The Procter & Gamble Co. yesterday announced that Head & Shoulders (H&S), the world’s top shampoo brand, will produce the world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle made from up to 25 percent recycled beach plastic. In partnership with recycling experts TerraCycle and SUEZ, this innovation will come to France this summer as a limited-edition H&S bottle available to consumers in Carrefour, one of the world’s leading retailers. This will be the world’s largest production run of recyclable bottles made with post-consumer recycled (PCR) beach plastic, and a first major step in establishing a unique supply chain that involves the support of thousands of volunteers and hundreds of NGOs collecting plastic waste found on beaches. “We felt that the leading shampoo brand in sales should lead in sustainability innovation and know that when we do this, it encourages the entire industry to do the same,” said Lisa Jennings, vice president, Head & Shoulders and Global Hair Care Sustainability Leader, Procter & Gamble. “We’ve been fortunate to work with such great partners in TerraCycle and SUEZ to make this vision a reality,” she said. Additionally, P&G said that in Europe by end of 2018 more than half a billion bottles per year will include up to 25 percent post-consumer recycled plastic. This represents more than 90 percent of all the hair care bottles sold in Europe across P&G’s hair care portfolio of flagship brands like Pantene and Head & Shoulders. The project will require a supply of 2,600 tons of recycled plastic every year — the same weight as eight fully loaded Boeing 747 jumbo jets. P&G has been using PCR plastic in packaging for over 25 years, and yesterday’s announcement is an important step in the company’s journey to meet their Corporate 2020 goal of doubling the tonnage of PCR plastic used in packaging. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF),  95 percent of the value of plastic packaging material, worth $80 to 120 billion annually, is lost to the economy and on the current track, there could be more plastics than fish in the ocean (by weight) by 20501. “At P&G, we believe that actions speak louder than words. The increased use of PCR plastic across our hair care portfolio of brands, demonstrate our continued commitment to driving real change,” said Virginie Helias, vice president of Global Sustainability, P&G. “The Head & Shoulders recyclable shampoo bottle made with beach plastic is a world’s first in the hair care category. Increasing the use of recycled plastic in the packaging of our flagship brands, like Pantene and Head & Shoulders, makes it easier for consumers to choose more sustainable products, without any trade-offs. So while we’re proud of what we’ve done and what we’re doing, we know there is much more work ahead.” “This partnership represents an important step for TerraCycle. We are proud to be working with one of the world’s largest brands to create a breakthrough product. Creating the world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle with beach plastics is a start of an important journey. With the circular economy gaining more traction, we hope that other global brands will work with green suppliers and use their influence to drive change for the benefit of the environment,” said Tom Szaky, CEO, TerraCycle. “This partnership between SUEZ, TerraCycle and P&G represents an exciting step in the creation of a world first for consumers, a recyclable shampoo bottle made of beach plastics. We hope that other organizations will continue to partner with different providers in order to deliver major environmental changes in this industry and hopefully across other industries too. With nine dedicated plastic facilities across Europe, Suez is already producing 170,000 tons of high quality recycled polymers,” Jean-Marc Boursier, Group senior executive VP in charge of Recycling & Recovery Europe, SUEZ.

Celebrating Impact in Davos Many Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurs demonstrated wide-scale impact at the Annual Meeting:   --Tom Szaky of TerraCycle launched a new campaign with Procter & Gamble to transform Head & Shoulders (the world’s number one shampoo brand) with the world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle made from 25% recycled beach plastic. By 2018, ½ billion bottles of P&G shampoo will be made with recycled plastics.

