An estimated 3,000 government officials, business leaders, economics experts and non-profit representatives flocked to Davos, Switzerland, for the 2019 edition of the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering. To create a new world, we need a new world order. And that order should be guided by a vision for shared prosperity and shaped, at least in part, by a circular economic model. That mantra was espoused by many of the estimated 3,000 government officials, business leaders, economics experts and non-profit representatives who flocked to Davos, Switzerland, last week for the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering. Amid the kerfuffle about the comings and goings of an estimated 1,500 private jets, consternation over the U.S. no-show and muted cheers over record numbers of female delegates, calls for circularity — including the bold push for reusing consumer products packaging fronted by TerraCycle — and inclusivity sounded again and again. "This next phase of globalization needs to deliver economic growth — but deliver it such that it is equitable growth," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, one of the conference co-chairs, in prepared remarks for his speech at the event. "Let’s challenge the status quo with innovation and ingenuity." That requires an intergenerational, international perspective: This year, six of the eight meeting agenda co-chairs were millennials representing Colombia, Iraq, Japan, Kenya, Sweden and the United States. Noura Berrouba, member of the Governing Body of the European Youth Parliament, challenged participants to find empathy. "These are not threats; these are not problems," she said, referring to the distance between the Davos attendees and those whose voices need louder amplification. "These are change agents and opportunities, and if we want to create a world where we tackle our common challenges, we need to work with the people outside of these halls." The tone of these remarks was echoed later in keynote addresses by the prime ministers of Spainand Italy, as well as the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who spoke extensively about the need to address the growing wealth gap in Europe and the rest of the world. The "yellow vests" movement in France, for example, has been a wake-up call to other members of the European Union. Governments’ climate change strategies have focused on renewable energy, energy efficiency and avoiding deforestation but they have overlooked the vast potential of the circular economy. "I am a multilateralist; I am deeply convinced there is no other way to deal with global problems but with global responses," Guterres said. "It is also not enough to vilify those that disagree and call them 'nationalists' or 'populists.' We need to understand the root causes of why large sectors of the population in different parts of the world today disagree with us — and we need to address those root causes and show these people that we care for them." Just one more exacerbating factor: New data from Oxfam suggests that Earth’s 26 richest individuals own as much as the poorest 50 percent. In 2017, it took 43 billionaires to get to that number. In an essay penned for the World Economic Forum (WEF) media center, the chief sustainability officer for Indian equipment and vehicle conglomerate Mahindra, Anirban Ghosh, suggested that the ingredients to build compelling circular economy businesses and models in poor or developing nations — including India and China — are plentiful and potent. He noted that addressing climate change offers an unparalleled opportunity to "reboot" the world economy, pointing to materials recovery and higher rates of repair as steps in the right direction. "Often handled informally, these activities provide the only source of livelihoods to some of the world’s poorest populations," wrote Ghosh. "By turning these existing trends into core development strategies, these countries could generate significant economic savings and massively cut down on carbon emissions. While developing countries must learn to do more and do it better, developed economies have an opportunity to re-orient the ‘take-make-dispose’ economic model towards a more circular paradigm." A sense of urgency Much has changed globally in the 12 months since the last Davos gathering, most especially the publication last fall of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change signaling that humans are acting far too slowly to meet the climate-mitigation goals of the Paris Agreement. Everyone needs to get a move on, to stay within just 1.5 degrees Celsius warming of global temperatures by 2030, the panel urged. "Unprecedented changes in all aspects of society" are required to get there — touching land use, energy, buildings, transport and cities — costing an estimated $2.4 trillion a year worldwide, it warned in October. We’re already witnessing the fallout in the form of more frequent hurricanes, droughts and wildfires around the world. As is tradition, the forum released its annual report (PDF) about global risks shortly before the gathering: the top three dangers, in terms of likelihood, are all related to global warming — extreme weather events, failure of mitigation and adaptation and natural disasters. That’s almost the same as last year’s list, with the exception of the weight the forum placed in 2018 on cyber attacks and data privacy concerns. "Renewing and improving the architecture of our national and international political and economic systems is this generation’s defining task," wrote World Economic Forum's president, Børge Brende, in the risk report introduction. "It will be a monumental undertaking, but an indispensable one." The upside potential of circular economy strategies It also could be lucrative for the businesses that step ahead, according to several economic analyses and reports published this week alongside the forum. Research from Dutch-based Circle Economy estimates that just 9 percent of the global economy operates in a circular manner. Only by prioritizing broader reuse of the roughly 92.8 billion metric tons of minerals, fossil fuels, metals, biomass and other materials that enter the economy annually can countries meet the United Nations target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C, the organization suggests. "Governments’ climate change strategies have focused on renewable energy, energy efficiency and avoiding deforestation but they have overlooked the vast potential of the circular economy," said Circle Economy CEO Harald Friedl in a statement. "They should re-engineer supply chains all the way back to the wells, fields, mines and quarries where our resources originate so that we consume fewer raw materials. This will not only reduce emissions but also boost growth by making economies more efficient." Certain industries could have a massive impact. A separate report (PDF) published by WEF and the United Nations E-Waste Coalition estimated the annual value of electronic waste at $62 billion, three times the worth of all the silver produced in a single year. Put another way, the current "volume" of e-waste produced annually, almost 50 million tonnes, weighs more than every commercial airplane created. The data heralds a new collaboration between several U.N. agencies and technology giants Dell, HP Inc., Microsoft and Philips, which are investing $15 million to begin constructing an e-waste recycling industry in Nigeria. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation also weighed in with an updated report about the connection between food waste and circular economy principles, which the organization estimates could be worth $2.7 trillion annually to the global economy. The paper is essentially a call to action for city planners, given that urban areas will consume roughly 80 percent of all food produced by 2050. Three practices that will be particularly imperative: local sourcing that prioritizes agribusinesses using generative soil techniques; more creative ways of making use of food by-products to eliminate waste; and more weight on plant-based protein alternatives. Here are some ways that technology can help One company that has factored the implications of circular economy principles for some time is Google. One of its quests has been researching and imaging ways in which it can help cities rethink energy management, transportation systems and waste diversion, recycling and reuse systems. Naturally, Google believes technology will be central to accelerating and enabling the transition. This week, the company’s cloud software organization kicked off a social entrepreneurship contest in collaboration with SAP called Circular Economy 2030 to surface "original ideas" for transforming anything from agriculture to packaging. Google also believes artificial intelligence has a big role to play in accelerating and scaling the circular economy transition, a position it defends in a white paper released in collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Two of the bold claims: Design choices enabled by AI could help eliminate up to $127 billion in spending per year related to food waste and up to $90 billion in electronics production — both predictions are pegged to 2030. AI could be particularly useful in overhauling the product design process, according to the paper. Here’s why: Circularity requires more features to be taken into consideration for the design of products, components, and materials, such as disassembly, upgradability, or recycled content. Add to this list of features the wide choice of materials and the possibilities of manipulation of structures with 3D printing and other manufacturing techniques, and the design options become countless. AI technology can be a helpful tool to enable designers to manage this complexity when making decisions. A continuous feedback process where designers test and refine AI generated design suggestions could lead to a better design outcome in a shorter time period. For a hint of other technologies that could play a role in the transition, peek at information about Accenture’s latest The Circulars awards, meant to recognize trailblazers. This year’s program attracted more than 450 applications. The winners included Lehigh Technologies, which helps reincarnate end-of-life tires for new uses; TriCiclos, a company that has reinvented the waste management infrastructure in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru; and Winnow, which makes a "smart meter" used by companies such as IKEA and Hilton to reduce food waste in commercial kitchens. An infinite loop for consumer products, inspired by reusability Davos was also the launch pad for a new initiative, Loop, convened by consumer products giants such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Danone and Mondelēz to test a system of reusable packaging imagined by upcycling pioneer TerraCycle. In the first phase, available this spring near Paris and in the New York metropolitan area, about 300 products will be made available in reusable, durable containers. Once an item is consumed, the empty container can be returned for a refill. "We realized that recycling and using recycled content is about trying to do the best you can with waste, but it's not solving the foundational reason we have waste," TerraCycle founder and CEO Tom Szaky told GreenBiz. "We did a lot of reflection on that and realized that the foundational cause of garbage is disposability and single-use. We tried to come up with a way to solve for disposability but maintain the virtues of disposability, which are convenience and affordability." Whether consumers embrace the idea remains to be seen, of course, but the need for more business models build on the concept of reuse never has been more urgent.

