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How Safe is Reusable Packaging During COVID-19?
Last year, Loop launched its revolutionary shopping platform anchored by reusable packaging. Here, Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle and the driving force behind Loop, provides an update on the platform and how it’s faring in light of COVID-19.
Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle, Inc., and founder of Loop
Packaging World:
What progress have you seen with Loop since it launched last year in New York and in Paris?
Tom Szaky:
As you know, in May [2019], we launched in Paris with Carrefour and in the Northeast of the U.S. with Kroger and Walgreens. Those tests have gone incredibly well. The punchline is that all the retailers we’re working with are now working on going in-store. Carrefour will be the first retailer to put Loop in-store, which means really the retailer sells it [products in reusable packaging] in their physical stores, and there will be collection bins for the packaging at the store. Carrefour is going into stores starting in July, then 10 more stores in September, and then a much larger number at the end of the year. Kroger will be going in all Portland stores around September/October, and then more stores will follow. Walgreens too is making plans to go in-store in the Northeast. That has been a huge thing.
Brands have been joining consistently and continue to join aggressively. We’re seeing really good rates of brands joining—on average, a brand every two days. We are also on track to be launching in Canada with Loblaw, in the U.K. with Tesco, with AEON in Japan, and with Woolworths in Australia, all in the next 12 months. I’d say it’s just off to the races, and we’re thrilled so far. It’s continuing, and it’s accelerating, even within the context of COVID. Actually, March will be the best-performing month to date so far.
What have you learned through the pilot?
The two biggest lessons by far are related to the three major stakeholders—manufacturers, retailers, and consumers—and then Loop as a fourth stakeholder. And what I’ve learned is that while they all see the benefits of reuse, they really want to try to make it as similar to disposability as possible. And noting that many other reuse models diverge from the concept of disposability, what has really resonated for brands is that they simply fill packages—the packages just happen to be durable versus disposable. Retailers just order the packaging in pallets and put it on their shelf, which is a very similar experience versus things that may be more disruptive in reusables, like refill stations. Then consumers just get to buy products and throw the packaging away—they just happen to be throwing it into a reuse bin, per se. That’s one thing: The desire of all stakeholders to have the convenience of disposable models is very, very high.
Another key thing is we found that shifting from disposability to reusability does bring a major sustainability benefit, but what has been interesting to learn is that what consumers like even more is how beautiful the packages have become, and that packaging beauty has also been a very big driver we didn’t expect before.
I’m surprised to hear you say that March will be your biggest month so far, given that companies like Starbucks are banning reusable cups and some retail stores are banning reusable bags because of a fear of contamination with the virus. How do you think Loop has continued to thrive?
It’s a very interesting question. I’ll give you the answer in two ways, if I may. The first is that you mentioned Starbucks, and yes, Starbucks has famously stopped accepting reusable coffee cups, and I think frankly, they made absolutely the right decision. And they did that I think because of three main things that are very different in an informal reuse system where a consumer is giving a cup to a barista versus a professional reuse system.
In the Starbucks example, there are three things that are very different. One is there’s no dwell time. I could be an infected person giving my cup to a barista, and I’m giving it to them right away. There’s not a single second of dwell time. And there are many reports that show the virus can last maybe up to three days on the surface... . The second is that the barista does not have proper health and safety support, training equipment, or anything like that. They’re just a normal person in normal clothes. And then third, they’re not even cleaning the cup at all. So there’s no cleaning, no health and safety protocol, and no dwell time.
In the professional reuse system, whether that’s Loop or whether that’s a Canadian beer [bottle] or Germany with beverage [bottles], which are all examples of very big national reuse systems, all three of those things are at play. There’s strong dwell time. We typically will take about a month before the package is clean. Two, there are major health and safety protocols because that was always a big concern, and we’re really pleased that our health and safety is so strong that nothing had to be upgraded once COVID came out. We were already thinking about really important health and safety measures. So all the team members who do cleaning are in full-body personal protective equipment. And that’s been the case even before COVID. The packaging is also cleaned in a proper cleanroom versus not even being cleaned, or maybe how a bar would clean your beer cup, with just a spray of water, or even like a restaurant doing it in the back of their kitchen. There’s an actual cleanroom environment. And then the third is that it’s being cleaned at very high standards with really sophisticated chemistry and technology.
