A New Jersey-based company is trying to tackle the single use plastic problem with an old-school idea, and they just started serving Pennsylvania. Loop brings everyday products to your door in reusable containers. Scot Case, an environmental consultant based in Reading, was intrigued. "It allows people to be lazy environmentalists," Case said. "You open it up, use the product, when I'm finished - there's no more left - I put the empty container in a little box, and they return it." After you send the products back, Loop prepares them for reuse. Loop will even recycle the tamper proof packaging. "I don't even have to worry about how something gets recycled I just put it back in the container," Case said. The only catch is there's a deposit for the packaging, but you get that money back when you return. Currently, Loop has partnered with about 80 brands that range from hand soap to pancake mix. "The Häagen-Dazs ice cream has been a huge hit," Case said. The company says the net-positive environmental impact happens after three to five reuses. "It's a problem that feels insurmountable to many people, they don't know where to get started, so loop gives them something tangible to participate in," said Heather Crawford, Vice President of Marketing and E-Commerce. "It'll be pretty exciting to see what it looks like six months to a year from now," Case said.

Sarah Levy (left) worked with customer Helena Hughes at Levy’s store, Cleenland, in Cambridge. She weighed Hughes’s re-usable containers before filling them.(SUZANNE KREITER/GLOBE STAFF) CAMBRIDGE — On a recent afternoon, Sarah Levy picked up an empty pickle jar from a shelf in her storefront, sniffed it, and then suggested a customer fill it with soap. There’s a take-a-jar, leave-a-jar policy at Cleenland, Levy’s new “low-waste, no-shame” store that lets shoppers stock up on cleaning supplies using their own bottles. And as an early adopter of an emerging shift in American consumption habits, she has become adept at getting the gherkin smell out of glass. “This is not a trend; it’s a resurgence of interest in re-using instead of recycling,” said Levy, who opened Cleenland in Central Square in June. After weighing her customers’ jars, she commiserates with them over global environmental challenges. “We’re not going to recycle our way out of this problem,” said Ksenija Broks, a teacher from Roslindale. As consumers such as Broks seek to limit the waste they create, more local entrepreneurs like Levy are stepping in to serve them and have begun opening storefronts — physical, mobile, and online. The Boston General Store is selling a growing assortment of zero-waste accessories. Make & Mend sells secondhand arts and crafts supplies in Somerville’s Bow Market. The Green Road Refill bus tours Cape Cod selling plastic-free alternatives to home and body products. Last month, Sabrina Auclair launched Unpacked Living, an online storefront that she says is the only plastic-free store in Massachusetts. Recent changes in the Chinese recycling industry have upended the way America deals with waste. China had processed US recyclables for decades but is now rejecting “foreign garbage” as part of a broader national antipollution campaign. The decision has reverberated in municipalities across the United States, forcing Massachusetts authorities to place new restrictions on materials they accept curbside in recycling bins. In so doing, it’s also forced more consumers to reconsider the amount of waste they create. Julia Wilson, who tracks corporate sustainability efforts for the Nielsen research firm, says 73 percent of consumers are looking to shift their consumption habits to reduce their environmental impact, and she predicts that they’ll spend $150 billion on sustainable goods by 2021. Young consumers in particular lack the brand loyalty of their parents, she said, meaning they’re willing to make purchase decisions that align with their values. And that presents an opportunity. “It opens the door for new entrepreneurs and upstart products and brands who are thinking about things differently,” she said. Some entrepreneurs are using a “circular economy” model in which goods are delivered in durable packages and sent back when they’re empty. Boston-based ThreeMain launched earlier this year selling cleaning products in reusable aluminum bottles. The most well-funded endeavor, Loop, which expanded to Massachusetts last month, sells 100 major brands including Haagen Dazs, Crest mouthwash, and Clorox wipes in reusable containers. Re-usable glass jars are available at Cleenland, in Cambridge’s Central Square.(SUZANNE KREITER/GLOBE STAFF) Tom Szaky has spent over 17 years processing hard-to-recycle materials as the founder of TerraCycle, and said the challenges in the recycling economy led him to launch Loop. “Waste has really moved from a problem to a crisis in the last 24 months,” he said. “And the real root cause of waste is the idea of disposability, which was really only invented in the 1950s.” Loop’s goal, he said, is to make buying items in durable, reusable containers as “incredibly convenient and incredibly affordable” as the ones we’re currently buying — and tossing — when we’re through. “Our goal is that it feels to you as disposable as possible,” he said. “I want you to feel like it’s a throwaway lifestyle.” The service has been operating in Paris and New York for the past few months and will have as many as 500 products by the year’s end, Szaky said. Partnerships with Kroger and Walgreen stores will launch next year. To the enlightened observer, these entrepreneurs aren’t so much trying to reinvent commerce as they are trying to take it back to a more traditional form of selling goods. Levy recognizes the difficulty involved with changing consumer habits, but she said the model works because she’s selling necessities. “You don’t go a week without hand soap,” she notes. And she’s hopeful, as the popularity of zero-waste shops has exploded abroad in the United Kingdom, Canada, and particularly in Australia, where the nonprofit Plastic Free Foundation launched the #PlasticFreeJuly campaign, which has become a global phenomenon. Auclair’s path to entrepreneurship started in the shampoo aisle of a Market Basket. The Colombia native has lived in Massachusetts for over a decade and grew to hate the American habit of buying everything in plastic. Because her apartment building in Beverly doesn’t recycle, she felt frustrated by the amount of waste she created. “If I buy a shampoo plastic bottle, I’m buying trash,” she said, recalling her Market Basket revelation. “I vowed that day that I was going to quit plastic.” Auclair found a community of like-minded consumers online and began to document her attempt to live plastic-free on Instagram. She created the Facebook group Zero Waste Massachusetts before launching Unpacked Living. The site sells such items as bamboo toothbrushes, metal lunch tins, and lip balms in cardboard containers. It’s a small endeavor — she has invested about $2,000 on the products, and her warehouse is her guest bedroom — but she said it’s a start. Area food suppliers say concerns about plastic waste are driving a steady increase in bulk buying, particularly following the closure of the Harvest Co-op last year. Matt Gray has seen sales of his bulk section and bottled milk soar in his Somerville storefront, Neighborhood Produce. Alys Myers is working to build Supply, a bulk delivery business out of Dorchester, and Roche Bros. recently added a bulk section in its Downtown Crossing store. And since taking over the store’s operations last summer, Greg Saidnawey, the 26-year-old fourth-generation owner of Pemberton Farms market in North Cambridge, said he has doubled the amount of items the store sells (it now offers 120 bulk bins, 65 spices, three oils, four soap products, six pet foods, and 12 beverages). “The demand was there,” he said, “and we took the opportunity and ran with it.” Gergana Nenkov, a marketing professor at Boston College who studies how consumers engage with messages around sustainability, said these entrepreneurs are responding to the shifting attitudes of younger consumers. “There’s a big concern about ‘What are you doing for the world?’ ” she said, a message that “startups are leading the way on, and big companies will follow.” Until then, for consumers like Julia Burrell, living a low-waste life can still feel a lot like a full-time job. In January, the self-described “environmental atrocity” made a decision to rid her life of plastic, documenting her effort on Instagram as The Crazy No Plastic Lady. It’s still hard to buy meat and cheese in plastic-free packaging, she said, and she’s been slapped on the wrist while attempting to use her own containers in the bulk aisle of such stores as Whole Foods. “Living this lifestyle requires a lot of research,” she said, sitting in front of a collection of empty glass jars that line the mantel of her East Boston home. “And a lot of seeing what you can get away with.” But Burrell is hoping her Instagram account might lead to a new career coaching organizations on taking steps toward reducing their waste. “If I focus my energies into this, I think I could parlay this into a successful business,” she said. “It would be the most meaningful job I have ever had.”