Tim Cook, Matt Damon, economic worries and social unrest The week of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is a fire hose of news. Headlines, predictions, sightings and tidbits that months and years later are recognized as the flash point for much larger shifts and trends can often get overlooked. To help you sort through it all, we’ve put together this crib sheet of everything that we think was important that happened here in Davos. (Yes, I’m writing this from Davos on my way home.) Before we get into the substance, a couple of observations. The World Economic Forum has traditionally brought together the world’s top political and business leaders. But this year, the political leaders were largely absent — remaining in their home countries to handle crises largely of their own making (President Trump with the shutdown and Prime Minister Theresa May with Brexit). The surprise guest this year was Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, making his first appearance; it may be an indication of Apple’s increasing dependence on foreign markets for growth.

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The topic du jour (besides the shutdown) was a debate over where the global economy was headed. Chief executives professed confidence that their earnings would continue apace, while economists and investors talked about the prospect of a recession in 2020. And others, like Ray Dalio — and Seth Klarman, who did not attend, but whose annual letter was a constant talking point — worried about social unrest. Interestingly, Dr. Doom — Nouriel Roubini — was actually upbeat. A Chinese chief executive described his country’s economy as “ugly” — he used that world repeatedly — suggesting that the underlying foundation there was more fragile than most economists acknowledge. That could lead to weakness in China spreading to the rest of the world. And the general sense is that while the U.S. and China may reach a trade détente, we might be headed for a decades-long economic cold war. Larry Fink’s letter and the concept of E.S.G., shorthand for “environmental, social and governance,” got a lot of discussion this year — it felt like it might be a tipping point in the dialogue. European companies are still more interested in E.S.G. than U.S. companies, but it feels like a trend that isn’t going away. TPG’s Rise Fund started a new company, Y Analytics, to measure E.S.G. Bono, a board member of Rise, was on hand to talk about impact investing and to support his Red brand, which he started a decade ago in Davos (DealBook broke that story at the time) as well as his One franchise. Matt Damon was in town to raise money for his water.org, which is turning into a quite successful story (side note: Mr. Damon had to borrow a suit because his bag got lost by Swiss Air). Jane Goodall was also in Davos — and let me say that she is as nice as she is important. Even the Vatican sent a delegation to talk about conscious and inclusive capitalism. And Rebecca Blumenstein, the deputy managing editor of The New York Times, interviewed Bill Gates on Twitter about his work around the globe. ____________________________ Today’s DealBook Briefing was written by Andrew Ross Sorkin in Davos, Switzerland; Stephen Grocer in New York; and Tiffany Hsu and Gregory Schmidt in Paris. The U.S. versus China: It’s not a trade war, it’s a tech war The soap opera of tariff negotiations has riveted economists and executives: Will Beijing keep its promises? Will Washington cooperate? But the real drama is not about trade, but about technology, many in Davos have said. The brewing conflict could affect generations and disrupt the world order, according to Fred Kempe, the chief executive of the think tank Atlantic Council. He wrote: The growing danger is that the tech race could become the primary battleground in a struggle between democracy and autocracy — and between China and the U.S. The dangers of a technological Cold War, a zero-sum contest for global dominance that ultimately separates Chinese and U.S. tech sectors from each other and divides up the world, are increasing. What’s the worry? The billionaire George Soros said that artificial intelligence, when in the hands of authoritarian regimes, was a “mortal threat” to the world. He cited China, which is developing a social credit system that would use personal data to judge an individual’s trustworthiness, as an example. President Xi Jinping could eventually have “total control over the people,” making him “the most dangerous opponent of open societies,” Mr. Soros said. What do the Chinese think? The technology industry relies heavily on global interactions and is “probably suffering the most right now,” said Ken Hu, the deputy chairman of Huawei. The Chinese telecommunications company has been accused by multiple nations, including the U.S., of violating trade rules. Other players, such as the Chinese state-owned oil and gas company Sinopec, say they expect Chinese companies to scale back foreign investment — steps already taken by Alibaba and by GAC Motor. Last year, nearly 60 percent of Chinese C.E.O.s considered the U.S. to be the most important foreign market; this year, only 17 percent feel the same, according to one survey published this past week. Hope for resolution? Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said via video link that Washington was willing to play nice with Beijing if China pledged to protect intellectual property. At a dinner in Davos, a top Chinese regulator heard complaints from international business leaders about the ownership structure of state-owned enterprises and about the Made in China 2025 effort, which aims to take the lead in industries such as artificial intelligence and robotics. But China wants its space. Vice President Wang Qishan said in a speech that “it is imperative to respect national sovereignty and refrain from seeking technological hegemony.” He added: We need to respect the independent choices of model of technology management and of public policies made by countries, and their right to participating in the global technological governance system as equals. More forecasts for a global economic slowdown A recession may not be coming this year, but neither is a boom, Greg Ip of the WSJ writes. The International Monetary Fund downgraded its 2019 forecast for global growth to 3.5 percent. That’s a respectable number, he writes, but the world is struggling to sustain even that muted pace. The reason: The world cannot tolerate interest rates as high as it once did. The “neutral” interest rate — one that is high enough to contain inflation, yet low enough to avoid recession — is much lower than before. The underlying cause: As aging workers retire and birthrates drop, the labor force has grown more slowly. Productivity has also eked out smaller gains than in the past. The upshot: Central banks need to proceed carefully, because a little fiscal tightening goes a long way. More on the global economy: Ray Dalio, founder and chairman of the hedge fund Bridgewater, said he foresaw slower growth rates in the U.S. and Europe. France is sticking to a 1.7 percent economic growth forecast for 2019, the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the I.M.F., warned against an overreliance on central banks, urging countries to strengthen their economies through fiscal and structural changes. In the absence of world leaders, the atmosphere was downbeat. