use wax paper to wrap sandwiches. There are also biodegradable and compostable sandwich bags and food wraps available on the market, such as from EcoProducts. Purchase deli products from the deli counter and request that they wrap your purchase in butcher paper. Ask your market’s butcher to wrap your meat order in butcher paper. Not all fruits and vegetables need to be plopped into plastic bags to purchase. Consider not bagging bananas, single fruit or vegetable items, celery, etc. Purchase bread products wrapped in paper. (The benefit here is those breads are much more fresh and yummy than plastic wrapped breads.) Purchase milk in paper cartons. Clean and reuse what you can. (My favorite comes from “grandma El” who cleaned every wax bag from cereal cartons and reused them to pack sandwiches.) Let’s sacrifice for our own good and the planet that gives us life. Your Lenten sacrifice may benefit you in ways you couldn’t imagine.

Why brands are riding the wave of conscious consumption.

This article appears in the March/April 2017 issue of strategy.   Down on her luck, with barely a cent to her name, Emily Bitze needed tomatoes for her noodle dinner. Her cupboards were bare, so she did what any hungry millennial would do: she bummed from her friends online. It worked, sort of – she ended up with hearts of palm instead.   But that wasn’t the end of the story for the creator of Toronto’s famous trading site, Bunz. After that first solicitation, “Mother Bun” – as fellow traders like to call her – started the cashless bartering group on Facebook for her circle of friends. Three years later, in February, the newly rebranded group migrated to its own app, and now helps 100,000 members swap metro cards for Tinkerbell bags, clothing for calculators, and even beer for roadkill (taxidermists in training) on a daily basis.   Bitze is part of a group of adults under 34 (millennials, as we know them) who anthropologist and strategist Johanna Faigelman of Human Branding says is leading the charge in the next evolution of “conscious consumerism.” We’re entering a phase where the second “R” in “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” is stealing the environmental limelight, with resourceful folk – somewhat ashamed by the trappings of excessive consumerism – bartering once-loved items and upcycling strangers’ trash into their own personal treasure. Beyond bartering with Bunz (which has spawned copycats in cities all over Canada), there’s also Hipcycle, Ikea Hackers, The Upcycling Exchange and others that are fuelling a new kind of post-consumerist world. “We’re being much more conscious of what we’re consuming and how that impacts not only ourselves, but the world around us,” says Faigelman. She says you can trace the trajectory of the social movement by looking at the growth of the sharing economy and the idea of community that’s being built through groups (like Bunz) on social media, not to mention consumers demanding more transparency and ethical practices from companies. Faigelman believes there may be socio-economic factors at work, too. “I think it connects on a deeper level, where there is a certain amount of dissatisfaction from millennials on how much money they have spent on their education with no real clear path for them,” she says, with bartering as a way to feel less reliant on currency. “There’s also a bit of an undercurrent of rebellion against being dictated to in terms of how to consume and be a consumer.” So, how can marketers respond to this sprouting trend? Faigelman suggests not just looking at the products their company produces, but also how they’re packaged. “That’s a dimension people weren’t really thinking about before. We do a lot of innovation around new and clever formats to make it more usable or portable, but in fact, one of the questions that comes up [in our focus groups] is ‘Where is this going to go post-consumption?’” Be more conscious of the product’s packaging and its life cycle by creating reusable food containers that you can eat from today and use for something else tomorrow, she says as an example. “Packaging can be convenient or sexy, but if it doesn’t meet the yardstick on the conscious consumption side of things, you could lose.” Quebec-based Chalifoux Dairy’s Riviera brand is measuring up to the eco packaging standards. Its products, from parfaits and cheese to milk and butter, line shelves in grocery stores across Canada. In dairy aisles, where most products are packaged in plastic, Riviera stands out with signature glass Petit Pots, first introduced as compact, reusable containers in 2015. A local ceramist uses the pots to hold plants in porcelain planters (see top image), which she sells on Etsy, while other artists have repurposed them as candle holders, Christmas ornaments, even light fixtures. The packaging addresses the notion that consumers want “brands to take action beyond self-interest or selling another consumer product to add to the wasteland” — as Faigelman puts it — by providing “1,001 Tips” for reusing the pots, which live on its website and are promoted on-pack and in social posts. The brand is also working with Maison Orphée to create recipes for dips and spreads that people can make at home and store in the jars, which are also sold online (without the dairy contents), alongside accessories to fancify the jars, such as delftware-style porcelain lids. The trend has been gaining steam and there have been more cases, particularly in the past year, where marketers are tapping into ethical consumption. Here we explore programs coming from Canada and the U.S. that have played with the idea of how we pay for things and the reinvention of consumer goods.

Krylon makes old things new again

Krylon stuck out like a sore thumb at this year’s Interior Design Show in Toronto. Most paint brand vendors show up to talk about colour trends and how their paints can achieve a visually balanced look with the latest hues. U.S.-based Krylon, on the other hand, didn’t choose to focus on the 2017 palette, but rather its videos of design blogger Amy Devers taking old household items and revamping them with just a touch of spray paint. The videos were a part of the brand’s global campaign, in which Krylon and its agency Deutsch, followed Devers as she travelled 690 miles and stopped at yard sales along Route 127 in the U.S. to purchase 127 items, from furniture and jewelry to toys and tools. The video demonstrations showed how to make the old items look new again with a lick of Krylon paint, and then put them up for sale on Pinterest. The brand called it the “First Ever Pinterest Yard Sale,” with the videos receiving between 1,000 and 5,000 views each.

