宝洁、雀巢、百事和联合利华是塑料垃圾来源的大头，现在，他们正和 25 家公司测试新模式来解决这一问题，参与这一计划的公司包括了洗发水、洗涤剂和包装食品领域的大公司。新商品包装将从难以降解的塑料转变为玻璃和钢制，这些材质更适合消费者使用完毕退回到品牌方，或者进行清洁和重新装满其他东西。

周四在瑞士达沃斯，全球25个最大的品牌宣布，他们将很快提供可重复使用的容器产品。诸如Tropicana橙汁、Dove除臭剂、Tide洗衣粉、Quaker谷物和Häagen-Dazs冰淇淋等产品将以玻璃或不锈钢容器提供，而不是一次性使用的一次性包装。

近日，包裹递送服务公司UPS与全球多家知名大型消费产品公司以及回收利用全球领导品牌泰瑞环保（TerraCycle）强强联手，共同推出了一个回收利用的全新系统，几乎可以摆脱塑料用品世界的不利影响。这个名为“loop”的系统鼓励可重复利用可归还的再利用形式，通过管理消费产品包装的方式达到让消费者减少一次性包装消费的效果。

As the food industry looks for more and more ways to reduce its waste, a new service called Loop is making it easier on both the industry and consumer end to recycle re-usable containers. The service is a mashup of Amazon Fresh and your old-school milkman. When you order products through Loop, you'll receive them in new, reusable containers inside a special renewable tote. Once the contents are used up, you can schedule a delivery of new products as well as a pickup of the old containers. You just place them back into the tote, and they're taken back to their respective companies to be thoroughly sanitized and reused. Loop encompasses multiple industries and product types, including food. Several major food brands have signed on already, including Nestle (under Häagen-Dazs), Hidden Valley Ranch, Nature's Path, Hellman's Mayonnaise, and vegan producer Teva Deli. Other recognizable products on board include Tide, Axe, Dove, Degree, Clorox, and Gillette. The service is powered by global recycling organization TerraCycle, who already has the capability to help recycle these packages on an international scale. As a result, the implications for waste reduction are numerous, since producers no longer need to utilize as much plastic and raw materials for packaging, and consumers will send less of it to landfills as a result. Other services also exist that are helping to combat packaging waste through recycling. In Southern California, for example, startup BottleRocket will give you money for all of the recyclables you save. You can schedule a pickup through their site, and each time they collect, the resulting sum from the refund values can be converted into cash, gift cards, or a charity of your choice. Loop is scheduled to launch its service in the spring of 2019 in the United States and France. You can register on the company's site to join a waitlist and be notified when it's ready to go.

Recycling is incredibly important, but it’s not without its caveats. For one, plastics lose their quality each time we recycle them, so it’s not an effective long-term solution for our plastics. Plus, it’s not always economically viable for recycling centers to actually process all our plastic waste—not to mention that it’s nearly impossible to get the majority of the global population recycling at all (never mind recycle properly). So while it’s crucial that we continue to recycle, we also need to make some real changes to the way we consume products. We need to stop our endless consumption of single use plastics. With the amount of plastic matter polluting our oceans and water supplies on a daily basis, using plastic once and then throwing it out is just not sustainable. But a massive change may be on the horizon.  Loop—a new zero-waste platform spearheaded by TerraCycle (a waste company that works to recycle especially challenging materials). A coalition of major brands—like Procter & Gamble, Nestle, PepsiCo, and Unilever—designed Loop to be convenient, affordable and unobtrusive for consumers. That’s right—we’re not talking about artisanal ice creams and high-end nut butters in reusable packaging. Loop will make many of America’s most popular products zero-waste—like Tide detergent, Häagen Dazs ice cream, Seventh Generation cleaning products, Pantene shampoo, Dove deodorant and Crest mouthwash. And they’ll deliver them to your door and pick up the empty container up when you’re done, like a modern milkman. HOW LOOP WILL WORK When you order your deodorant or detergent or whatever, you’ll pay a small deposit for the bottle. Then, the company will deliver the product in a super-durable, reusable tote, designed by engineers at UPS to withstand many abusive uses. When you finish your products, you can throw them back into the tote. When the tote is full, you simply request a delivery person to pick it up from the Loop website or drop it off at a UPS location. Everything in the system is designed to withstand at least 100 uses, which is a major step up from the use-and-toss system we have in place right now. Even if you don’t like the big brands that are partnered with the service, you have to admit that making zero waste a part of the average consumer’s shopping experience would be a major environmental win. Loop is launching its pilot programs this year. As early as this spring, consumers will be able to take part in this new sustainability initiative in both New York City and Paris. After that, who knows. If Loop is a success, maybe you’ll be able to buy your favorite ice cream flavors in a stainless steel container, too.