There’s a huge difference within reuse of how one reuses and what systems and measures are behind the scenes. And what’s been interesting is that with COVID, it’s still not even in the top-10 questions we get on customer service in any of the Loop deployment. Where I do get a lot of questions on reuse is in fact only from the members of the media. I say this with a smile and a joke, but I totally understand why you’re asking the question. But it’s interesting that it hasn’t come from the people participating.
Do you think the growth of Loop right now is due to the fact that consumers are able to get their products without having to go to a store? And, do you think trend will continue, even after COVID is resolved?
I definitely think that the growth is probably in some part linked to the general growth e-comm is having right now due to COVID—for sure. I don’t want to take entire credit that it’s just the platform, and I think the macroeconomic trends and how we are consuming are absolutely playing into it.
The positive tailwind and just the general shift in consumption to online is definitely supporting the deployments we have of Loop today, which are mostly online. But do note that all the deployments coming up of Loop are in-store deployments. So we’re not necessarily an online play, we just happened to start online, and I think that’s an important distinction. But yes, today we’re seeing some nice tailwind just because of the way the models are set up today.
I do think there’s this general question around the health and safety of reuse, as you just asked. And my hope is—so far so good—that people see the distinction in different reuse models, and that they’re not all the same. There’s a big difference between the systems behind them and how they operate. And during a COVID-type moment, which ones people should maybe temporarily stop using. Starbucks is a great example, and I really commend them for pausing. And really temporarily, by the way, I think it should come back after COVID is over. And then let’s see how much our life changes or not. There’s every sort of assumption.
How much will we learn from this and how much will we change is unknown. I really hope, frankly, that we take a reflection that by slowing down the gears of the economy, the planet has improved greatly, from a pollution point of view. I have a funny feeling though, we won’t. We will simply try to work even harder to make up the time and revenue many companies have lost during this time.
One thing I’ve seen with COVID is a lot of environmental groups saying that consumer brands are using it as an excuse to extol the benefits of single-use packaging, and that it will undo all the progress these groups have made. Do you think that’s true?
Look, I think that I would answer it this way. I think that just like we commented, hopefully the world will reflect that slowing down the economy has made the world better from a climate change point of view and a pollution point of view. I’m sure you’ve seen lots of examples. I’ve seen a lot on my social media that are giving really objective feedback. Look at Italy before COVID, and the amount of emissions it was making during COVID is significantly down, and let’s see if people reflect on that. But that will be COVID creating an environmental improvement.
I think on the other side, we are going to wake up to a heightened waste crisis, because people have been now purchasing way more disposable packaging, partly because we shifted our consumption say, away from restaurants and even more into packaged foods, and we will see a general increase in the waste crisis when this is over.
I think that’s what we’re going to wake up to post-COVID: A better climate, but a worse environment from a waste point of view. And I think people will understand that it’s not the difference between disposable or reusable. Good packaging has good benefits. There’s really badly designed disposable packaging, and there’s really badly designed reusable, and vice versa. There is incredibly designed reusable packaging, and there’s incredibly designed disposable packaging. I think we shouldn’t necessarily link single-use versus multi-use to whether it’s well designed or badly designed.
With the right systems in place, durable packaging can be more sterile or more clean than disposable packaging. Disposable packaging does have acceptable level of microorganisms on it.
Yet when you go to a dentist office, and you get your teeth cleaned, they’re using metal tools that were used on hundreds of patients before you. And if they didn’t clean that to a surgically sterile state, that could be putting you at massive health and safety risk. Right? And we’re all totally fine with it.
So this is this idea of single-use versus multi-use should be independently questioned from good design versus bad design, versus the cleanliness of the systems at play. They’re all independent concepts. I do understand completely why people link reusable to potentially greater risk, but I think it’s a misnomer. A disposable coffee cup sitting at Starbucks in an uncontrolled environment could collect a lot of dust and dirt and all sorts of other negatives.
So these are unrelated questions. I do again, understand, but it’s weird. I’ll give you an example of the weirdness. Before COVID got really crazy, as it was just beginning, I was in an airport lounge, and there was a tray of apples, and they set a sign next to it saying, “To protect your health, each apple has been individually wrapped in Saran Wrap.” And I chuckled to myself and I was like, “Wait a minute. Okay, it’s lovely that they’re wrapped, but were they washed? Who touched them, and how did they touch them? Or did they just basically have a dirty hand?” It was a pesticide-laden apple, just being wrapped in Saran Wrap to make it seem better. So I don’t know, but I had a chuckle on it. I think there’s this weird psychological effect that’s not based in reality. And this is why I think the most important thing as anyone evaluates anything is to think about what are the systems behind it.