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.CreditAndrew Harnik/Associated Press   Image Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.CreditAndrew Harnik/Associated Press Tax the rich Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t in Davos this week. It just felt like she was. The New York representative’s proposal to impose a 70 percent tax rate on income above $10 million came up frequently among the uber-wealthy in attendance. In those elite circles, filled with people whose fortunes have soared in recent years, the idea was not popular. Michael Dell, the billionaire founder of Dell Technologies, is not a fan, for one. Scott Minerd, the chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners, said the concept was “scary.” Glenn Hutchins, the chairman of North Island and a co-founder of Silver Lake Partners, suggested that it was an attempt to “score political points” and that it would probably be unsuccessful. Ken Moelis, the chief executive of the investment bank Moelis & Company, said it would be “disastrous for the economy.” Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire chief executive of Blackstone, said he was “wildly enthusiastic” about Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s pitch. (He was being sarcastic.) But as the economy slows and 2020 election talk surges, taxing the rich is a topic that will most likely continue to surface. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democratic candidate for president, proposed a so-called ultramillionaire tax this week on the 75,000 wealthiest families in the country, including President Trump’s. Still, top earners would probably figure out how to sidestep such rules, Mr. Minerd said. The political pendulum is swinging. The conservatives found out they’re being held hostage by the extreme right. Now the Democrats are going to find out they’re being held hostage by the extreme left. Defending the international order Globalization had some powerful defenders in Davos, with world leaders imploring delegates not to abandon postwar principles of international integration. Several took jabs at the absent President Trump without mentioning him by name, criticizing his “America First” foreign policy and his habit of provoking trade disputes. The vice president of China, Wang Qishan, whose own country has been accused of running roughshod over foreign competitors and global business rules, nonetheless condemned “practices of the strong bullying the weak and self-claimed supremacy.” Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong, said that certain countries were drifting from the multilateral framework of the past few decades. “If that is no longer the mainstream, we could be in trouble,” she said. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who leads a country that is deeply reliant on international trade and increasingly surrounded by neighbors confronted by protectionist tendencies, urged Western powers to “act against the fragmentation of the international architecture.” She said that global organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank should be reformed and that countries should embrace compromise. She added: I think we should understand our national interest in a way that we think about the interests of others, and from that create win-win situations that are the precondition for multilateralism. Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, pledged his country’s support for “the free, open, and rules-based international order.” He called on forum participants to “rebuild trust toward the system for international trade.” A call for greater oversight of Big Tech World leaders called for more regulation. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan said his country would push for a new international system for the oversight of data use. His proposal was echoed by others: • The South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said African Union leaders would discuss greater oversight of the tech sector at a meeting early next month. • Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany cited a need for the European Union to have a “common digital market.” • Vice President Wang Qishan of China also said that more international cooperation in regulating the market was required. Talk focused on global governance, data privacy and the impact of artificial intelligence, but there was no consensus on what approach to take. Some official sessions tried to put a positive spin on the effects of technological advances, but the optimism seemed out of step with public concern about the disruptive effect on privacy and politics. Tech leaders make the rounds: On his first trip to the forum, Tim Cook, the Apple chief executive, met with world leaders, including President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Dubai’s crown prince, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, acknowledged that her company needed to earn back the trust of the public. Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, said that as facial recognition technology grew, he would “welcome regulation that will help the marketplace not be a race to the bottom.” The milkman makes a comeback Environmental issues took center stage, with world leaders and celebrities weighing in and new partnerships being formed. One of the biggest initiatives announced at the forum was an alternative recycling platform called Loop, which seeks to change the way consumers buy brand-name products. The concept: The project revives the milkman concept, in which products are delivered in reusable containers that are returned to the manufacturer. The partners: Some of the largest consumer goods companies — including Danone, Mars Petcare, Mondelez International, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble and Unilever — are working together on the project as a way to limit waste. The pitchman: Tom Szaky, founder and chief executive of the recycling company TerraCycle, headed to Davos two years ago to meet with the leaders of packaged goods companies and push his big idea. Climate concerns dominated much of the discussion elsewhere at the gathering: • In an interview with Prince William, the naturalist David Attenborough took world leaders to task for waiting too long to address climate change. • Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand joined the chorus, urging her global counterparts to think about the role they play in addressing climate change, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan called for action on the issue. • The singer Bono poked fun at sustainable development goals, saying, “The S.D.G.s, it does sound like a sexually transmitted disease, doesn’t it?” • An expected drop in private jet traffic to Davos this year could be a sign that participants are taking the environmental impact of their travel more seriously. • Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, gave a speech urging the global elite to protect the planet. The best of the rest • Forum participants seemed receptive to Saudi Arabia’s damage control campaign over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (Reuters) •The World Economic Forum hosts 3,000 official participants, but the population of Davos swells to 30,000 during the week. Here are the unaffiliated events, sessions and parties that drew celebrities like Matt Damon and Wyclef Jean. (CNBC) • The Bank of England is ready for Brexit and is disillusioned with Bitcoin, said its governor, Mark Carney. (Bloomberg) • Hundreds of protesters, some waving signs that read “Let them eat money,” complained that the elite participants at Davos cared more about the bottom line than about the state of the world. (AP)