To solve the ever-growing problem of too much waste and plastic, a coalition of major consumer product manufacturers is borrowing an old-fashioned idea.

Most Care2 readers probably won’t remember the days when the milkman came to call each morning. He used to bring milk and cream in glass bottles, which customers used and then put outside for him to retrieve. Today, that idea is getting a fresh coat of paint. Thanks to a new marketing platform called Loop, the producers of many of the items you buy will market their goods in reusable, returnable stainless steel containers. That’s called zero-waste packaging, my friends, and its time has come. “While recycling is critically important, it is not going to solve waste at the root cause,” Tom Szaky, CEO and cofounder of TerraCycle, one of the partners behind Loop, told Fast Company. “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.” There’s a lot of truth in that statement. We buy so much stuff these days because it’s convenient and single-serve. Yes, it’s plastic — but it’s not plastic’s fault. Our love affair with convenience has landed us in the mess the world now faces. Here’s how the Loop platform will work:

• Customers purchase products — anything from Dove deodorant to Haagen-Dazs ice cream — from Loop’s website
• The purchase includes a deposit for the container
• UPS, a Loop partner, will deliver the products to the customer’s home in a re-usable, compartmented tote
• As the products are used up, customers place the empty containers back into the tote
• When the tote becomes full, customers request a pickup via Loop’s website or drop off the tote at a UPS Store

Loop automatically replenishes the products a customer sends back, so the things you use all the time will come to you as you finish them. Loop calls it “the first subscription model that manages itself.” Each package is designed to be used at least 100 times. Use of that tote to move the products back and forth means there are no cardboard shipping boxes to get rid of — sorry, Amazon. Just consider the volume of garbage that will drop out of the waste stream if this model of packaging becomes the standard for the future. The array of brands participating in the Loop pilot program in New York City and Paris is remarkable. Here are only a few:

• Crest
• Seventh Generation
• Tide
• Clorox
• Pantene
• Nature’s Path Organic
• Hidden Valley
• Febreze

Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Danone, Mars Petcare, Mondelēz International and others will provide their products in reusable containers for Loop’s pilot program. Assuming all goes well, we can expect to see Loop roll this idea out to a broader geographic area. With a little luck, maybe zero-waste packaging will be the future of commerce. Sometimes old ideas are the best ideas, after all. Like the old song says — everything old is new again.