And in a way, that’s where brands are very powerful. I trust, for example, that a Nestlé product has really good health and safety protocols behind it, just like someone who buys a Nestlé product on Loop should trust that Nestlé has evaluated the cleaning process and has signed off on it, or they wouldn’t put their brand on it. And not a single brand in Loop has asked us to do anything except continue to go.
Do you think a reusable packaging program like Algramo where consumers use the same package over and over again is more prone to contamination?
So here’s the difference. If you think about reuse systems, it all begins with a reusable package—a durable package. The real difference between any reusable system is not the package, but how the package is refilled. So I’d say Loop is a re-refill-for-you system. You throw it out, we pick it up, clean it, and then the manufacturer refills it, and it’s sold again. So let’s call Loop a re-refill-for-you system. We personally like it because it gives you the convenience of disposability. You can effectively feel disposable but act usable.
Now, Algramo, which is a wonderful company, is a you-refill-for-yourself system, which is basically, you take it to a refill station, and they have a unique twist that their refill station can be static, but can also be mobile. It can be on wheels. And the consumer is charged with taking their package, cleaning it as they wish, and using it at the refill station.
I think it’s important to note that they are not filling food products. They’re filling detergents, which have different health and safety protocols. I mean, they are literally cleaning agents. It’s not filling food. But one question that’s important to think about is what happens if a consumer who is sick—let’s just say with COVID or any other transmissible disease—is touching that package, and let’s say the virus or the bug can transmit onto the package, and what if the package then touches the refill station or any other aspect of it? And then a healthy person touches the refill station—maybe the walls of the refill station, it doesn’t have to be the nozzles, it could be any aspect of it—and it transmits?
And I would say that’s the same as what happens if I should walk into a supermarket, and a sick person who had just looked at buying a can of pickles decided not to buy it and put it back on the shelf, and I picked it up a minute later.
This is why Algramo is in no way different than a comparable example: If I’m sick and I evaluate a box of Cheerios and put them back, and you’re healthy and you pick it up a minute later. The same inherent risks are not more or less, right? So that would be my key answer. I think whether the consumer washes it themselves or not is not that relevant because the consumer is keeping the package for their own use.
I think what’s really important is if the package goes from consumer A to consumer B, from consumer B to consumer C, and then from consumer C to consumer D, like Loop, then having a very strong cleaning protocol is critical. And I would in no way trust the consumer to clean the package.
An example where I would be a bit more critical is there are a lot of reusable cup models where what they do is they have a float of coffee cups, let’s say between 10 coffee shops, and you can buy your coffee in a reusable cup, then you drop it off in a bin in the coffee shop, and then the coffee shop cleans it and then sells it again. Well in no way to disparage a coffee shop, I don’t trust a restaurant doing cleaning in a type of protocol that a big platform would. They would probably just throw it in their dishwasher. There wouldn’t be health and safety inspections, there wouldn’t be a cleanroom environment, which adds added health and safety.
It’d be kind of the same as a restaurant setting though, wouldn’t it?
It absolutely is. And during COVID, I would not eat in a restaurant and use reusable plates and forks. As soon as COVID is over, I would totally do it, because I don’t think we need to be as concerned post-COVID. Life was normal, and it worked just fine.
And again, I think this is where we have to distinguish between today’s environment and a normal environment, and not assume that post-COVID we don’t go back to a normal state. I mean, most of our activities are very communal, and we’re sharing a lot of our microbes.
Sustainable packaging goes beyond traditional recycling
TerraCycle
pepsico
Dove
Nestle
Unilever
Include USA
UPS
Walgreens
Tide
Tesco
Loop
Clorox
Tropicana
Häagen-Dazs
Gillette
Kroger
Loblaws
Chameleon Cold Brew
Hidden Valley
AEON
WANT TO SAVE THE PLANET? EXPERT SAYS DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF
Most things we buy today are wrapped in plastic, shipped in cardboard, and protected by styrofoam, but as more people become concerned about packaging, businesses are stepping in to provide alternatives. Still, some experts don’t think buying greener products will solve the world’s trash problems.