Loop will send you name-brand products, like Tide detergent, Crest mouthwash, or Häagen Dazs ice cream. When you’re done, you ship the empty container back, where it gets cleaned and reused for the next customer. [Photo: Loop]

• BY ADELE PETERS6 MINUTE READ

In the not-too-distant future–as soon as this spring, if you live in or near New York City or Paris–you’ll be able to buy ice cream or shampoo in a reusable container. When you’re done eating a tub of Haagen-Dazs, you’ll toss the sleek stainless steel package in your personal reuse bin instead of your trash can. Then it will be picked up for delivery back to a cleaning and sterilization facility so that it can be refilled with more ice cream for another customer. Loop, a new zero-waste platform from a coalition of major consumer product companies, will launch its first pilots this year. “While recycling is critically important, it is not going to solve waste at the root cause,” says Tom Szaky, CEO and cofounder of TerraCycle, a company that is known for recycling hard-to-recycle materials, and one of the partners behind the project. [Photo: courtesy Loop] “We run what is today the world’s largest supply chain on ocean plastic, collecting it and going into Unilever and Procter & Gamble products and so on,” Szaky says. “But every day, more and more gets put in the ocean, so no matter how much we clean the ocean, we’re never going to solve the problem. That’s really where Loop emerged…To us, the root cause of waste is not plastic, per se, it’s using things once, and that’s really what Loop tries to change as much as possible.” [Photo: courtesy Loop] TerraCycle worked with companies like Procter & Gamble, Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever, and more than a dozen others for over a year to develop the new platform. Each package in the system is designed for 100 or more uses. In the initial launch, products will be available through Loop’s e-commerce site. When you order, say, deodorant or mouthwash, you’ll pay a deposit for the bottle. The order will show up in a reusable tote–designed by engineers at UPS to withstand repeated journeys–instead of a cardboard box. As you use up products, you’ll throw the empty containers back in the tote. When it’s full, you can go to the Loop website to request a delivery driver to pick it up (or, if you prefer, drop it off at a UPS store).   [Photo: courtesy Loop] For consumers, the process is designed to be as seamless as possible. “The goal isn’t as much to get you to change, it’s instead to create systems that don’t make you change–but have you then solve the issue in the process,” Szaky says. “Creating consumer change is phenomenally difficult. So the first question we asked in developing the model was why did disposability win? Why did it take over? I think it did because disposability is convenient and affordable.” Others have tried to tackle the problem of trash through other models, like refillable packaging or zero-waste grocery stores. But when those solutions fall short of the convenience or affordability of standard plastic packaging, they struggle to gain mass adoption. Loop aims to be essentially as convenient as throwing something in the trash; you don’t even need to rinse the container, so in that respect, it’s simpler than recycling. Apart from the refundable deposit on the package, the cost of the products will be similar to what customers pay now. Customers may also pay for shipping the totes back and forth, though a certain number of products can be shipped free, depending on the weight. ADVERTISING inRead invented by Teads   [Photo: courtesy Loop] UPS, which is partnering on the initial pilot to both deliver orders and pick up totes of empty containers, says that the system fits into its existing operations. “If you think of a typical day for a package-car driver, that driver will leave the building in the morning with a full package car,” says Patrick Browne, global director of sustainability at UPS. “As he’s going throughout the day delivering, on a very engineered route to reduce miles, at the same time, he’s picking up packages. So the effect is that driver leaves full and comes home full.”   [Photo: courtesy Loop] When a package is returned, a customer gets back their deposit (or, if they’ve opted for an automatic subscription, the receipt of the container can trigger a new order). Empty packages go to a facility to be cleaned, and then get sent back to manufacturers for refilling. All of this shipping does have a carbon footprint, but when TerraCycle calculated the total impact of the packaging, they found that it’s between 50-75% better for the environment than conventional alternatives.   “The major [environmental] cost of a product, whether it’s durable or disposable, is its creation–making it for the first time, extracting materials from the earth, and so on,” Szaky says. “That doesn’t happen in reuse. Instead, what you have is the cost of some shipping as well as the cleaning, and that ends up being significantly better than the cost of remanufacturing.” Shifting the ownership of a package from a consumer back to a brand creates new opportunities. “It shifts from being a cost to the manufacturer to being an asset,” he says. Instead of aiming to make the cheapest packaging possible, packaging can be designed to look better on shelves. It can also perform better; the Haagen-Dazs ice cream tub, for example, can keep ice cream frozen for multiple hours. [Photo: courtesy Loop] As brands worked on the packaging designs, it also led to some changes in the products. A toothpaste tube is too difficult to reuse, so Unilever designed toothpaste tablets that consumers can chew instead of squirting out of a tube. The tablets come in a reusable, zero-waste container (they also use less water). And in some cases, the products themselves can also come back for recycling. Loop will sell diapers, for example, in a returnable diaper pail, and then recycle the parts of diapers that are recyclable.     [Photo: courtesy Loop] The model is similar to milk deliveries in the early 20th century, though it’s yet to be proven that it can work in the modern world. In the pilots this spring, Loop will test how the system works, including the durability of containers, the impacts on manufacturing operations, delivery, and, crucially, whether consumers reorder products this way. (At a later point, it will begin to roll out the products at brick-and-mortar stores; the details of the system at physical stores haven’t been finalized yet.) Success, Szaky says, will depend on consumer acceptance, and the fact that the platform sells brands that are already hugely successful will help. “We don’t have to prove our brand of shampoo, it’s already the best,” he says. “We don’t have to prove that consumers shop at our store, they already do this. It’s just giving them an alternative way to access those things.” If the early pilots go well, the platform could become mainstream. The fact that these are major brands like Tide and Gillette–and not niche brands targeting green consumers–is significant. The largest brands are acknowledging that packaging needs to change. (Many have already committed to move to reusable, recycleable, or compostable plastic packaging.) Eight of the 10 companies that Greenpeace has listed as the world’s largest contributors to the plastic waste crisis are part of Loop, and the coalition is in talks with the other two. “We are objectively in a garbage crisis, and brands are really looking to bring solutions to end the crisis,” Szaky says.