TerraCycle's new circular shopping platform rescues big packaged brands from PR crisis Remember the sea turtle with a straw fused up its nose? The viral image that broke your heart and made you swear off straws? There’s more. On February 4, the UK’s RSPCA released the latest round of disturbing photos of wildlife – maimed seals, ducks, deer, even cats – ensnared in plastic bags, bottles and other snaggy remnants of our disposable economy. A flurry of British media headlines cut to the chase: record numbers of animals are killed or injured by plastic. It doesn’t take a PR insider to tell you that new reports of wildlife injured by plastic litter are sure to get packaged goods makers biting their nails and bracing for impact. With public outrage over disposable plastics growing steadily, major international brands have been under heavy pressure to rethink their packaging models. Over the last few months, the world’s largest consumer goods makers and sellers responded by announcing some surprisingly aggressive waste reduction targets. With some cajoling from the UK-based Ellen MacArthur Foundation, roughly 300 major corporations responsible for 20 per cent of the planet’s plastic packaging, including Unilever, Colgate, SC Johnson, H&M, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, signed onto a “new plastics economy” commitment. They’ve vowed to make sure all their plastic packaging is either recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2025. The targets are impressive. They’re also, as shareholder advocacy group As You Sow noted, aspirational. Making your plastic packaging recyclable is one thing. Making sure it all gets recycled is another, particularly with global recycling infrastructure in a free fall, as China and now Malaysia and soon Vietnam shut their doors to the planet’s less desirable recycling scraps. (Not to mention that 90 per cent of plastic is never shipped off to be recycled to begin with, regardless of whether it’s technically recyclable). Compostable packaging targets get messy, too, when you consider that many cities with curbside composting, such as Toronto, reject most certified compostable packaging (like, say, compostable coffee pods) in their green bins because they’re, in a nutshell, not compatible with their systems. That leaves the most meaningful option – and the gateway to a truly circular economy – behind door number three: reusable. Deposit return systems on refillable drink containers, including beer or milk bottles, have been the golden child of the circular economy since, well, the golden era of the milkman. Other circular economy darlings have usually been limited to companies that make products that can be taken back and/or and refurbished, like an old Patagonia coat. The idea has never really gained traction with the make ‘n toss packaged good set – until now. Enter Loop’s new “circular shopping platform” – heralded as the 21^st century milkman. But instead of a milk truck, your friendly neighbourhood UPS driver will be tasked with dropping off (and picking up) a leak-proof reusable LOOP box filled with an array of popular brands like Pantene, Tide, Seventh Generation, Dove, Tropicana, Nature’s Path, Body Shop and more so people can get everything from mayonnaise to deodorant in branded stainless steel, glass and refillable plastic containers – all within 48 hours of ordering. Once you’re done, call UPS for pick-up and the containers will be returned to Loop for sanitation then to manufacturers for refill. It’s a conscious consumer’s dream. It also sounds like a lot of greenhouse gas-intensive shipping. TerraCycle, the company behind Loop has said it’s calculated the total impact of its shopping platform and says that, overall, Loop products are 50 to 75 per cent better for the environment than conventional alternatives. Usman Valiante has his doubts. The senior policy analyst with Corporate Policy Group LLP has been involved in rolling out producer take-back initiatives in B.C. and Ontario and cautions that early carbon footprint estimates often miss the mark: “If you look at the greenhouse gas footprint of Amazon, online shop was supposed to reduce the amount of truck trips, when it’s actually done the opposite.” It would be “fine, if the entire transportation system ran on renewable energy,” says Valiante. “But it’s not.” Loop has argued that while it might add more delivery trucks to the road, it’s system will ultimately involve fewer garbage trucks. It also plans to break into brick-and-mortar retail outlets in the future. Loop’s real world GHG numbers will be crunched further during its trial run in New York and Paris starting this May. If all goes well, Loop trials will be coming to Toronto, Tokyo, San Fran and London next to much fanfare. Many of Loop’s early brand partners could no doubt use some good press. Coco-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Nestle, Mars, Clorox, Mondelēz have all been slammed by Greenpeace as the world’s largest contributors to the ocean plastic crisis. Their branded packaging has been turning up in Greenpeace ocean trash audits from Asia to Canada. It’s actually why Loop’s creator, Toronto-raised and Jersey-headquartered Tom Szaky reportedly pitched those brands first. Partnering with Loop doesn’t just save them from a PR crisis and position them as innovators. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has also been drawing corporate players to the circular economy table with the promise of boosted brand loyalty and deeper data dives on consumers. As Institute for Smart Prosperity’s Stephanie Cairns points out to, when people sign up to have weekly deliveries of Haagen-Dazs [the only ice cream brand in the Loop store so far], Nestle doesn’t just get brand loyalty, it starts amassing specific data about exactly who’s eating its ice cream and when. “For a lot of brands, this a very attractive idea,” says Cairns. TerraCycle (founded in 2001) has always known the power of flipping the script on branded packaged goods. One of the recycling company’s earliest upcycled products involved transforming old branded juice pouches into new branded tote bags. Okay, so not everyone wants to sling a Luna-wrapper-turned-messenger bag over their shoulder. But with TerraCycle’s new Loop initiative, they’ve figured out a classier way to close the loop on disposables, working with consumer good companies to develop sleek, branded reusable containers, on which deposits will be paid. The concept should test well with well-heeled, urban Aspirationals – the 40 per cent of people who, according to BBMG, wan­­t to buy from companies that do good. Particularly those Aspirationals already doing a lot of online shopping and feeling guilty about their packaging trail. But not every consumer will want to or can afford to fork out $20 for shipping and up to $10 per container on a deposit, which throws a bit of a wrench in the reach and scaleability of the model. For others, no amount of shiny reusable packaging will scrub the tarnish from the Coca-Colas and Nestles of the world. Emily Charles-Donelson works with Toronto Tool Library and Sharing Depot, where customers can borrow items and refill their own soap containers. She’s worried that Mondelēz, Clorox and friends will be selling Millennials more of the same old problematic products in feel-good packaging. “Loop’s reusable container program has the potential to significantly amplify the growing culture of reuse, moving us away from the erroneous notion that recycling is a viable solution to the waste crisis,” says Charles-Donelson. “Zooming out, however, LOOP is a halfway solution dreamed up within the parameters of the same broken corporate narrative that fueled the environmental crisis in the first place.” Can we buy our way out of this mess? Probably not, especially if we’re buying disposable paper towels and sewer-clogging antibacterial wipes in refillable containers. But at least we’re starting to come to terms with the glaring reality that we can’t recycle our way out. Until we’ve figured out a new green economy that isn’t so deeply hinged on ever more consumption, the world needs Loop and others like it to catch on, do well, scale up beyond the 20,000 stainless steel tubs of Häagen-Dazs being piloted (humans, after all, buy 13 billion litres of ice cream every year) and to thrive as one of many circular economy solutions around the globe. Maybe more than anything, we need the Loops, Tool Libraries and Sharing Depots of the world to be supported by ambitious and binding circular economy regulations, along the lines of what we’re seeing in Europe and the UK (we’re waiting on you, Canada).  At the moment, Cairns says, “We [in Canada] don’t have a public policy framework that’s going to easily enable a [refillable] product to come into the market and be collected through regular waste pick-up streams and recirculated back to suppliers.” “The Loop model really highlights the defects in Canada’s current system,” says Cairns, but she points out it also shows the potential that’s out there “if we unleash creative thinking out-of-the-box thinking.”s  

