Thousand Fell, the environmentally conscious, direct-to-consumer shoe retailer which launched last November, has revealed the details of the recycling program that’s a core component of its pitch to consumers.   The company, which has now sold enough shoes to start seeing its early buyers begin recycling them after ten months of ownership, expects to recycle roughly 3,000 pairs per quarter by 2021, with the capacity to scale up to 6,000 pairs of shoes.   The recycling feature, through partnerships with United Parcel Service and TerraCycle, offers customers the option to avoid simply throwing out the shoes for $20 in cash that the company pays out upon receipt of the old shoes.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.   What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens).   Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.   What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens).   Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.

Thousand Fell, the environmentally conscious, direct-to-consumer shoe retailer which launched last November, has revealed the details of the recycling program that’s a core component of its pitch to consumers.   The company, which has now sold enough shoes to start seeing its early buyers begin recycling them after ten months of ownership, expects to recycle roughly 3,000 pairs per quarter by 2021, with the capacity to scale up to 6,000 pairs of shoes.   The recycling feature, through partnerships with United Parcel Service and TerraCycle, offers customers the option to avoid simply throwing out the shoes for $20 in cash that the company pays out upon receipt of the old shoes.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.   What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens).   Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.   What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens).   Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.

Thousand Fell, the environmentally conscious, direct-to-consumer shoe retailer which launched last November, has revealed the details of the recycling program that’s a core component of its pitch to consumers.   The company, which has now sold enough shoes to start seeing its early buyers begin recycling them after ten months of ownership, expects to recycle roughly 3,000 pairs per quarter by 2021, with the capacity to scale up to 6,000 pairs of shoes.   The recycling feature, through partnerships with United Parcel Service and TerraCycle, offers customers the option to avoid simply throwing out the shoes for $20 in cash that the company pays out upon receipt of the old shoes.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.   What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens).   Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.   What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens).   Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.

Thousand Fell, the environmentally conscious, direct-to-consumer shoe retailer which launched last November, has revealed the details of the recycling program that’s a core component of its pitch to consumers.   The company, which has now sold enough shoes to start seeing its early buyers begin recycling them after ten months of ownership, expects to recycle roughly 3,000 pairs per quarter by 2021, with the capacity to scale up to 6,000 pairs of shoes.   The recycling feature, through partnerships with United Parcel Service and TerraCycle, offers customers the option to avoid simply throwing out the shoes for $20 in cash that the company pays out upon receipt of the old shoes.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.   What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens).   Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.   What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens).   Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.

Thousand Fell, the environmentally conscious, direct-to-consumer shoe retailer which launched last November, has revealed the details of the recycling program that’s a core component of its pitch to consumers.   The company, which has now sold enough shoes to start seeing its early buyers begin recycling them after ten months of ownership, expects to recycle roughly 3,000 pairs per quarter by 2021, with the capacity to scale up to 6,000 pairs of shoes.   The recycling feature, through partnerships with United Parcel Service and TerraCycle, offers customers the option to avoid simply throwing out the shoes for $20 in cash that the company pays out upon receipt of the old shoes.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.   What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens).   Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.   What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens).   Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.

Ohio’s medical marijuana industry generates millions of dollars worth of waste that ends up in trash bins.   Now a nonprofit with links to Ohio’s medicinal cannabis industry is trying to change that through a recycling program for hard-to-recycle items like batteries.   Cannabis Can recently brought its idea to the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy, which regulates marijuana dispensaries.   The group hopes to partner with TerraCycle, a New Jersey company specializing in items that most municipal recycling programs can’t handle, such as batteries and refill cartridges for vaping pens.   But they face an uphill battle.   First, the State of Ohio Board of Pharmacy needs to greenlight the plan.   If the board provides the go-ahead, Cannabis Can and TerraCycle’s program will eventually include the cartridges that hold liquefied marijuana. Those cartridges often have marijuana residue left over, and the board wants a plan that ensures that the residue is properly disposed of before a cartridge is recycled, Cannabis Can Director Lorien Hill-Purcell said.   “The board is very concerned about residuals, which we understand,” she said.   Ali Simon, public and policy affairs liaison for the medical board, said the regulatory body is waiting on a proposal from Cannabis Can and TerraCycle.   Cannabis Can, whose official title is the GHH Community Foundation, originally conceived of an awareness campaign to educate medical marijuana patients on how to recycle waste generated by the program. They discovered that municipal recycling programs can’t accept items like electronics.   “Then it really became clear to us that there isn't a path available for most of it,” Hill-Purcell said.   Other groups have considered recycling programs for the medical marijuana industry, but so far Cannabis Can is the first to put together a formal proposal, Simon said.   If the program is approved and TerraCycle signs on as a partner, Cannabis Can envisions a multi-stage program that will start with recycling batteries, and work its way to recycling items like vape oil cartridges that have left-over marijuana, Hill-Purcell said.   Vaping is one of the most popular ways to ingest medical marijuana. It involves e-cigarettes or vape pens that vaporize marijuana oil to be inhaled. The vape pens require batteries and refill cartridges.   It’s not clear how many batteries and cartridges are disposed of by medical marijuana patients. The state does not track sales of individual products such as batteries or chargers that do not contain marijuana, but roughly $46 million worth of products containing vape oil have been sold in Ohio since the first dispensary opened in January of 2019.   If the plan goes through, TerraCycle and Cannabis Can want to put recycling bins at all of Ohio’s marijuana dispensaries. The state currently licenses 52 dispensaries.   TerraCycle Vice President of Communications Lauren Taylor said the company should be able to recycle everything it is given.   Most plastic waste, and many items of e-waste like batteries, can be recycled, but the vast majority of the nation’s recycling programs shun those items.   “The value of the material is less than the cost to collect it and sort it and sell it,” Taylor said. “That is a challenge for the recycling industry.”   Many vape pens use lithium ion batteries which are a particularly difficult product to recycle, said Dr. Tarunjit Butalia, a research associate professor in the department of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at Ohio State University.   TerraCycle offsets the cost by seeking sponsors, Taylor said. Bausch and Lomb, for example, sponsors the company’s contact lens recycling program.   Taylor declined to discuss the details of the marijuana recycling program, including whether or not it has a sponsor, saying only that the idea is in its very early stages.   pcooley@dispatch.com