A UPS firmou uma parceria com a empresa de produtos de consumo e de reciclagem TerraCycle e lançou um sistema reutilizável e retornável para gestão de embalagens de produtos de consumo – o Loop.

A Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE: PG) anunciou hoje a introdução de embalagens reutilizáveis e recarregáveis em alguns de seus produtos mais populares, como parte de um novo esforço que visa mudar a dependência mundial de embalagens de uso único e de resíduos descartáveis.

A Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE: PG) anunciou hoje a introdução de embalagens reutilizáveis e recarregáveis em alguns de seus produtos mais populares, como parte de um novo esforço que visa mudar a dependência mundial de embalagens de uso único e de resíduos descartáveis.

Davos, Switzerland (CNN Business)Has business finally woken up to the enormous challenges posed by climate change? This year's World Economic Forum provides some hope. Climate was a major theme in Davos, where panel discussions on everything from global warming to ocean sustainability and biodiversity drew large crowds. Naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough was given top billing and primatologist Jane Goodall appeared on a panel. A dinner hosted by climate and environmental groups was one of the hottest tickets of the week. The focus on climate reflects developments that have been hard to miss even for profit-obsessed CEOs. Damaging storms have in recent years resulted in major financial losses and a California utility company has been brought to its knees by billions of dollars in claims related to wildfires. Companies have also seen how easy it is for their reputations to be tarnished over environmental issues — and how easy it can be to change. "Things change instantly because of the power of social media," Burberry (BBRYF) board member Orna Ni-Chionna said during a panel discussion in Davos. Ni-Chionna knows what she's talking about. Burberry was caught in a PR firestorm when it emerged last year that unsold clothes were being destroyed. "When this was discovered, the social media theme that rocketed to the top was 'Burberry burns.' It took me about five minutes to send an email to our chief executive and ... it took our chief executive three weeks to have a completely new policy," she said. Call to action Talk is well and good, but there was widespread recognition in Davos that real change won't happen without action. For experts here, that means corporate and government policy reforms. Many speakers acknowledged progress won't be made until the economics change. "There are still fossil fuel subsidies from G7 countries — that's ridiculous," said Rachel Kyte, special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy. "Why we are subsidizing something we know is killing our children, poisoning them and affecting their ability to learn? That's beyond me," she added. There were new initiatives too. Procter & Gamble (PG), PepsiCo (PEP), Nestlé (NSRGY) and Unilever (UL) joined forces with waste management company TerraCycle to launch Loop, a project that will allow people to reuse containers for some of the world's most popular household products. 'Feel the fear'  The spirit of the event was reflected in two attendees with little in common: One is a former vice president of the United States; the other a 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl. What Al Gore and Greta Thunberg share is anger at corporate executives who aren't moving quickly enough to address climate change. "I don't want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel every day," Thunberg told attendees. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg talks to journalists during her trip to Davos. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg talks to journalists during her trip to Davos. Gore participated in a friendly panel discussion with David Attenborough on Tuesday, where he warned that politicians are in denial about environmental risks. The former Democratic presidential candidate was downright fired up by the end of the week. On Thursday, he stood before a room packed with CEOs and climate change experts and warned that humanity's survival is at stake. "Who is with me?" he yelled into the microphone as the crowd roared their approval. The question everyone was asking: what will follow that roar?

(Photo: TerraCycle’s circular delivery system Loop. Credit: LoopStore.com) Global recycling organization TerraCycle unveiled a new circular delivery service for consumers called Loop. The coalition supporting this reusable and returnable system includes Procter & Gamble, Unilever, PepsiCo, Mondelez International, Nestlé, Danone, and UPS. TerraCycle describes Loop as a circular shopping platform that replaces single-use disposable packaging with durable, reusable packaging. Consumers subscribe and order products that get delivered by UPS in a specially designed shipping tote instead of a box. Goods arrive in durable, reusable or fully recyclable packaging made from materials such as alloys, glass, and engineered plastics, according to UPS and TerraCycle. Once the products — such as ice cream, shampoo, and spices — are used, customers place empties back into the tote, schedule a free pick-up, and the system makes sure the products get automatically replenished. “Loop hygienically cleans and sanitizes the empty packaging you send back so they are ready for reuse, instead of ending up as waste after a single use,” the company’s site says. The system debuted at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Loop will not just eliminate the idea of packaging waste, but greatly improve the product experience and shopping convenience,” said TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky. A pilot program is slated for Paris and the metro New York area this year so the system can be optimized. P&G announced that its brands Pantene, Tide, Cascade, Crest, Ariel, Febreze, Oral B, Gillette, Venus, Pampers, and Always will be part of Loop. Nestlé says that Häagen-Dazs is debuting a reusable stainless steel double-walled ice cream container with the launch of the service. Unilever’s Dove, Axe, Degree, REN Clean Skincare, Hellmann’s, Love Beauty and Planet, Love Home and Planet, and Seventh Generation are also participating. “We want to put an end to the current ‘take-make-dispose’ culture and are committed to taking big steps towards designing our products for re-use,” said Unilever CEO Alan Jope.  