It can be difficult to find a place to recycle toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, dental floss boxes, beauty product containers, No. 6 plastic Solo cups, cereal bags and granola wrappers, Emily Hopta said. But Hopta, a parent volunteer at Charleston Montessori, started a program at the private school in May 2013 that seeks to keep such items out of landfills. By the end of last year, the 45-student school had recycled more than one ton of material. “We’re a small student body, but [are] making a pretty big impact,” Hopta said. She said the school kept a running total of the recycled amount as a motivator. “The children realized they recycled the weight of a polar bear,” she said. “It’s just a fun visual.” Hopta said most of the recycled items come from the students themselves, though Charleston Montessori has partnered with local businesses to recycle their stuff, too. She said the Charleston office of the Kay Casto & Chaney law firm deposits the Solo cups from its water cooler into a bin that a family from the school collects. The school, on Charleston’s West Side, also collects the No. 6 plastic cups from Taylor Books and Edgewood Country Club in Charleston and First Presbyterian Church in Dunbar. It also takes the plastic beauty product containers from local salons. Hopta said that, in November, a friend of the school collected 63 pounds of Gu Energy Labs gel packets at the Chicago Marathon. The school also collected gel packets discarded by Charleston runners. The school partners with Trenton, New Jersey-based TerraCycle, which itself partners with various companies to recycle their waste. TerraCycle says its collection programs operate in 20 countries. The school won $500 for the Gu gel packet recycling contest, bringing the total amount raised through the program to $1,800. Hopta said $400 will go toward classroom materials, and $1,400 toward the school’s scholarship program that helps kids pay the tuition. Hopta said other companies that have rewarded the school and local charities in recognition of the recycling program are Tom’s of Maine, a personal-care products company that donated $250 to the school and 250 toothpaste tubes to Covenant House of West Virginia, a Charleston-based nonprofit that aids the homeless and others in need; and Huggies, which donated diapers to the YWCA. Lauren Taylor, TerraCycle’s global director of communications, said some products it receives are reused, but generally the items are shredded and melted down into recycled plastic and turned into pellets. “It might go into a playground, a picnic table, a park bench, anything,” Taylor said. She provided what she said were third-party reports to the Gazette-Mail that indicate that recycling such materials — including shipping costs incurred related to the recycling — has less of an environmental impact than discarding the materials. But she said the reports weren’t for publication. Jennifer McGee, a co-director of school, said parent volunteers help store materials before they’re mailed, and children at the school, who span ages 3-12, sort materials. She said the school can ship boxes of materials using free shipping labels printed from TerraCycle’s website. McGee said businesses interested in providing materials to the school can call 304-340-9000 and can visit www.terracycle.com to see what items can be recycled. Individual donations currently aren’t being accepted. Like the Kanawha County Solid Waste Authority, the school doesn’t accept glass. McGee explained that, as children gets older, the school wants to expand their sense of community from just playing with friends to, eventually, thinking globally. “We really try to get them interacting with their school community and then, eventually, the local community and beyond,” she said.  

  · New plastics economy: Prompted by a joint report of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the World Economic Forum, social entrepreneur Tom Szaky, Co-Founder of TerraCycle, is partnering with Procter & Gamble and SUEZ to produce recyclable shampoo bottles that are up to 25% recycled beach plastic. By 2018, this partnership will produce half a billion such bottles to help fight the pollution of the ocean and waterways.