Consider an average deodorant tube. Packaged in a hard plastic case, your deodorant contains lots of tiny plastic components for twist-ability that are not recyclable. This means that out of the all deodorants sold in the U.S. last year, most of them were tossed into the trash, with many of them ending up in the ocean. (Yes, garbage often ends up in sewers, rivers, and the ocean on its way to the landfill.) The result? Whales with bellies full of plastic, vanishing coral reefs, and a patch of trash three times the size of France floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Plastic waste is so pervasive that it has been found at the furthest depths of the ocean, and as plastic containers break down, tiny plastic fragments invisible to the naked eye (microplastics) end up in waterways and eventually, into the very fish we eat. Still, the plastic containers filling your bathroom cabinet and makeup bag are not the only troublemakers. It’s the ingredients inside the bottles that are also wrecking havoc with the environment. From glitter, which is often made from plastic and washed down the drain, to face wipes, which are virtually indestructible, to the 14,000 tons of sunscreen collecting in the world’s reefs each year, the beauty industry’s environmental footprint is having long-term ramifications. Take sunscreen. Oxybenzone and octinoxate, two of the most common sunscreen ingredients, are toxic for coral reefs. Avobenzone, a common substitute for oxybenzone, could be just as dangerous. Experts estimate that 90 percent of all reefs will be dead by 2050 unless we ban these sunscreens altogether. As for ingredients like parabens and sulfates, well, most chemicals that are washed down the drain are unable to be filtered out in treatment plants, so they end up in our waterways, in our tap water, and eventually the ocean—an important point, considering American women use an average of 12 personal care products, each containing 168 different chemicals.

We Can't Recycle Out of This Problem

You’ll notice that your serums and moisturizers are often kept inside a little bag, which is inside a colored light-protectant bottle, with a special pump and applicator. Most of these different parts (especially colored plastic, along with pumps, which usually contain a metal spring) are considered “non recyclable.” While companies like TerraCycle are changing the game by recycling the "non-recyclable" (from coffee capsules to plastic gloves to toothbrushes and deodorant cases, TerraCycle can recycle almost any form of waste), it’s important to focus on buying brands already committed to clean, sustainable practices. “The packaging thing has become such a hot button issue,” says Follain founder, Tara Foley. “However I want people to remember that it's the ingredients inside the packaging that can make a huge, huge impact very quickly as well. It’s critical to ensure that the whole product, not just the packaging, is clean.” She notes that bio-based plastics and biodegradable plastics, often viewed as green alternatives by consumers, have environmental drawbacks of their own. Indeed, the process in which plant ingredients in your natural beauty products are farmed can affect local communities and ecosystems, as well as the product’s overall carbon footprint. With conventional beauty brands, their packaging might taut recyclability, but the catastrophic environmental impact of the chemicals used to make their products could potentially be worse. It’s also important to note that most beauty products use water in manufacturing and as a main ingredient (usually under the label of “aqua”). Water is a precious energy resource that we need to protect as we tackle climate change.

The Solution

Try an eco-audit of your own daily beauty and grooming regimen. Assess the number of products you buy and how much waste is produced as a result. The first step is to contact Terracycle to find out how to properly recycle the products you are currently using. (To make the process easier for yourself, keep a separate bin for recycling in your bathroom.) Loop, a new innovation from TerraCycle inspired by the old milk man delivery and pick-up system, has already seen companies like P&G, Unilever, and The Body Shop sign onto the pilot program which recently launched in New York, New Jersey, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania, and Maryland. If you need more incentive, Credooffers store credit when you bring in empty bottles. The next step is to slowly start replacing your products with sustainable alternatives. You may have seen brands like Meow Meow Tweet and By Humankind, which offer products like refillable deodorant and mouthwash tabs. You can also switch to reusable cotton pads, refillable makeup from brands like Kjaer Weiss, and package-free products like shampoo bars—all of which significantly cut down plastic and chemical waste. Oh, and ditch the single-use face mask.