It’s the early 1960s. Girls are fainting over the Beatles, Sean Connery is James Bond and a revolutionary trend is sweeping the nation: Plastic. Plastic is about to have its breakthrough moment in the food industry. The plastic milk jug, specifically, is on the brink of taking off: the “market potential is huge,” the New York Times correctly notes. To American families, a third of which are still getting their milk from a milk man, plastic is a wonder package. It’s lighter than glass. It doesn’t break. Unlike paper cartons, it’s translucent. You can see how much liquid is left in the jug. With a plastic container, everybody wins. Except for the milk man. And, as it would turn out, the planet. Recycling is a failing industry.” TOM SZAKY, TERRACYCLE CEO Fast forward to now. Plastics are expected to outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050.  Marine life is choking on the debris: Microplastics are in our soil, our water, our air, getting into our bodies with potential consequences that we don't fully understand yet. Massive amounts of plastic have piled up in landfills, some emitting greenhouse gases and contributing to global warming over the seeming eternity they take to degrade. Plastics are threatening the health of the planet and its inhabitants, and they’re not going away. Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Danone, Mars Petcare, Mondelēz International and others — some of the world’s largest consumer goods companies — are partnering on a potential solution to limit future waste. They’re working together on a project known as Loop, to be announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday. It offers consumers an alternative to recycling — a system that isn't working well these days. At this point, the partners are testing the waters. It’s an experiment they’ll roll out to several thousand consumers in New York and Paris this May, with plans to expand to London later in 2019 and Toronto, Tokyo and San Francisco in 2020. The Loop tote bag (Mark Kauzlarich for CNN) Loop is a new way to shop, offering about 300 items — from Tide detergent to Pantene shampoo, Häagen-Dazs ice cream to Crest mouthwash — all in reusable packaging. After using the products, customers put the empty containers in a Loop tote on their doorstep. The containers are then picked up by a delivery service, cleaned and refilled, and shipped out to consumers again. In other words, it’s the 21st century milk man — here to save the world from single-use plastics. Maybe. From trash in Trenton to a global stage Two years ago, Tom Szaky traveled from Trenton, New Jersey to Davos with a half-baked idea and a loose plan to pitch it to the leaders of the world’s biggest brands. Szaky, now 37, is the CEO of TerraCycle, a modest waste management company. TerraCycle expects its global 2018 sales to amount to $32 million and is currently trying to raise $25 million from small investors. A Princeton dropout with big ideas and a casual demeanor, Szaky spent the first years of his career talking about “worm poop,” a phrase he used to market his fertilizer business in a way that got him a ton of media attention. By the time he was 24, he had landed contracts with Walmart and Home Depot. His mission — to eliminate waste first and make a profit second — is so seductive, some employees have taken major pay cuts to work for TerraCycle. The company’s Trenton headquarters is decorated with garbage; Szaky’s office walls are hanging curtains made from empty plastic bottles. Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle and the brains behind Loop. (Mark Kauzlarich for CNN) At Davos, he said, a certain vibe made top business leaders amenable to his idea. “Have you ever been to Burning Man?” Szaky asked during an interview with CNN Business. “The closest comparison —and it’s a weird comparison to me — is going to Burning Man.” At Burning Man, the annual week-long event where participants build a temporary community in the Nevada desert, people inherently trust each other, he said. At Davos, he was able to approach any business leader and, because of a similar type of openness, be granted an audience.

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Szaky was at Davos in 2017 because TerraCycle had helped Procter & Gamble launch a line of Head & Shoulders shampoo that came in bottles made with plastic collected from beaches. While he was there, Szaky — a slick, charismatic pitchman — landed a spot on stage with the CEOs of Walmart, Alibaba and Heineken. He also secured short meetings with the leaders of consumer packaged goods companies and pitched them on his big idea. Szaky asked companies to think differently about who owns their packaging. Today, companies sell consumers both the product and the package it comes in. Ultimately, it’s up to the customer — and also the municipality where they live — whether an empty bottle gets recycled or tossed in a landfill. Under the current system, the fate of the bottle is out of the manufacturer’s hands, so companies aim to produce the cheapest possible packages, Szaky said. But what if, instead, the manufacturer retained ownership of the bottle by collecting and reusing it? The company could count it as a longer-term asset on its balance sheet and depreciate it over time. Under that system, the manufacturer would be incentivized to invest more resources in an elegant, durable design, Szaky argued. At Szaky’s pitch meetings, some important subtext went unsaid. The plastic waste that ends up in landfills and oceans has the logos of the world’s biggest brands all over it. He had specifically targeted companies that were featured on a Greenpeace list of worst plastics polluters, because he knew they had a potential public relations crisis on their hands. “I don’t have to rub this in their face,” Szaky said, because the companies are “painfully” aware of their reputations. The consumer goods giants got on board. And after that trip, Szaky got serious about making Loop a reality by Davos 2019. Now, eight of the 10 companies mentioned in the Greenpeace report are Loop partners. How it works Loop customers have to make an account and fill up a basket online. The prices for the items should be comparable to what they would be at a nearby store, Szaky said. In addition to the regular cost of the item, customers must put down a fully refundable deposit for each package. The deposit varies from about 25 cents for a bottle of Coca-Cola to $47 for a Pampers diaper bin (which TerraCycle said eliminates the need for a Diaper Genie). Shipping becomes free after the customer buys about five to seven items, depending on the size and bulk of the products.

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In the United States, the items arrive via UPS in a Loop tote bag.  Frozen items, like ice cream, come in a cooler within the tote. As customers go through products — use all the shampoo, eat all the ice cream — they fill up the totes with the empties. Unlike traditional recyclables, the packages don’t need to be washed. At the end of the cycle, a UPS driver picks up the tote. Customers can keep repeating the cycle or opt out and recover their deposit. Even banged up packages earn back the deposit — customers only lose that money if they fail to make a return. When the packages are no longer suitable for use, TerraCycle recycles them. Loop may be convenient for users in some ways, but there are potential drawbacks. Szaky acknowledged that it’s a lot to ask people to use yet another retail website. He hopes that Loop will eventually be integrated into existing online shops, including Amazon. “We’re not trying to harm or cannibalize retailers,” Szaky said. “We’re trying to offer a plug-in that could make them better.” Already, two large retailers, Carrefour in France and Tesco in the United Kingdom, are Loop partners and more may join the project. Eventually, Loop packages may also be sold on store shelves. Shoppers who want to be a part of Loop’s soft launch in May have to apply. The first group of users will be selected based on location and overall interest in the platform, according to TerraCycle. The test will allow Loop to iron out any kinks before the program is open to the broader public, Szaky said.  