A year ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found that most plastic packaging is used only once; 95% of the value of plastic packaging material, worth $80 billion-$120 billion annually, is lost to the economy after a short first use. In the design of a “New Plastics Economy,” which challenges institutions to move away from the existing linear, take-make-dispose economy, theoretically, these captured plastics can instead be recycled to be used over and over. Linear solutions for plastic waste miss out on opportunities to capture and use these resources. As it stands from an economic standpoint, the value of capturing plastics for processing is only as high as the profitability of these materials after collection and logistics. Most waste outputs fall outside the scope of recyclability by this rule, and producing new, virgin plastic is currently less costly than purchasing recycled materials on back-end channels. Thus, it is up to manufacturers and brands to create and expand the market for recycled plastics by purchasing recycled materials to make their products, selling them to consumers and then making the product easily recyclable. Procter & Gamble announced that it has teamed up with us at TerraCycle and SUEZ, the largest waste management company in Europe, to source, develop and put out the first fully recyclable shampoo bottle made from up to 25% recycled beach plastic for the world’s #1 shampoo brand, Head & Shoulders. The first 150,000 bottles will be available in France this summer, making it the world’s largest production run of recyclable shampoo bottles made with beach plastic, and a major step in establishing a unique supply chain that supports a new plastics economy. Working directly with NGOs and other beach cleanup organizations, TerraCycle sources the shipments of rigid plastics collected through beach cleanup efforts, capturing these materials for recycling for the first time, at no cost to participants. TerraCycle’s partnership with SUEZ tackles logistics (collection and shipment) and processing (separation and material pelletization) of these mixed plastics so they can be used as recycled raw material. The scale of the beach plastics project focuses on the goal of incorporating more post-consumer recycled content (PCR) across other P&G brands and globally, inspiring other world entities to do the same. P&G has been using PCR plastic in packaging for over 25 years, last year using over 34,000 metric tons, and its Hair Care division is projected to see half a billion bottles per year include 25% post-consumer recycled content (PCR) by the end of 2018. 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; in the United States, the EPA’s most recent report places the plastics recovery rate for recycling at 9 percent. But the benefit of putting forth the resources to divert plastics from landfills and create a market for them in the value system is many-fold. Approximately 10–20 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year. These include microplastics, which result in an estimated $13 billion a year in losses from damage to marine ecosystems (not to mention the severe degradation to natural capital suffered by animals and their habitats) and financial losses to fisheries and tourism. If things don’t change, we are projected to see more plastics than fish in the ocean by 2050. To read the full story, visit http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/creating-market-recycled-materials-new-plastics-economy.html.

Today, Procter & Gamble announced that it has teamed up with us at TerraCycle and SUEZ, the largest waste management company in Europe, to source, develop and put out the first fully recyclable shampoo bottle made from up to 25 percent recycled beach plastic, for the world’s #1 shampoo brand, Head & Shoulders. The first 150,000 bottles will be available in France this summer, making it the world’s largest production run of recyclable shampoo bottles made with beach plastic, and a major step in establishing a unique supply chain that supports a new plastics economy. Working directly with hundreds of NGOs and other beach cleanup organizations, TerraCycle sources the shipments of rigid plastics collected through beach cleanup efforts, capturing these materials for recycling for the first time, at no cost to participants. TerraCycle’s partnership with SUEZ tackles logistics (collection and shipment) and processing (separation and material pelletization) of these mixed plastics so they can be used as recycled raw material. The scale of the beach plastics project focuses on the goal of incorporating more post-consumer recycled content (PCR) across other P&G brands and globally, inspiring other world entities to do the same. P&G has been using PCR plastic in packaging for over 25 years, last year using over 34,000 metric tons, and its Hair Care division is projected to see half a billion bottles per year include 25 percent PCR by the end of 2018. Today’s announcement is an important step in P&G’s mission to meet the Corporation 20/20 goal of doubling the tonnage of PCR used in plastic packaging. Using the program created by TerraCycle and SUEZ as a sourcing method, P&G is not only creating a market for recycled plastics, but a sustainable supply chain designed to feed back into itself. This collaborative partnership is a milestone in how organizations can look to partner up in order to deliver major environmental changes across industries. A year ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found that since most plastic packaging is used only once, 95 percent of the value of plastic packaging material, worth $80-120 billion annually, is lost to the economy after one use. These highlights challenged the world to drive greater recovery and reuse of plastics, and create solutions that see that plastics never become waste. The benefit of putting forth the resources to divert plastics from landfills and create a market for them in the value system is many-fold. Approximately 10–20 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year. These include microplastics, which result in an estimated $13 billion a year in losses from damage to marine ecosystems (not to mention the severe degradation to natural capital suffered by animals and their habitats) and financial losses to fisheries and tourism. If things don’t change, we are projected to see more plastics than fish in the ocean by 2050. Of the more than 300 million tons of new, virgin plastic produced globally per year, an estimated 129 million tons (43 percent) of the plastic used is disposed of in landfills; in the United States, the EPA’s most recent report places the plastics recovery rate for recycling at 9 percent. Linear solutions for plastic waste miss out on opportunities to capture and use these resources, reinforcing our dependence on fossil fuels and incurring an avoidable degree of structural loss. The interesting thing about beach plastic is that there is so much of it, and companies such as P&G see the ROI potential for harnessing those resources and rolling out their own sustainability initiatives. When consumer goods companies make the commitment to put out products made from non-virgin raw material, it creates a circular system that can be nurtured and expanded for sustainable growth and regenerative impacts.