People are awake to the issue of waste. Three years ago, people didn’t understand the issue of ocean plastic, and now they do. In our day-to-day lives, plastic is everywhere, but with China no longer buying our recyclables, every piece placed in our blue bin or purchased at the convenience store has even greater potential to add to the ocean gyres and microplastics making their way into our food chain. Though it may seem like the right thing to blame the existence of the material itself for these issues, plastic in and of itself is not the problem — it’s the fact that it is so often treated as if it is disposable, designed to be used once and is not typically widely accepted for recycling. We know plastic never fully breaks down. Wasting plastic isn’t just a loss of time, energy and finite natural resources, but active degradation of our planet and voluntary contribution to the climate crisis. Creating value for it is key to ensuring it doesn’t just get thrown “away.” Here are just a few of the innovations eliminating the idea of [plastic] waste.

Reduce, reuse — and reduce some more

At TerraCycle, we may be known for “recycling the unrecyclable,” but reduction prevents waste from occurring in the first place. For consumers, this may mean buying less and looking to borrow or reuse instead of buying new. For brands and industry, this means creating consumption models that require fewer plastic resources. Ride- and car-sharing services such as Lyft and Zipcar may not immediately come to mind, but these examples of sharing-economy models offer access to goods without ownership, offsetting the need to purchase. One less car on the road equals less of the gas, maintenance and water required to produce it, let alone drive. And since plastic makes up roughly 15 percent of the average car by weight, it fits.

Design differently

Packaging design is changing minute by minute, and many upgrades are doing away with plastic entirely. S’well and Klean Kanteen are popular brands of stainless-steel beverage containers replacing the disposable water bottle, also moving away from other reusable plastic bottles on the market. But again, plastic isn’t the problem. TerraCycle’s new circular shopping platform, Loop, features hundreds of consumer goods housed in durable versions of their previously single-use packaging. The products are offered in a combination of glass, stainless steel, aluminum and engineered plastics. The durable plastics are designed to last up to 100 uses; and when they do wear out, we recycle them, cycling the value of the material continuously.

Go naked

Farmer’s markets and craft fairs still sell their wares “naked” before they offer you a plastic bag, but there was a time where the consumer was responsible for bringing their own containers. The point of packaging is that it makes it easier and more convenient to buy goods, in addition to allowing inventory to be distributed, so reducing or doing away with packaging needs to create value (aka sell and be profitable) in order to work and be sustainable. Lush Cosmetics makes little to no packaging work as an extension of its brand identity. In addition to reusable metal tins, colorful cloth knot-wraps, and 100 percent post-consumer recycled plastic pots (some of it ocean plastic), 35 percent of Lush products are sold “naked,” allowing consumers to touch and smell in a retail experience that harks back to the shops of yore. Competitive with premium natural care brands, going package-less illustrates Lush’s ethos and serves as a model for others in the industry.

#RecycleEverything

Everything can be recycled — it’s just a matter of someone being willing to pay for it, which is why so many plastics aren’t. To solve for their plastics, some producers of consumer goods work with us to sponsor the collection, logistics and processing for TerraCycle’s variety of national recycling programs, made free to consumers. Through these programs, individuals and groups send in items including food and drink pouches, cosmetics packaging — even cigarette butts, the most littered item in the world. But with so many complex plastics in the world, there isn’t always a sponsor for its solution. Our highly customizable Zero Waste Box™ (ZWB) platform is another way for brands and businesses to offset their plastic impacts by offering it as part of their product lines at retail. Events, factories and public facilities also use it to supplement waste-reduction efforts for visitors and employees, solving for common streams such as packing and shipping material, breakroom items, and research disposables (i.e. gloves, disposable clothing, pipet tips). In areas of the country where recycling is entirely lacking, or certain plastics are not accepted (dark and colored plastics are not recyclable most places [more on that shortly], and some places don’t accept #5, for example), ZWBs are a solution for residents and businesses looking for the public system to catch up.

Invest in recycling technologies

Recycling more plastic is hindered by the fact that most recyclers don’t want it. Using post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials can present challenges with color, aesthetics and feel. In manufacturing, there is a need to find more end markets for colored and opaque plastics, as these are considered difficult to recycle because they are less versatile than clear, or virgin, plastic. Chemical recycling (depolymerization) is one option to decolor recycled plastics, but that certainly requires more infrastructure investment. These processes have the ability to remove pigments, dyes and additives to produce “virgin-like resins” that are competitive with virgin raw material. For example, Procter & Gamble recently invented the PureCycle Process and licensed it to PureCycle Technologies to open a plant to restore used polypropylene (PP, or #5 plastics) to “virgin-like” quality and remove colors and contaminants.

Explore new “plastics”

There is promise in exploring new materials — such as bioplastic derived from natural, renewable feedstocks instead of petroleum; and biodegradable plastics that supposedly break down in the natural environment, with considerations. Consumers certainly connect with the concept of a plastic made from plants, but before we go any further, humanity has pretty much maxed out agricultural land. Offsetting demand for petroleum-derived plastics with plant-derived bioplastics would call for millions of additional acres of agricultural space. The technology exists for things such as fruit juice waste, sewage, algae, pine trees and straw, but the infrastructure isn’t there. Moving on to biodegradable bioplastics, the compostability of compostable plastics is akin to the recyclability of plastics in general. All can be effectively processed, but most compostable plastics need an industrial facility. They won’t break down in your backyard pile, let alone the ocean or in a landfill, and there are only a handful of composting facilities in the United States. What’s more, many composters don’t want this in their piles, because most so-called biodegradable plastics don’t break down into nutrient-rich material as, say, food scraps or yard clippings do. What producers can do in this area is ensure their exploration of new materials is in line with the system as it is currently. Club Coffee — a major Canadian roaster, manufacturer and distributor of packaged coffee — created the world’s first 100 percent compostable, BPI Certified, plant-based coffee capsule, an item once called the “environmental boogeyman.” The pods break down in as little as five weeks without releasing toxins in the earth, or a composter’s product. This innovation, like all of the best innovations in plastics, account for the inputs of all stakeholders. Governments can certainly drive change by subsidizing research and incentivizing environmentally preferable use of material to ease the financial risks. What’s key here is the creation of value for consumers, governments, businesses and investors around solutions for the plastic pollution crisis, to ensure it works in the world as it is, to create the space for even greater systems change.