The engineering challenge

Partner companies have to pay to participate in Loop. Szaky didn’t disclose the buy-in amount, but said it’s in the low six figures. On top of that, many are redesigning their traditional packages — an expensive endeavor that could cost another seven figures, Szaky said. Szaky said TerraCycle asked the Loop partners to design packages that can survive at least 100 reuses. Rick Zultner, TerraCycle’s director of product and process development, is more measured; he called that figure a “nice goal to meet.” “Some things can definitely meet that,” Zultner said, adding that if the packages are reused at least 10 times, they’re probably still better for the environment than single-use plastics. TerraCycle needs to conduct its beta test to make sure that hypotheses like these are right. “There is a fundamental advantage of reuse versus recycle,” Virginie Helias, Procter & Gamble’s chief sustainability officer, said. But “we need to have certain conditions” to make it work, she added. Carbon emissions from trucking and other factors could outweigh the environmental benefits of Loop if packages are only reused a few times, or if the transportation system is too spread out. Loop has conducted life-cycle analyses to try to estimate the environmental impact in a variety of situations. To maximize the number of reuses, Loop packages are made out of durable materials like stainless steel, aluminum, glass and engineered plastic, which is stronger than disposable plastic.

Single-use vs. Loop’s reusable packages

         

Loop/CNN

Loop packages are sleek and innovative. Degree’s refillable deodorant in silver and white looks like something Apple would make. Ingredients and, when relevant, nutritional information for all products appear in an insert inside the Loop tote instead of on the packages. In Paris, Loop users can recycle soiled Pampers diapers and Always menstrual pads in this bin. (Procter & Gamble) One package — a bin launched by Procter & Gamble in the Paris test — is designed to hold soiled Pampers diapers and Always menstrual pads. It has a carbon filter to block odors. The hygiene items, which are traditionally thrown out, are instead recycled, while the bin is sanitized and sent out again. Nestlé’s new Häagen-Dazs container, part of the New York launch, is designed to keep ice cream cool in the Loop tote and cooler for 24 to 36 hours. Kim Peddle-Rguem, president of Nestlé’s US ice cream division, called the redesign a “torture test.” It took 15 tries to get the container, a double-walled stainless steel vessel, right. In one prototype, the ice cream wouldn’t harden at a critical stage. Another package was too difficult for customers to open. For now, Nestlé is making 20,000 containers for the Loop test. Five flavors will be available: Strawberry, vanilla, non-dairy chocolate salted fudge truffle, non-dairy coconut caramel and non-dairy mocha chocolate cookie. Häagen-Dazs Loop containers. (Brinson+Banks for CNN) Because the test is so small, Nestlé isn’t making Loop products in any other facility — which means it has to truck everything from California to the East Coast. If the project takes off, Nestlé will rethink that route to make sure it’s environmentally sound. “This process isn’t yet perfect and we know it will need to continue to be updated and refined,” said Peddle-Rguem. “We will be analyzing all parts of the process, including shipping and how many times consumers are reusing the container to find those areas for adjustment.” A plastics crisis Consumer goods companies say their customers are demanding more environmentally-friendly packaging. “We’re seeing that very clearly in our research,” said Procter & Gamble’s Helias, adding that wasteful packaging is “becoming a deterrent for purchase.” Mondelēz, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and others are aiming to make all or some of their packaging out of recycled materials by 2025. Szaky doesn’t think they’ll be able to pull it off. “Recycling is a failing industry,” he said. Roughly 30% of US recyclables are exported overseas. But in 2017, China — then the world’s largest importer of waste and scrap  — stopped accepting unsorted paper and some types of plastic from other countries, throwing the US recycling system into a tailspin. The Chinese ban left many communities scrambling for a new place to send their recyclable waste. Some municipalities halted curbside pickup for recycling, others recycled fewer items or raised prices. The operators of some recycling facilities reportedly stashed recyclable waste, looking for a new buyer, but ultimately dumped it in landfills. Unaware consumers may continue as usual, without realizing their recyclables aren’t being recycled at all. Last year, “we saw a global shift in how recycling works,” said Keefe Harrison, CEO of The Recycling Partnership, a nonprofit group that uses corporate funding to help develop recycling infrastructure. We want to put an end to the current ‘take-make-dispose’ culture and are committed to taking big steps towards designing our products for re-use.” ALAN JOPE, CEO OF UNILEVER China’s ban is not the only reason that recycling is struggling. Ironically, an effort to reduce packaging called lightweighting — making plastic packages, like water bottles, lighter as a way to use less plastic and reduce the amount of fuel needed to move packages by truck — poses recycling challenges because light packages fly off recycling conveyor belts and get lost. Plus, low oil prices make it cheaper for companies to just make plastic from scratch, Szaky noted. Overall, about 91% of all the plastic waste ever created has never been recycled — a statistic so “concerning,” the Royal Statistical Society named it the 2018 international statistic of the year. Recycling is not the best way to cut down on waste. “Preventing in the first place is always better than cleaning up after,” Harrison noted. If Loop works correctly, it would do just that. The question is: will it work?

When garbage was glamorous

Single-use packages were touted as convenient and elegant in mainstream media from the 1930s to 1960s.

     

   