Loop launches in May with a pilot program. The company behind it says it will help customers cut down on single-use materials Loop will launch a pilot program in Pennsylvania in May 2019 for reusable packaging for products like Crest mouthwash, Coca-Cola bottles, Hidden Valley Ranch dressing bottles and more. A Trenton, New Jersey-based sustainability company is rolling out a new program, offering a ton of household products packaged in ways that could reduce our contributions to the rapidly-declining state of our environment. TerraCycle recently announced it's launching Loop in the northeastern U.S. and in France. Loop will allow shoppers to buy products like shampoo, deodorant, mouthwash, ice cream, juice, and detergent from major distributors but packaged in reusable containers. The pilot program will be available in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York in May. The point is to help consumers cut down on those single-use plastic containers that usually end up in landfills — like plastic Coke bottles, Febreze canisters, Pantene shampoo bottles, and Haagen Dazs ice cream tubs. With Loop, containers will be made from steel or glass. In Philly we learned the depressing reality not too long ago that even recyclable materials get sorted into the trash because they're contaminated with leftover food or water, too hard to sort by material, or are hard to sell to other countries on the recycling market. Actually, 25 percent of what we recycle in this city ends up in a landfill. So, here's how it'll work. Customers will be able to visit Loop websites and order waste-free products from brands like Pepsi, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. Then, they'll receive their products in a tote that eliminates shipping materials like cardboard boxes. Haagen Dazs is one of the brands partnering with TerraCycle that will transform its single-use products into reusable containers. After users are finished with the products, they won't need to clean or dispose of the containers. Loop will pick up the containers from the customer's home, clean them for safe reuse, and replenish the products. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the products will cost "roughly the same" as their cost on grocery store shelves. But, users will have to pay deposits of anywhere between $1 and $10 per container. Loop is currently recruiting 5,000 interested customers for the pilot program. According to the Journal, it will expand to London and 10 additional cities later this year and into 2020.