There’s something in the air. Or, should we say, the ocean. Joining what The New York Times called “a growing global movement,” the Canadian government recently announced it would be tackling the global pollution crisis with bans on single-use plastics. The big question is whether that strategy will trigger the teamwork needed to get the best results. The details of the Canadian plan remain to be seen, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would follow the lead of the European Union with their vote to ban items, such as plastic cutlery and cotton-swab sticks, that often end up littered in oceans and waterways. With a goal of improving the current 10% “at best” estimate for plastics recycled in Canada, any bans could start at soon as 2021. A key step in that direction will have to be input from manufacturers, retailers, all levels of government and the public—to capture all the factors for success. Going green, in the grey   Government action is an important and largely missing ingredient in the effort against plastic pollution. Banning certain types of single-use plastic can be a way to prevent pollution at the source. However, we must keep in mind that, despite the current systems of thinking regarding the most environmentally and economically preferable ways to manage resources, we need to pay attention to the grey areas and see the full range of potential impacts. Hindsight is 20/20, which can explain our experience with disposability and single-use in the first place. Manufacturers didn’t advertise the virtues of disposability to fool the public into polluting and littering, but they focused on how this new wave of consumption might make life easier; today, in the light of the past, the effects of a narrow focus on these benefits are plain. We need to take the same big-picture thinking to today’s environmental initiatives of product bans, regulations on packaging design, even recycling, as we need to consider their current impacts and the potential for success in the long-term. We need to be alert to the reality that while consumers care about the planet and their health, they have gotten used to the convenience, price point, and ease offered by lightweight, single-use items. Exploring alternatives We know the consumers care and report being willing to pay or switch brands for those that offer accessible, actionable solutions. A study from Dalhousie University, “The Single-Use Plastics Dilemma: Perceptions and Possible Solutions,” reveals current and emerging generations of Canadian consumers are mindful of the need for greener products; the same study reports one out of every two Canadians actively shop for food in non-plastic packaging. However, we also know many consumers are focused on price. Interestingly, 71.8% of respondents reported that in the event single-use plastic bans are enacted, they’d want a discount, incentive or rebate for supporting alternative solutions. It shows the need to meet people where they are, offer them the virtues of convenience and functionality they have become accustomed to, and make it more worth their while. Plant-based plastics are one option that consumers are excited about. The consumer behavior study showed 37.7% of respondents would be willing to pay more for an item with biodegradable packaging, which is usually plant-based; this percentage grew to 46.6% for those born after 1994. Consumers connect with the concept of compostable plastics made from plants that should break down in composting facilities, or better still, the natural environment. , as it addresses our dependence on petroleum and concerns of further contributing to landfills or ocean pollution. But those expectations may mean a grey area for “green” plastic, as not all of these materials are created equal. Breaking down compostability   The compostability of plant-based plastics is akin to the recyclability claims for petroleum-based plastics. Everything doesn’t break down in every setting. In the case of compostable plant-based plastics, most require processing in an industrial composting facility to get the mix of the right temperatures and moisture levels to break down as quickly as possible. Many won’t cycle down in your backyard pile, let alone the ocean or in a landfill. The good news is the number of composting facilities in North America is growing, particularly as governments push for food waste diversion away from landfills and incinerators. One of the big challenges centers on “biodegradable” claims. Many composters report that most so-called biodegradable plastics don’t break down into nutrient-rich material as, say, food scraps or yard clippings, which have a wide range of micro- and macronutrients as well as a living ecosystem of bacteria and other microbes. There is growing pressure to ban “biodegradable” claims completely because they are seen as misleading for consumers. All aboard What producers can do is ensure new materials are in line with the system as it is currently. Club Coffee, a major Canadian coffee company, created the world’s first BPI Certified coffee pod for the most common brewers in North America. Unlike the traditional plastic pod, their pods break down in as little as five weeks in facilities designed to produce high-quality compost. A big reason is the pods include the skins of roasted coffee beans, turning what was a waste byproduct into a key ingredient for compostability.   The PURPOD100TM meets ASTM International’s Standard D6868 for compostability and required quite a bit of lab testing, and transparency around ingredients and production. The company has worked to ensure that marketing and advertising materials are accurate and not misleading. Club Coffee has worked closely with leaders like the Compost Manufacturing Alliance, which brings together major U.S. composting operators to test products to make sure they really deliver the composting results that consumers expect and that operators need. The company also works with the Compost Council of Canada. The result of taking into account the inputs of all stakeholders? Consumers value the coffee, convenience, and compostability; retailers get the positives of a more sustainable, premium product; composters have a product that works in their systems; and Club Coffee enjoys brand affinity. Where the private sector here is stepping up to solve for single-use plastic on its own, governments can drive change by subsidizing research and incentivizing environmentally preferable uses of materials to ease the financial risks. As with recycling, supporting the expansion of the composting network will be an important step forward. According to a study by Frontier Group and U.S. PIRG Education Fund, composting could aid topsoil quality and reduce the amount of trash sent to landfills and incinerators in the U.S. by at least 30 percent.   Get in the ‘Loop’ Exploring alternatives to conventional plastics is one valuable solution as are single-use plastics bans. Another way forward is to reduce waste at the source through reduction and preventing the need to dispose. To get there, consumers need the alternatives that businesses are in a position to provide. TerraCycle’s new circular shopping platform Loop currently features durable versions of goods previously housed in single-use packaging. The products are offered in a combination of glass, stainless steel, aluminum, and engineered plastics designed to last up to 100 uses; when they do wear out, they are processed to cycle the value of the material continuously. Offering trusted brands in upgraded containers, consumers enjoy products they love while eliminating disposable packaging. Delivered to one’s door, a modern version of the milkman model of yore, the Loop Tote doesn’t use bubble wrap, air packs, plastic foam, or cardboard boxes, scrapping e-commerce excess. Loop partners with retailers to bring reusable packaging into stores, making it easy for consumers to make the switch. In the U.S., the founding partners are Walgreens and Kroger, Europe has Carrefour, and Canada’s largest food and pharmacy retailer Loblaw recently announced it would launch the platform early-2020. Executive Chairman Galen Weston said, “Our industry is part of the problem, and we can be part of the solution.” Buying into solutions for single-use plastics The state of the recycling industry around the globe is fragmented, as are the needs of each region, but the world’s problems with plastic pollution are the same. While improvements are made by governments, there is a strong demand for authentically “eco-friendly” plastics and durable alternatives. Consumers hold more power in this aspect than they know. If we demand less disposability and more systems-thinking, businesses will push suppliers, vendors, peers, and stakeholders for better materials and models for waste reduction, and profit, in the face of many challenges. Thus, the most important shift toward solutions for single-use plastic waste is a collaboration with valued experts. Businesses can close the loop by sharing learnings, taking responsibility, and inspiring others to start their circular economy journey. All players on the supply chain are accountable for the life cycle of goods, and exploring bold alternatives that create value from every angle are the ones that will stick.