We have been fans of Entenmann’s long before this post, they disappear just as quickly as I can buy them! I like the convenient packs for after school when I pick the kids up to shuttle them to an event, along with a drinkable yogurt, it fills my little guy up and ties him over until dinner. Entenmann’s and TerraCycle have teamed up to reward you for making eco-friendly habits by “Making the Pledge”! Read more below on how you can enter to win a classroom party! TerraCycle®, is an international recycling company turns waste into plastic that can be used for products such as park benches, recycling bins, and playgrounds. Through the free recycling program, you can collect waste, like Entenmann’s® Little Bites® pouches, and ship to TerraCycle® for processing using a pre-paid shipping label. Now through March 31, 2017, TerraCycle® and Entenmann’s® Little Bites® want to reward you for making eco-friendly habits by Making the Pledge. If you collect Entenmann’s® Little Bites® pouches on behalf of a K-12 school, you could be placed in the running to win a Classroom Party. It’s easy to participate: make the pledge, send in the waste, and earn more rewards! The Entenmann’s® Little Bites ® Pouch Recycling Program is open to any individual, school or organization interested in reducing local landfill waste. To learn more about the Entenmann’s® Little Bites ® Pouch Recycling Program here: http://www.terracycle.com/en-US/contests/little- bites-pledge.

Scientist at Cornell University and the University of Minnesota have discovered a way to combine polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) plastics together without compromising durability. Usually incapable of creating a homogeneous mix, PE and PP plastics are limited in terms of what they can be recycled into together. However, using multi-block polymers, the team created a structurally strong plastic alloy that could potentially make it easier for manufacturers to recycle these two types of plastic waste. "It would essentially reduce the overall cost of modifying polyolefins and significantly increase the amount of polypropylene and polyethylene that gets recycled because the formulations can be made at a lower cost," says Ernie Simpson, global vice-president of research and development at TerraCycle.

Getting rid of plastic waste remains a Sisyphean task despite our efforts to tackle it by employing PET-eating bacteria and turning it into footwear, liquid fuel, and even the foundations for an entire village. The material that ends up being recovered and reused is just a drop in a non-stop growing mountain of garbage. But what if there was a way to create a super-durable alloy out of two of the biggest sources of packaging waste while using less oil at the same time?   Bringing this potential win-win scenario a step closer to reality is a team of scientists from Cornell University and the University of Minnesota, who recently announced the creation of a polymer additive that can create such an alloy out of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP). The idea, according to researcher Geoffrey Coates, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University, is two-fold: to make a better material from the world's most used polymers and also help recycle them more efficiently. Though PE and PP are individually tough as standalone plastics and have a similar hydrocarbon makeup, they are immiscible with one another. Common grades of the polymers become brittle and unusable when blended together, thus limiting what companies can do to recycle these materials. To get around this problem, the research team developed a multiblock copolymer that can weld common grades of commercial PE and isotactic polypropylene (iPP) together, depending on the molecular weights and architecture of the block copolymers, by creating molecular stitches between the two materials. This makes the resulting blend as tough as iPP and PE themselves. In their tests, the researchers welded together two strips of iPP and PE plastic using different multi-block polymers as adhesives, and then pulled them apart. In most cases, the polymers are easily separated due to their incompatibility, as was demonstrated when the researchers carried out the tests with di-block polymers. However, in the case of the tetrablock additive, the plastic strips held together so well that it ripped the polymer apart, a sign that it is "a very good material" to glue polyethylene and polypropylene together, says Coates. According to the researchers, what makes the results all the more encouraging is that they were able to create the alloy with just one percent of the additive, giving rise to the possibility that it could improve recycling and also lead to the creation of a whole new class of mechanically tough polymer blends. For Ernie Simpson, global vice-president of research and development at TerraCycle, the New Jersey-based company that specializes in upcycling consumer waste, what makes this a potential game changer is the cost savings it could bring to a company's bottom line compared to the current compatibilizers on the market. "If the claims are true that a one percent addition is as efficient at 10 percent of other compatibilizers, on a cost-basis, this would be a serious game changer," Simpson tells New Atlas. "It would essentially reduce the overall cost of modifying polyolefins and significantly increase the amount of polypropylene and polyethylene that gets recycled because the formulations can be made at a lower cost." Of course, this depends on factors such as the amount of compatibilizers being used and their original cost. Assuming this new material comes in at roughly the same cost and requires just one percent instead of 10, the savings would encourage people to make new formulations based on the tetrablock and use them in various applications, he points out.

Scientist at Cornell University and the University of Minnesota have discovered a way to combine polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) plastics together without compromising durability. Usually incapable of creating a homogeneous mix, PE and PP plastics are limited in terms of what they can be recycled into together. However, using multi-block polymers, the team created a structurally strong plastic alloy that could potentially make it easier for manufacturers to recycle these two types of plastic waste. "It would essentially reduce the overall cost of modifying polyolefins and significantly increase the amount of polypropylene and polyethylene that gets recycled because the formulations can be made at a lower cost," says Ernie Simpson, global vice-president of research and development at TerraCycle. Read the full story on New Atlas.