That’s the goal of “Loop,” a durable packaging initiative run by New Jersey-based recycling company TerraCycle that debuted at the World Economic Forum earlier this year. This week, Loop began its U.S. trial, allowing consumers to use steel, glass and durable plastic reusable packaging for everyday items. Kroger Co. and Walgreens, along with such consumer brands as Procter & Gamble, Nestle, The Clorox Co. and Unilever, are taking part.

• Loop, the "circular shopping platform" developed by recycling company TerraCycle, launched its e-commerce site Wednesday and announced Kroger and Walgreens as its founding retail partners at a press conference in New York City Tuesday.

Loop was announced in January by recycling specialist TerraCycle, whose CEO Tom Szaky recently said: “Plastic is not the evil. The evil is using something once.” Pilots launched this week in the northeastern United States, with Kroger and Walgreens as new partners, and in Paris, with another planned later this year in the United Kingdom. With any luck, this new approach to product packaging will catch on and become a new normal for many of our everyday products.

Loop, a first-of-its-kind circular shopping system created by TerraCycle in partnership with major retailers and brands, on May 21 officially launched its pilot program in the Mid-Atlantic region of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Washington, D.C. To celebrate the launch, TerraCycle and Loop’s retail and brand partners held a press conference and reception at the World Economic Forum in New York City.

The system has undeniably proved popular with businesses and consumers alike. In recent months, TerraCycle has launched partnerships using this model with Mars Petcare, Colgate Palmolive, Kelloggand Acuvue targeting pet food packaging, oral healthcare products, Pringles cans and contact lenses respectively. Additionally, consumers sent more than 500,000 used crisp and snack packets to TerraCycle through its partnership with Walkers during its first three months of operation.

A grocery order where products are delivered undamaged – yet spawn no disposable packaging destined for  the trash or recycling bin after use – is the future envisioned by TerraCycle. The waste management expert launched the embodiment of this vision last year in a project called Loop. The platform is a home-delivery service that offers consumers the option of avoiding single-use models when doing groceries by delivering products in durable, reusable packaging.

• What if consumers didn't have to dispose their empty plastic containers but could return them and get them refilled?
• That's the idea behind Loop, a subscription delivery service from waste management company TerraCycle.
• Loop has signed up several giant consumer-goods makers to have their products delivered via the service.
• It's a new spin on the milkman deliveries of yore, except with consumer goods from shampoos to sodas.

One year after China banned plastic waste from the U.S. and other developed countries, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Unilever and other consumer giants are collaborating with a new service that gives consumers a way to shop and achieve zero waste. It's called Loop — a subscription delivery project directed by waste management company TerraCycle that launches in May with the blessing of the World Economic Forum. It was announced in January at Davos, where TerraCycle CEO Tom Szachy pitched his idea to the world's biggest consumer companies — some of the most notorious repeat offenders on climate change. "We wondered is recycling the answer to waste? And we realized it's good at solving the symptom of garbage, but not the root cause, which is disposability," Szachy told CBS MoneyWatch. "And that got us to thinking of disposability and what could be the solution." Instead of throwing away packaging after it's been used once, Loop delivers over 300 consumer goods in reusable packaging. Shoppers can purchase Tide detergent, Dove deodorant, Coca-Cola soda or Häagen-Dazs ice cream that will be delivered to their doorsteps in tote bags. It's a new spin on the milkman deliveries of yore, except with just about any consumer good. Buyers can eat the ice cream, drink the soda, launder their clothes and then put the empty containers back into the tote bags for pickup. Loop retrieves the bags, sterilizes the containers in its warehouses and refills them before shipping them out to consumers again. Users wouldn't even have to clean the containers, like they would for recycling. "We don't want you to change your consumer behavior," Szaky said. Loop plans to roll out mid-May in Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, and London in September. Loop plans to launch in Canada, Japan, Germany and more U.S. regions in 2020.

Solving a recycling crisis

The program is launching more than one year after China's ban on accepting plastic waste in January 2018 put the whole U.S. recycling system in a tailspin. The U.S. had shipped its recyclable plastic and cardboard overseas for more than 25 years. In 2016 alone, China took 760 million tons of plastic off U.S. hands. While Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have picked up where China left off, those countries don't have waste management systems sophisticated enough to handle U.S. plastic scrap. Now, the U.S. is facing a wake-up call, having to develop new ways to manage its waste. Many cities and towns across the nation are even forgoing recycling or scaling back on programs as a response. All that has added pressure on consumer-goods giants, especially because environmentalists never saw the recycling industry as an ideal solution. While items like glass bottles can be recycled back into new glass bottles, products made with plastic are often recycled into lower quality plastic goods or they aren't accepted by waste management programs. That means recycling can barely make a dent in the sheer weight of plastic waste. "When they say, 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,' 'Recycle' is in the last place for a reason," said Michelle Stevens, owner of the Refill Shoppe in Los Angeles, California, which refills products for customers.   Nestlé spent one year developing the new stainless steel packaging for Häagen-Dazs ice cream. LOOP