Loblaw Companies will not need to make any up-front investment in or changes to its logistics cycles to incorporate reusable packaging partner Loop into its operations, a spokesperson for the company says. “In the first phase, Loop is responsible for the logistics from the storing and delivery of the goods to consumers, so there will be no impact on our logistics,” Catherine Thomas, senior director of external communication for Loblaw Companies Limited, told Inside Logistics. Loop, a subsidiary of New Jersey-based Terracycle, integrates reusable packaging product cycles into existing retail environments. It will kick off the service by selling President’s Choice products in reusable packaging entirely through the Loop + Loblaw online purchasing platform. This system will be accessible via the PC Express website but will transact independently. Should the Canadian pilot be successful with its Toronto launch, both parties intend for Loblaw to become more involved as Loop’s processes become integrated directly into the retailer’s online platform and, eventually, into in-store applications and across additional markets. Product returns will also fall under Loop’s purview, which will not present logistics challenges. “A return will not impact the logistics cycle in any way,” says Lauren Taylor, Loop Global’s vice-president of creative and communications. “Each Loop company owns its own package, so each company will handle any product dissatisfaction.” Loop maintains a rigorous sanitation process that ensures high hygiene standards as containers are reused. They will be washed above 150°F with a sodium hydroxide solution, then rinsed over 180°F with a mild acid sanitizer. Last, the containers will be rinsed with deionized water. “Loop has partnered with manufacturers to implement stringent Quality Assurance processes throughout each stage of our cleaning and fulfillment systems, so consumers are receiving products that are entirely safe for consumption. Loop will also follow strict reporting processes to ensure that any adverse events or quality complaints are immediately escalated and addressed by both Loop and the manufacturer of the product.” The Toronto pilot project is one of several worldwide. Loop is currently active in Paris and New York, and launches are in the works for London (U.K.), Tokyo, Germany, and California.