A program from startup shoe company Thousand Fell encourages customers to recycle their footwear, which will then be turned into new pairs of shoes. The initiative is a partnership among the startup, UPS and recycling firm TerraCycle, and Thousand Fell expects to recycle 3,000 pairs each quarter by next year.

Thousand Fell, the environmentally conscious, direct-to-consumer shoe retailer which launched last November, has revealed the details of the recycling program that’s a core component of its pitch to consumers.   The company, which has now sold enough shoes to start seeing its early buyers begin recycling them after ten months of ownership, expects to recycle roughly 3,000 pairs per quarter by 2021, with the capacity to scale up to 6,000 pairs of shoes.,   The recycling feature, through partnerships with United Parcel Service and TerraCycle, offers customers the option to avoid simply throwing out the shoes for $20 in cash that the company pays out upon receipt of the old shoes.   With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life-cycle of their products. Nike operates a reuse a shoe program at some of its stores, which will collect used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. And several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products.     What’s more, Thousand Fell’s recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged goods like dry goods, beverages, desserts and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens). Across retail, zero waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everyone from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest.     “Thousand Fell owns the material feeds and covers the cost of recycling, as well as the resale or reintegratoin of recycled material back into new shoes and the issuance of the $20 recycling cash that is sent back to the consumer once they recycle,” wrote Thousand Fell co-founder Stuart Ahlum, in an email.   Clothing and textiles account for 17% of all landfill waste and shoes are particularly wasteful. Shoes account for 10% of retail production capacity but about 25% of textile waste, according to Ahlum.   The company sells its environmentally friendly shoes for under $100, a price point that makes them more accessible to price-conscious consumers, according to Ahlum.   Through the program UPS will run shipping for the Thousand Fell sneaker recycling program and making its network of shipping locations — including within Staples stores — available for drop-off of Thousand Fell’s shoes.   With TerraCycle, Thousand Fell will ensure that the old sneakers will be sustainably recycled and diverted from landfills. UPS’ Ware2Go business is also providing fulfillment and warehousing services for Thousand Fell, the companies said in a statement earlier this week. Meanwhile, TerraCycle and Thousand Fell are developing a closed loop process where old sneakers will be reintegrated into the supply chain to make new sneakers.   Through Thousand Fell, shoe buyers can track their purchase history and the carbon footprint of their sneakers at the company’s website — and register their sneakers once they’ve received them. The registration allows customers to initiate the recycling process at a drop off location or directly shipping their shoes back to TerraCycle.   “This enterprise partnership between UPS, TerraCycle, and Thousand Fell is the reverse logistics engine that powers the circular economy. It solves the critical problem of collecting worn products back from customers — at scale and at cost,” Ahlum wrote in an email.