 

 

  Loop's new recycling program hopes to eliminate waste altogether.TERRACYCLE Some of the biggest consumer brands are trying out a new way to repurpose packaging. It’s a modern take on an old school model: think of milkmen picking up used milk bottles or recycling glass bottle to get the deposit back.   Last week at Davos, TerraCycle, a US-based waste management company, debuted a new model of recycling, called the Loop, working with global brands like Unilever, P&G, The Clorox Company, Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca Cola European Partners, Danone, and The Body Shop. It does just as the name suggests: keep “looping” the packaging back to the brand for a refill, instead of throwing it in the bin after just one use. This could be the beginnings of an e-commerce circular shopping system. Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever, said: “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. We’re proud to be a founding partner of Loop, which will deliver our much-loved brands in packaging which is truly circular by design.” TerraCycle has been on the business of trash for a decade, recycling waste, and helping brands figure out more eco-friendly alternatives. Despite their successes, Loop required reimagining the current system altogether. “It took quite a bit of effort to get the founding partners on board:  PG, Unilever, Nestle, Mars and PepsiCo as the model requires a major investment of money, time and other resources,” says Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle. “Once these companies joined they set the stage and since then it has been surprisingly easy to bring partners on board.” Reusable containers with glass and metal would substitute cheap disposable packaging.TERRACYCLE He admits that it’s more complicated and costly option right now for brands. But at scale, the cost can drop. Same applies for retail partners like Carrefour and Tesco who were first hesitant to sign, but have been easier to convict after Carrefour pioneered the way, being the first grocery retailer to test out Loop. Laurent Vallée, General Secretary of Carrefour Group, said: “Loop is a disruptive solution led by a visionary entrepreneur. Carrefour has a strong commitment to eliminating waste and plastic. It was a natural fit for Carrefour to commit to this great project, thus becoming the first player in the retail space to join Loop. We believe our clients are increasingly concerned with unnecessary waste and we expect them to embrace this new solution. We hope other international manufacturers and retailers will join us to adopt new standards and fight waste.” For customers, the prices for Loop products will be comparable to what they would be normally in disposable packaging. However, customers do have to pay a refundable deposit for the durable containers. In the US, this will vary from $0.25 to $10. This is fully refunded when the empty packaging is picked up, no matter what condition it is returned in, Szaky clarifies. Rather than build a new brand centered around packaging, Loop wants companies and consumers to pay closer attention to the economics of packaging: the current model incentives the cheapest options. Since compostable packaging is still more expensive, big global brands have been slow to adopt. “The good news is that in Loop you don’t have to trust our products, as they are already the best brands in the world from Tide to Haagen Dazs, and you don’t have to trust us as a retailer. All you have to do is switch from disposable to durable, which gives you the following profound benefits,” he adds. With some of this new packaging, there may be some added bonuses: for instance, the metal containers keep ice cream frozen longer and wet wipes, well, wetter. Plus, there’s the obvious bonus of less trash to take out every week. By working with UPS and Suez, TerraCycle can use the same routes UPS does daily to deliver packages to pick up the waste. So no drops to recycling units or additional steps for customers. The idea was conceived at the World Economic Forum; hence it’s debut there this year. Szaky used the convening of these global brands at this annual event to design the system. To expand on this vision, Szaky has been raising capital through crowdfunding: over $3 million have been raised thus far. Szaky says they’re also raising capital specifically for Loop, which is owned by TerraCycle Global, and requires a fair amount of capital upfront for brands to innovative new types of packaging and a process of refillng. The pilots with these global brands will unravel this spring and it’s yet to be determined if customers are as eager as brands to solve the waste problem.