Summer might be ending, but the extreme heat waves and storms this year brought won't stop any time soon. The good news is, businesses and individuals from all industries are making strides to combat climate change in 2019. This year, GreenBiz has continued to track the progress of the clean economy for our sustainability-conscious readership. Thoughtful innovations are leading the charge, from zero-waste packaging to airless tires to regenerative agriculture. During these dog days of summer, we rounded up the 10 stories that our readers collectively tuned into the most, in case you missed them or want a refresher. We hope this list will keep you inspired — and here’s to the stories of the clean economy that are still to come. 1. A zero-waste packaging innovation launched in February, and blue-chip companies have been joining in droves since. We want to Loop you in.   Loop, a zero-waste system that recycles and refills high-quality packaging, attracted an impressive roster of consumer brands — and the largest GreenBiz readership this year. The system aims to eliminate the environmental consequences of disposability but also maintain its virtues, such as convenience, said Tom Szaky, CEO and co-founder of TerraCycle, the company that made Loop. Big names such as Procter & Gamble, Nestlé and Unilever are joining because they recognize the growing demand for sustainable products and packaging, but it remains to be seen whether consumers will match the enthusiasm, our executive editor wrote in this article. 2. At the beginning of the year, the EAT-Lancet Commission released dietary guidelines for the "Great Food Transformation," which aims to achieve sustainable human and planetary health by 2050. The recommendations in their current form, argued our op-ed writer, nutrition consultant Erica Hauver, cannot accomplish either goal. The Eat-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health sought to answer a critical question: "Can we feed a future population of 10 billion people a healthy diet within planetary boundaries?" Its answer — the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems (PDF) — gives recommendations for global diets for the next 30 years. However, its findings have been controversial. Contributor Hauver explores these recommendations and their shortcomings. She notes of the commissioned report: "First, it is founded on outdated, weak nutrition science. Second, the commission failed to achieve an international scientific consensus for its dietary targets, in spite of its claims to have done so. Third, it has suffered from biased, or at least unrepresentative, leadership." The need for a sustainable food system and for transformational change within it are critical — and must be given the consideration deserve, argues Hauver. 3. Car owners know how scary tire blowouts can be, but this new development might offer them a peace of mind: Michelin is teaming up with General Motors to test airless tires.   A prototype of the Michelin Uptis technology — the potential benefits of airless tires include fewer punctures and reduced materials requirements. "Airless tires" might sound like an oxymoron, but the iconic French tiremaker is looking for new ways to advance sustainable mobility. It’s doing just that with Uptis, a new generation of airless tires, made up of composite materials, which could decrease the amount of rubber and raw materials used. Their unique design, which bears the weight of cars at high speeds, also could improve passenger safety. They are likely to be quickly adopted in markets with higher rates of tire blowouts because of gnarly road conditions, such as India and China. Michelin and GM are testing them later this year and hope to make them commercially available by 2024, wrote GreenBiz’s editorial director, Heather Clancy. The ultimate vision is to produce "100 percent sustainable" tires, sourcing entirely from renewable or bio-sourced materials. 4. We put out our fourth list of up-and-coming changemakers in the sustainability field. These twentysomethings represent what makes us hopeful about our work during these uncertain times. One of our most widely-anticipated stories is our annual 30 Under 30 list. After nominations from the global GreenBiz community throughout the spring and much-appreciated partnership from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and BSR in gathering suggestions, the GreenBiz editors must whittle the hundreds of names we've received down to only 30. They're always difficult deliberations, but the application pool was particularly incredible this year. As we wrote: "They work in the worlds of technology and tires, finance and forestry, retail and recovery operations. They hail from Tokyo and Toronto, London and Lima, Mexico and Manhattan. They toil in data centers and diversity, conservation and conservative politics — and generally are making the world greener and more just." 5. We spent International Women's Day doing what we do every day: feeling inspired by the work that women in corporate sustainability are undertaking. To celebrate, though, this year, we decided to write about those amazing women.  From women running corporate offices to those running for office, incredible badasses around the world are leading the way to a more sustainable and just future. They're fighting for everything from greening finance to equity in tech startup acceleration to healthy materials in fashion to decarbonizing transportation. "Whether it's the unwavering diplomacy of public-sector leaders such as Christiana Figueres or the steely resolve of executives such as Apple's Lisa Jackson, this group is especially noteworthy both because of what they already have achieved and for their ability to directly influence future innovation and progress," wrote our editorial director, Heather Clancy. 6. Our food production system and climate change are inextricably linked. However, better decision-making in our land use and agricultural practices has the potential to stop climate change — and even, reverse it. The agriculture sector represents a far outsized proportion of global emissions that contribute to climate change — between 20 and 25 percent, according to scientists. However, in order to feed the growing population nutritiously and maintain millions of livelihoods around the world, the field is a difficult one to transition to low-carbon. However, the way that we manage agriculture and husbandry makes a massive difference in the amount of greenhouse gases both of them emit. General Mills’ Head of Sustainability of Natural and Organic Operations, Shauna Sadowski, wrote for GreenBiz on why how the future of land and livestock management is regenerative. 7. Oil companies love to talk about their transition to clean energy. BP even changed its name to "Beyond Petroleum." But how are they really doing? Our senior energy analyst Sarah Golden breaks it down with facts and numbers.    Oil supermajors such as Chevron and ExxonMobil are ratcheting up PR budgets to brand themselves as clean energy allies. They're talking the talk, but are they walking the walk? As it turns out, "only 3 percent of the capital expenditures by the top five supermajors is dedicated to low-carbon technologies," GreenBiz’s senior energy analyst, Sarah Golden, wrote. These companies might understand the importance of energy transition to stop runaway climate change, but in the meantime, they’re cashing in on the current U.S. oil boom, with plans to increase oil production and export to foreign markets. Golden also explained in detail what the big five are doing to transition to clean energy. "In some ways, the oil companies would be perfect renewable allies," she concluded. Want to know why? 8. Amazon makes it easy to start your own delivery business by providing its branded vans. Why not make it easier on the planet by electrifying them? Amazon has set ambitious goals to minimize its carbon footprint, from investing in electric pickup truck maker to championing reusable packaging. The logistics giant could make another leap by electrifying its branded vans, which it lends to contractors to launch local delivery businesses and courier packages for Amazon customers. Without electrifying its delivery fleet, Amazon is missing a cost-saving opportunity, wrote GreenBiz’s transportation analyst Katie Fehrenbacher. As these last-mile delivery trips are "relatively short-range, occur over a condensed area and have somewhat routine routes," electric vans can save money by eliminating fuel costs, she analyzed. UPS, FedEx and DHL are already electrifying their delivery fleets, but the market is still relatively new. Could Amazon make a move and tip the scale? 9. Looking for some new listening material to learn even more about the diverse field of sustainability? We have some recommendations for you.  You might have heard our GreenBiz original podcasts, but you might not know that we're generally major podcast aficionados — and we wanted to share the love with you. We've been creating podcast roundups for the past few years, and this year was our longest list so far. We couldn't choose our favorite — but maybe you can find a new one of yours. From transportation expertise to stories of resilience to sustainability comedy (yes, that's a thing), our list has something for everyone. 10. WeWork’s leader of sustainability and well-being sat down with GreenBiz contributor Mia Overall to explain her role in the coworking brand, how she got there and how the company plans to take on climate change.   Lindsay Baker, WeWork's first chief sustainability officer. You won’t find any trace of meat at WeWork’s corporate spread. Don’t worry — carnivores are still welcome, but the coworking brand has stopped spending its budget on meat. This is only one of the ways it’s minimizing its environmental footprint, spearheaded by The We Company's new leader of sustainability and well-being, Lindsay Baker. From building healthier office space to imagining cities of the future, she has seen the role evolve tremendously since jumping on board. And now, the most pressing matter on her mind is climate change. "For us, this means tackling our own climate footprint, but also helping entrepreneurs start businesses to help tackle climate," Baker said. "We’re also disproportionately trying to have a positive impact in areas of the world that are impacted by climate change."