As for what individual companies are doing at this moment — and plan to do moving forward in response to the report — is a little less clear although one report participant Unilever, has already publicly announced its intention to make all plastic packaging used it its multitude of brands “fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.” Says Paul Polman, CEO of the British-Dutch consumer goods behemoth, the world’s third largest, which owns a wide range of iconic food and personal care brands including Dove, Lipton, Noxzema, Marmite, Ben & Jerry’s, and Hellmann’s: Our plastic packaging plays a critical role in making our products appealing, safe and enjoyable for our consumers. Yet it is clear that if we want to continue to reap the benefits of this versatile material, we need to do much more as an industry to help ensure it is managed responsibly and efficiently post consumer-use. To address the challenge of ocean plastic waste we need to work on systemic solutions - ones which stop plastics entering our waterways in the first place. We hope these commitments will encourage others in the industry to make collective progress towards ensuring that all of our plastic packaging is fully recyclable and recycled. Dame Ellen MacArthur praises Unilever’s direction in a press statement released by the company: By committing to ambitious circular economy goals for plastic packaging, Unilever is contributing to tangible system change and sends a strong signal to the entire fast-moving consumer goods industry. Combining upstream measures on design and materials with post-use strategies demonstrates the system-wide approach that is required to turn the New Plastics Economy into reality.   Although not listed as a “participating organization” in the report, Procter & Gamble has endorsed the New Plastics Economy initiative and announced, in conjunction with the report's release, that it plans to develop world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle partially made from “beach plastic” — that is, plastic waste plucked from shorelines.   The shampoo bottles themselves — Head & Shoulders brand, by the way — will be composed of 25 percent plastic sourced by volunteers at beaches in Northern France. The pilot initiative, launched by P&G in collaboration with two companies that are listed as participating organizations in the report, the always fantastic upcyclers at TerraCycle and French water and waste management company Suez, will kick off later this summer in France. Says Jean-Louis Chaussade, CEO of Suez: Suez was pleased to contribute to the New Plastics Economy report, a collaborative case for rethinking the current plastics economy. As this report shows, a radical and joint rethink of both design and after-use processes will be required, in addition to other measures such as stimulating demand for secondary raw materials. We look forward to continued collaboration to enable better economic and environmental results in the plastic packaging value chain and to accelerate the transition towards the circular economy.” Outside of beach plastic Head & Shoulders bottles, P&G has also announced that by 2018 roughly 90 percent of all hair care bottles the company sells in Europe — 500 million bottles annually — will be composed of at least 25 percent recycled plastic. In addition to global business heavyweights including Nestle, SABMiller, Coca-Cola, Kimberly-Clark and IKEA, the NYC Department of Sanitation, Zero Waste Scotland, the London Waste & Recycling Board and the city of Atlanta were actively involved in the creation of the report alongside Dow Chemical, DuPont and Australian packaging giant Amcor among others. And not at all surprisingly, sustainable designer and Cradle to Cradle guru William McDonough served on the report's advisory panel. You can view The New Plastics Economy in full here. And be sure to keep an ear open from other major corporations aside from Unilever and Procter & Gamble on how they plan to work together and individually to combat the scourge of ocean-clogging plastic packaging waste.