With the initiative, Thousand Fell joins a growing number of companies in consumer retail that are experimenting with various strategies to incorporate reuse into the life cycle of their products. Nike operates a "reuse-a-shoe" program at some of its stores, which collects used athletic shoes from any brand for recycling. Several companies are offering denim recycling drop-off locations to take old jeans and convert the material into other products. What's more, Thousand Fell's recycling partner, TerraCycle, has developed a milkman model for reusing packaging to replace consumer packaged items like dry goods, beverages, desserts, and home and beauty products under its Loop brand (and in partnership with Kroger and Walgreens). Across retail, zero-waste packaging and delivery options (and companies emphasizing a more sustainable, circular approach to consumption) are attracting increased interest from investors across the board, with everything from delivery companies to novel packaging materials attracting investor interest. "Thousand Fell owns the material feeds and covers the cost of recycling, as well as the resale or reintegration of recycled material back into new shoes and the issuance of the $20 recycling cash that is sent back to the consumer once they recycle," wrote Thousand Fell co-founder Stuart Ahlum, in an email.

  In March, Seattle was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the parents of Yooni Kim, a retail worker, were worried about her. They sent her a package of disposable masks, and she began wearing them to work. But that created a new problem for their environmentally conscious daughter: How could she responsibly dispose of the used masks? Soon, she discovered a potential solution: a recycling service, offered by a company called TerraCycle. For $86, TerraCycle would send Kim a small “ZeroWaste” box, roughly the size of a toaster oven, which she could fill with used masks and ship back to the company for recycling.   As Kim debated making the purchase, she wondered what happens to recycled masks, and about the environmental impacts of TerraCycle’s process. She figured it had to beat the alternative: millions of used masks piling up in landfills or being burned in incinerators, depending on the local waste company’s practices. “It is an expensive thing to invest in,” she said. “But I was open to paying for it, because if someone wants to dispose of masks responsibly, why not.” Determining what constitutes responsible disposal, however, is not straightforward. And, experts say, a truly sustainable solution would require rethinking manufacturing systems, long before any masks hit the trash or recycling bin.   TerraCycle was founded as a worm fertilizer company in 2001. Since then, it has pivoted to recycling items other companies won’t accept, such as pens and markers, plastic wrap and single-use coffee capsules. So far this year, it’s collected and processed 74,000 pounds of disposable masks, gowns and gloves, stationing ZeroWaste boxes at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas and Subaru dealerships, as well as selling them to individual consumers like Kim.   To recycle the items, workers first sort through the large piles of used personal protective equipment sent to the TerraCycle headquarters in New Jersey to ensure that the dominant material is the non-woven polypropylene used in most disposable masks. (Metal nose strips from N95 masks, for instance, are removed.) Then, the piles are melted down and shredded into a mulch-like material that can be molded into things like railroad ties and shipping pallets. The resulting plastic is structurally sound, but looks uneven and dull, so selling it doesn’t net TerraCycle much money. That’s why the recycling boxes are expensive: The high price tag offsets what would otherwise be a net loss for the company.   The process may not be profitable, but according to TerraCycle, it can help the environment. “By recycling disposable masks, they are kept out of landfills and can be made into new materials and products, reducing the need to extract new materials from the planet,” said Shaye DiPasquale, TerraCycle’s publicist. DiPasquale also noted that bacteria from landfills produce methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.   But according to Jonathan Krones, an industrial ecologist at Boston College, the environmental calculus is more complicated than that. Recycling masks doesn’t necessarily reduce demand for freshly made plastic. “Would plastic lumber or fleece have been made in the first place without the recycled plastic material? I’m not convinced,” he said. And while landfills do produce methane emissions, they’re mostly from decomposing food or paper, Krones said, not bacteria on plastics such as disposable masks. Furthermore, transporting and melting down masks during recycling requires significant energy, unlike simply letting them sit in a landfill.   Ultimately, it’s impossible to definitively determine whether it’s more environmentally friendly to throw away masks or recycle them through services like TerraCycle’s. If the goal is to reduce environmental impacts, we should be asking questions about mask manufacturing, not recycling, said Krones, because most of the environmental costs come from making masks in the first place. “There’s no good option, because the product is inherently garbage,” he said. In other countries, such as Japan and Germany, manufacturers are required to take back some used products and front a portion of the disposal costs. But no such federal rules currently exist in the US.   Still, even if recycling masks isn’t more environmentally beneficial than just tossing them, TerraCycle’s work helps remind consumers and companies that trash doesn’t disappear after it’s thrown out. Simply offering a service that requires consumers to mail in items by type illuminates the fact that not everything is easily recyclable, and that precious time and energy are required to properly sort recyclable pieces.   And, Krones said, TerraCycle’s service has the power to get more people interested in learning about recycling and disposal systems. Kim learned how difficult it can be to properly recycle everyday items, and she has since become more interested in ways to create systemic change. “We’re all doing the best we can, and ultimately, the biggest changes will have to come from corporations reducing waste,” she said. As for purchasing a TerraCycle box, she’s trying to mobilize her neighbors to buy one together, so the high cost will be shared. “If I can find people who want to split a $90 box, then I’m sure we can pack it really tight,” she said.