The North American edition of the Sustainable Cleaning Products Summit took place in New York in July. Senior executives discussed pressing sustainability issues facing the detergents and home care industry. Some of the key take-aways from the event include: Need for positive vision. In his opening keynote, Professor Steve Cohen from Columbia University called for a positive vision for sustainability. According to Cohen, “sustainability is not about a denial...trying to make people feel guilty for their consumption is a losing strategy.” The way forward is a sustainable lifestyle whereby we (consumers) pay more attention to the environmental impact of our products and services. Sustainable product design. Many of the sustainability issues facing the planet are caused by product design; this was the key message from Howie Fendley from McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry. The Cradle-To-Cradle (C2C) design approach enables eco-friendly products to be designed and materials / nutrients to have infinite cycles. Method cleaning products and CandA jeans are examples of products made according to the C2C design approach. Indoor pollution and allergens. According to Dr. John Ryan from Allergy Standards, the rising incidence in asthma and allergens is partly because of indoor pollution. Chemicals in cleaning products are a major contributor to this pollution, with many ‘allergy aware’ consumers looking for healthier products for their homes. He requested home care companies to phase out possible allergens from their products. Removing packaging waste. Terracycle is working with cleaning product companies to remove plastics from waste streams. It has partnered with Procter and Gamble to create ocean plastic bottles for Fairy washing up liquid. Its new Loop shopping platform is making cleaning products available in multiple use packaging. Measure chemical footprints. Gojo Industries has adopted the chemical footprint project to evaluate the chemicals in its home care and personal care products. It is on track to meet its target of reducing its chemical footprint by 50% by 2020. Dylan Beach called on other companies to follow Gojo Industries and ‘clean up’ their formulations. Green fragrance options. Formulators now have access to a wide range of green fragrances for their home care products. Jack Corley from Custom Essence gave details of the natural essential oils, chemicals, and carrier oils that are being used to fragrance such products. Adulteration, price fluctuations, and supply issues were cited as challenges when using such green ingredients. Nature-inspired biosurfactants. Detergent producers can learn from nature to create microbial biosurfactants from fungi and bacteria. Professor Richard Gross from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute gave a workshop on how sophorolipids and their derivatives are being used as biosurfactants. Ethical labelling trend. The number of ethical labelling schemes for cleaning and home care products is increasing. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) gave details of its new EWG Verified standard for home care products, whilst an update was given on Green Seal and other standards. The development is leading to multiple certification: over 70 home care products are certified according to the USDA Certified BioBased and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Safer Choice standards. Emerging green brand. Clotilde Balassone from Unilever gave details on how the Love, Home and Planet brand was created. Launched earlier this year, the brand has a range of laundry and surface cleaning products that have plant-based ingredients and sustainable packaging. The brand is designed for millennials and aims to ‘build a movement for a cleaner, greener planet’. Marketing best-practices. Brands need to use social media to get green messages across to consumers, especially the Millennials and Gen Z. This was the message from Sourabh Sharma from FIG Or Out. He also called for experiential marketing and clear communications by home care brands if they are to market products effectively to these consumers.