The design challenge for reusability

Whether the consumer-goods companies keep participating in Loop will depend on how subscription users use the service. While the products' prices are expected to remain the same, shoppers will have to pay a deposit for the packaging that will be refunded once the package is returned. The deposit can change depending on the price of packaging. For example, Nestlé will charge $6.49 for its Häagen-Dazs ice cream, with a $5 deposit for the container. "We're assessing the willingness to pay to cover the cost," said Kim Peddle Rguem, president of the ice cream division of Nestlé USA. But Nestlé is hoping that a new stainless-steel ice cream container it has designed will give customers an experience that brings them back. The dual-canister container is supposed to keep the ice cream cold and let it melt from the top once opened, as opposed to the sides. The container itself should be warm to the touch. Rguem declined to say how much Nestlé has invested in Loop or how much it's paying TerraCycle to clean and refill the product. But she did say the company has already dedicated one year of time and resources to develop the new packaging. It will have about 20,000 containers ready to go when Loop launches. "The fact that it's available in this way, which also reduces waste, is exciting for us," Rguem said. "We know consumers are interested in this."

Established in 2001, recycling/upcycling and waste management company TerraCycle has grabbed headlines for its ability to recycle the “non-recyclable” and its partnerships with some of the biggest brands like Nestlé, Coca Cola, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Clorox, Mars and PepsiCo.

Courtesy of Loop Plastic pollution is one of our greatest environmental threats. These companies are fighting back Remember when the idea of bringing reusable grocery bags to the store felt impossible? Look how far we have come! However, there is so much more to do to mitigate consumers’ reliance on single-use plastics. These companies are changing the way we think about packaged goods, from ice cream containers to takeout boxes. We’re betting that these forward-thinking startups are poised to make a huge impact on single-use plastics and forever change consumers’ habits.

Loop

You heard it here first: Loop is going to revolutionize packaging. Loop is a first-of-its-kind shopping system that delivers consumer goods, like food and cleaning products, in multi-use containers that are then collected, cleaned, refilled, and reused. It’s like the milkman model of yore, but on a much larger scale. The company is a collaboration between TerraCycle and several major consumer product brands, like Proctor & Gamble, Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever, Mars Petcare, The Clorox Company, and Coca-Cola. Loop’s goal is to create a “zero-waste option for the world’s most popular consumer products while maintaining affordability, improving convenience, and returning disposable or durable items to a circular life cycle.” Loop launches in spring 2019; sign up at loopstore.com.

Debuting next month, the "circular shopping platform" aims to make reuse as popular as recycling.       Loop will deliver Haagen-Dazs ice cream in a reusable stainless-steel container. (Photo courtesy of Loop) What if you combined Amazon Prime with a 1950s milkman and Target's democratic design? That pitch might make the judges on Shark Tank scratch their heads, but it's the exact premise of a grocery delivery service that will debut in the Northeast next month, with potentially revolutionary implications for sustainability and the environment. On May 21, Loop will launch a "circular shopping platform" at loopstore.com. It will stock hundreds of familiar branded products — including condiments, ice cream and personal-care items — in durable, reusable packaging instead of single-use bottles, boxes and cans. Customers subscribe to the service and place orders that arrive via UPS; after the products are used up, Loop circles back to pick up the empties at no charge, then cleans and sanitizes them for reuse. Replenishments are automatically delivered. It's the brainstorm of TerraCycle, a company founded in 2001 to recycle previously unrecyclable materials. The overarching concept is the circular economy: Instead of "make and dispose," the goal is "reuse and eliminate." Materials are used for as long as possible, then recycled or reused, with the goal of creating zero waste.

"It's funny: Most of the things we buy, we don't really want to," says TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky. "When you go to say Starbucks and you buy a cup of coffee, you buy the coffee, but the cup is also in the price, and you own the cup. But do you really want to own it in the end? If we change ownership — instead of having the consumer own the package, the manufacturer owns it — the manufacturer is motivated to move away from making a product as cheap as possible to making it as durable as possible." To kick off the service, Loop partnered with some of the world's biggest manufacturers of grocery items, including Proctor & Gamble, Nestlé and Unilever. Brands available at launch will include Pantene, Tide, Crest, Gillette, Pampers, Always, Dove, Seventh Generation and Hellmann's. The reusable containers are made from innovative polymers and metals that are stylish and functional: Häagen-Dazs ice cream arrives in a stainless steel, double-walled container that's warm to the touch but frozen inside; Axe deodorant comes in a container that looks designed by Apple. "The design level is a whole new departure from anything in disposable," says Szaky. "Durability enables reuse, but it also enables amazing materials that can be leveraged in beautiful designs." But what if consumers don't want to pay for that premium? "That's crucial. For scale, we need not just the big brands and big retailers, but affordable pricing," says Szaky. "The goal with all the products is to cost about the same as what you normally pay." A small deposit will be charged for the containers; it's fully refunded when they're returned. "We need Loop to be affordable for it to really change the world," says Szaky. "Even middle income and rich people don't want to pay a premium if they don't have to. This is about more than just the circular economy. It is the circular economy at its heart, but it's also about the future of how we consume."