Sourced from Life Magazine

Can the milk man make a comeback? For the largest players, Loop is a relatively small experiment. The partners are among the largest advertisers in the world. If they wanted to, they could throw their full weight behind promoting reusable packaging. But at this point, the companies are moving forward with caution and pointing to Loop as one part of their broader sustainability efforts. Nestlé will decide after about 12 weeks whether or not to expand its participation with Loop. Other partners are giving Loop more time. Unilever will evaluate the project over the course of about 12 months. “We want to put an end to the current ‘take-make-dispose’ culture and are committed to taking big steps towards designing our products for re-use,” Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever, said in a statement. Unilever is testing nine brands in the Loop launch, including Axe, Dove and Degree deodorants, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Seventh Generation soaps. Like Nestlé, the company will evaluate the project’s success by tracking the number of repeat customers. We’re “not yet worried about the financial side of this,” said David Blanchard, Unilever’s chief research and development officer, noting the company is more interested in evaluating whether Loop triggers a “behavior change” among some consumers. It’s easy to see how Loop could fail. It asks customers to completely rethink how they shop. It asks them to dole out deposit money upfront, something many people can’t afford to do. It assumes that, all things being equal, people prefer their detergent in a spiffy container and their deodorant in a sleek pod. In reality, people may not care. Loop could be a dreamy, idealistic house of cards. But it also could work. Small dairies throughout the country are already reviving the milk man by offering delivery services. And it’s not just milk. Refillable beer growlers are staging a comeback, with Whole Foods and Kroger offering in-store beer taps. Startups are trying to help people refill reusable soap containers at home, and millions of consumers are already refilling SodaStream bottles in their kitchens, a sign that there’s a market for reusable bottles. If there’s ever a time that these new models can succeed, it’s now, said Bridget Croke, who leads external affairs for Closed Loop Partners, which invests in recycling technologies and sustainable consumer goods. (Despite the similar name, Closed Loop Partners has no formal relationship with TerraCycle’s Loop project.) To make Loop work, she added, TerraCycle will “need the right investments, the right consumer goods partners.” And “they’re going to really need to understand how to make the consumer experience better than what they have today.” And with so many big companies on board, they have a “solid shot,” she said. Photo Illustration: Getty Images / Loop / CNN If TerraCycle manages to find a solution to plastics pollution — to dust off the milk man, spruce him up, give him a website and get people to shop — things will start to change. “Once these trends start to shift,” Croke noted, “then it starts to catch fire.” Szaky hopes that by the 2060s — a century after plastics came on the food scene —  things will have come full circle. “Hopefully 50 years from now,” Szaky said, “we look at waste as a strange anomaly and we’re happy it’s over.”

Major brands are testing out reusable packaging in an attempt to cut down on plastic waste. By Gaby Del Valle@gabydvjgaby.delvalle@voxmedia.com  Jan 24, 2019, 5:10pm EST SHARE Häagen-Dazs ice cream in a reusable metal container. Loop Some of the world’s biggest companies, including Unilever, Nestlé, and PepsiCo, are rolling out reusable packaging for certain products in an attempt to phase out single-use plastics — and to alleviate their own reputations as polluters. This move, still in the planning stages, is a necessary step in shifting the conversation on reducing carbon emissions from a consumer focus to one that holds companies responsible. Starting in May, Unilever’s Axe and Dove deodorants will come in refillable steel containers that are expected to last eight years. PepsiCo will start selling Tropicana orange juice in glass bottles and certain flavors of Quaker cereal in steel containers. Häagen-Dazs, owned by Nestlé, will come in refillable stainless steel tins. Procter & Gamble’s Pantene shampoo will come in aluminum bottles, and its Tide brand detergent will come in stainless steel containers. The idea is to get consumers to cut back on the single-use plastics that have become an indispensable part of everyday life. Businesses and consumers have long concentrated on the third “R” in “reduce, reuse, recycle,” but with this initiative, companies are renewing focus on the first two. (By the way, an estimated 25 percent of all recyclable products end up in landfills anyway.) And instead of encouraging changes on the supply side — i.e., putting the onus for sustainable living on the consumer, which was a common theme in arguments about whether plastic straws should be banned — this move indicates that companies are starting to accept their outsize contribution to global carbon emissions. This initiative, which is part of a partnership with the recycling company TerraCycle, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, suggests that businesses are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the suggestion that their practices contribute to global pollution. “I sometimes wonder if it’s a fair accusation that we’re in the branded litter business,” Unilever CEO Alan Jope reportedly said at a conference this week. Helping people cut down on plastics is certainly a good way of challenging that accusation, but there’s a catch. For now, the TerraCycle program is in a pilot phase. It will be available to 5,000 shoppers in Paris and New York City in May, according to the Journal’s report, and will expand to London later this year and to 10 additional cities, including Toronto and Tokyo, in 2020. Here’s how it works: Consumers who get selected for the trial get the chance to order hundreds of products online. Those products arrive in a reusable tote bag with no extra packaging. Once the containers are empty, TerraCycle picks them up, cleans them, and delivers refilled containers back to customers. “People talk about recyclability and reuse and say they’d like to be involved in helping the environment, so let’s see if it’s true,” Simon Lowden, the president of PepsiCo’s global snacks group, told the Journal. “You simply have to start somewhere to test it and see what the barriers are and who actually buys into the model,” David Blanchard, chief of research and development at Unilever, told the paper. It’s not surprising that these companies would want to test out costly new initiatives before offering them to the general public. But given the urgency of climate change — an October 2018 report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said we have just 12 years to make unprecedented changes if we want to stave off the worst effects of global warming — it’s worth asking whether a lack of consumer interest or a perceived lack of sufficient profits will prevent reusable products from being offered to a wider consumer base. Nestlé, one of the companies participating in the TerraCycle initiative, is also planning to phase out many of its single-use plastic products and make all of its packaging recyclable by 2025. The company plans to completely eliminate certain “hard to recycle” plastics — like films, ice cream cone wrappers, and laminated paper cups — from its packaging. As Fast Company’s Mark Wilson pointed out, this isn’t going to come cheap — there’s “no immediate financial gain” to be made from going green. Companies can either absorb those costs, as Nestlé appears to be doing here, or pass them on to shoppers, which seems to be the case with the TerraCycle program. According to the Journal’s report, the reusable versions will cost “roughly the same” as their single-use counterparts, but users will have to pay deposits of $1 to $10 per container. Shipping starts at approximately $20. Given a choice between cheaper single-use products and more expensive reusable ones, why wouldn’t a cash-strapped shopper go with the cheaper option? (The answer, of course, is existential guilt and fear of watching a climate catastrophe play out in their lifetime, but not everyone can afford to go green.) Megacorporations aren’t the only ones redesigning products to make them more eco-friendly. The period underwear company Thinx recently designed a reusable tampon applicator that retails for $60, and other startups are making reusable versions of common household products like plastic wrap and Ziploc bags. In a world where consumers are often blamed for not being green enough — remember all the debates about whether banning plastic straws is actually good for the environment? — the TerraCycle program, despite being in its initial stages, suggests a future where the onus for changing consumption habits is placed on corporations rather than individuals.