Though French beauty company L’Occitane Group dates its sustainability efforts back to 1976 when founder Olivier Baussan started the namesake brand, the firm’s more recent efforts speak to a shift in modern consumer values.   “Our take has evolved as the ways we all consume has changed and the way we create waste has changed,” said Ashley Arbuckle, L’Occitane Group vp of marketing and wholesale. “The things we were doing in 1976 are not enough anymore.”   Baussan may have conceived L’Occitane to support local farmers and traditional farming methods, but today its sustainability exercises extend to biodiversity and most significantly to a reduction of plastic. In February, L’Occitane Group announced its plans to become fully sustainable by 2025 by working with sustainable plastic provider Loop Industries. Prior to this announcement, only 30% of L’Occitane’s products were made with recycled plastic and it was exclusive to darker-colored product, like its Aromachologie hair-care collection — not its hero body lotion lines. L’Occitane’s in-store recycling capabilities extended to just 30% of its 1,500-plus stores worldwide.   “In the beauty industry, plastic is considered the gold standard. It is one of the materials that’s easiest to work with and it is affordable, but it’s a problem,” said Arbuckle.   According to market research firm Euromonitor International, global consumer demand for plastics exceeded 2.2 trillion units in 2018, and the beauty industry specifically accounted for nearly 153 billion units of that larger pie. What’s even more telling is that 40% of those products were packaged with single-use plastic, meaning that it was unable to be recycled and ultimately ended up in a landfill. While beauty giants like L’Occitane, L’Oréal Group and Unilever are responding to the environmental problem with vigor, the questions around sustainable alternatives remains.   “I’ve been doing this for 17 years, and everyone has always agreed that garbage is a problem, but in the past 24 months, that’s moved from a problem to a crisis,” said Tom Szaky, CEO and founder of TerraCycle, who works with all of the aforementioned conglomerates on recycling efforts, as well as Procter & Gamble and Estée Lauder Companies. Within beauty, the company has projects with 51 partners. He credits that seismic shift in behavior among both consumers and brands to the popularity of David Attenborough’s visceral nature documentary “Blue Water II.” Szaky estimates that big corporations’ recycling investments typically range in the seven figures.   Companies are responding because they see the opportunity to more deeply connect with beauty customers, he said, and recent sustainable moves can also be credited as a prevention tactic, considering Canada, for one, announced in June that it is banning single-use plastic items by 2021. Even compostable efforts, such as those favored by L’Oréal’s Seed Phytonutrients, can be viewed as problematic, because compostable packaging is better suited for developing countries where the only alternative option is simply to litter — U.K.-based retailer  Tesco even outlawed compostable products by the end of 2019, because composters view that packaging as a contaminant.   In January, Unilever announced that nine of its brands, including Love Beauty and Planet and REN Clean Skincare, would trial new reusable packaging made from aluminum and glass, while Dove would test a new refillable deodorant stick via TerraCycle’s Loop system. This comes after Unilever’s own commitment, which it announced in 2017, that its plastic packaging would be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.   “We’ve made an incredible commitment as a company, but the beauty industry is a terrible offender because there are a lot of modern conveniences to using plastic. We have to make loud standards to change existing behavior and challenge that dichotomy of putting so much out there,” said Esi Eggleston Bracey, evp and COO of beauty and personal care at Unilever North America.   Interestingly, though, bigger and smaller companies, alike, like to shout their sustainable practices from the rooftops, especially around seasonal touch points such as Earth Day, World Ocean’s Day and Zero Waste Week, but Eggleston Bracey said efforts cannot be episodic.   “There’s a tension that exists between doing and saying, and both of those things are important, but the watch-out is saying without doing. We are willing to engage in trial-and-error at Unilever, because sustainability is our business model. It’s not a marketing model, and it is our desire to lead,” she said.   However, Szaky encouraged consumers and brands to read between the lines. “A lot of these beauty companies have made lofty commitments to be fully recyclable by 2025 through the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and we are part of that foundation ourselves, but if you read the details of those press releases, they are claiming that their packaging will be ‘technically ‘ recyclable, and they’re not making any claims around practicality,” said Szaky. “Technical means the process exists, but practical means you can put it in a blue bin in Chicago or New York or anywhere, and it will be recycled. Technical recycling doesn’t take into account the profitable needs of garbage companies. Garbage companies are only going to recycle what they can make money on.”   Certainly the after-use, garbage ramifications of a product are an unsexy proposition for brands and an industry preoccupied with image. But that’s not to say companies’ practices, whether its nascent brand Circumference or Kiehl’s actions, are for naught. “We are trying to do things that make a difference and not just slap a logo on a bottle,” said Arbuckle, who noted that L’Occitane Group has existing challenges in providing recyclable options in Hawaii because of shipping costs, and that is just one hurdle it faces in becoming a fully fledged sustainable business.   Though skeptics would argue that so much talk industry-wide can be misleading, Szaky said the economics have to work for the larger landscape to change. That only comes through investment in smaller-tier programs.   “Whether it’s L’Occitane, MAC or Kiehl’s — and we run the recycling programs in all of their boutiques — those companies are paying the actual cost of collecting and processing minus the value of the product, so that recycling and those recyclable practices are becoming commonplace,” he said. “It may not work at scale with blue bins all across the world, but this gives us a solution in an imperfect world. That will ultimately affect customers’ choice of what to buy, and, no matter what, that’s feasible by 2025.”

How to choose things for your home that have had, or can have, second lives. The circular economy, as defined by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, starts at the very beginning of the life of a product. "Waste and pollution are not accidents, but the consequences are made at the design stage, where 80 percent of environmental impacts are decided." Most discussions of the circular economy relate to single-use plastics, but Emma Loewe of Mind Body Green raises very interesting points in her post, The Rise Of The Circular Economy & What It Means For Your Home. She notes that all the issues also apply to more longer-lived items. When applied to physical products, designing for circularity means creating things that can be reused multiple times or broken down into their constituent parts and then rebuilt into equally valuable items. It's about designing out that end-of-life step altogether and making objects that can stay in use, in some form, indefinitely. Loewe describes companies like Coyuchi, who chop up old textiles and turn it into fiber again, or initiatives like Good Stuff, a "one-month exploration of how to live well in the circular economy that displayed furniture, fashion, and home goods that were built using circular economy principles or bought off of secondhand websites." Borrowing from food legend Michael Pollan, Good Stuff operated off the motto "Have Good Stuff. Not too much. Mostly reclaimed" – one that we could all stand to adopt in our own lives. These are issues that every designer should be thinking about. And not just buying vintage furniture (like I do) but getting creative with reusing and repurposing. Years ago we discussed Adhocism, coined by Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver in 1973, "Basically it involves using an available system or dealing with an existing situation in a new way to solve a problem quickly and effectively. It is a method of creation relying particularly on resources which are already at hand." An example is the dining room table in my cabin, shown at top, made from a bowling alley that I cut out of a building early in my architectural career. My dad built the side table out of laminated shipping container flooring. Or these windows, taken from a Toronto house during a renovation and rehung in a cabin in the woods. As for buildings and communities, the Ellen Macarthur Foundation has looked at this too. As I noted in our post, We currently keep a lot of people working in the linear economy, digging up resources, turning them into products like cars or buildings that then take a lot more resources to operate, use them until they wear out or we are bored with them or our needs change, then throw them away and start over. Emma Loewe points out all kinds of ways that people can think circular in their homes. One can subscribe to TerraCycle's new Loop program (although I think Katherine's ideas for living zero waste are more practical and realistic). There are furniture subscriptions services like Fernish (although I think you are better off buying used). She notes that even IKEA is thinking circular these days. "We're trying to make more from less to make less waste in our production," Lena Pripp-Kovac, head of sustainability at Inter IKEA Group. Making stuff takes a lot of energy and makes a lot of CO2. Traditional recycling is, well, BS. Truly going circular is not easy; as I have written before, we have to change our entire culture; it is a different way of thinking about things. But as Loewe notes, we actually can go circular in our homes and in our kitchens, and it is still pretty enough for MindBodyGreen.