The Struggle of Eco-Conscious Consumers
Madelyn Miller has been bringing reusable bags to the grocery store for decades, way before it was cool. Over time, she’s seen an increasing amount of plastic on store shelves. At her home in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, she searches around the refrigerator, “Here we go, my ricotta — I love ricotta cheese,” Miller said, pulling out the plastic tub. But she doesn’t always feel good when she buys ricotta, cottage cheese, or yogurt. “Almost the entire dairy aisle is full of plastic containers,” she said. Miller worries that these plastics are creating a waste stream, much of which can’t be recycled. Plus, they’re made from fossil fuels, so their production contributes to climate change. She does what she can to discourage its use. As she was getting ready for a recent trip to California to visit her grandchildren, she wanted to bring them something, so she bought a membership to the zoo, because she said, it won’t wind up as plastic pollution in the ocean. “I think it’s terrifying,” Miller said. “What we’re giving to our children is a legacy of sea animals. They’re ingesting these plastics, it’s killing them.” But to prepare for her trip, she stacked twenty small plastic containers of cat food on the kitchen counter. She knows it’s more packaging than necessary, but it’s convenient. “For my neighbor who’s coming in to help feed the cats, it makes it easier for her. Plastics make life easier,” she admits.Movement Toward Greener Packaging
New markets are opening up for environmentally-friendly packaging, as market analysts predict a five year growth of $70 billion for packaging that uses less energy and more recycled materials. For consumers, just Googling “alternative packaging,” brings targeted ads for things like toothpaste tablets sold in a glass jars, liquid soap in a cardboard box, and toilet paper rolls wrapped only in paper. Tom Szaky, CEO of a company called Loop, has been working with big brands like Tide detergent and Häagen-Dazs ice cream to redesign their packaging. “So for example your ice cream container now moves from being coated paper to double-layered stainless steel that is beautiful, reusable and more functional,” he said. People can buy these products at certain stores, in certain markets, or they can order on Loop’s website, and have them delivered in a special tote. Once the products are used up, people put the empty containers back in the tote, to be picked up and returned to Loop. “We clean it and provide it back to these manufacturers who refill them and around they go again,” he explained. Szaky said Loop is providing the convenience people are used to, without the disposability that can harm the environment. “This approach,” he said, “…we think is the silver bullet to get a large number of people to move away from a throw-away single-use lifestyle.” Loop is adding new products to its line every couple of days, according to Szaky. Loop is currently available in Paris, and some northeastern states including Pennsylvania. “I absolutely agree that that is a fabulous idea,” said Sarah Taylor, when she first heard about Loop. She’s a professor of environmental policy at Northwestern University, and author of a recently published book, “Ecopiety: Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue.” Its main theme is that we can’t buy our way out of problems like trash and climate change.Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Taylor says people get obsessed with small decisions. She knows, because she’s always asked about pressing personal choices, like, “So what do I do with my cat litter?” she laughed. “Should I use the plastic bags from the grocery store because I’m using them for my cat litter?” Taylor doesn’t want to be misinterpreted, she supports trying to buy ecologically-sound products. But instead of beating ourselves up about using a few plastic cat food containers, we should focus on the bigger picture. “The climate clock is ticking, it is ticking. So where is our action going to be more effective?” she asked. Taylor’s pushing for a focus on policy changes, like the plastic bag bans in Europe, some Asian countries and US cities. These changes are what she thinks will shift markets toward greener options. “I would say banning single use plastic would then support companies like Loop, or companies that provide these kinds of reusable packaging, so that they don’t have to fight the consumer culture upstream,” Taylor said. “They don’t just have to market to the eco-virtuous.” Because what’s really virtuous, according to Taylor, is pushing companies to make it easier for all consumers to do less damage to the environment.Why you should tumble round the idea of a circular economy
Take, make, use, dispose. For decades, this has been the standard approach to production and consumption. Companies take raw materials and transform them into products, which are purchased by consumers, who ultimately toss them out, creating waste. But as warnings about climate change and environmental degradation grow ever louder, people are starting to challenge the sustainability of this model. Many business leaders and governments — including China, Japan, and the U.K.—argue that we should ditch this linear system in favor of a so-called circular economy of take, make, use, reuse, and reuse again and again.
What’s wrong with the linear economy?
It often leads to a system that is inefficient, costly, and depletes natural resources. The mining of commodities from gold to coal can spoil ecosystems and disrupt nearby communities. Making steel from ore requires a large amount of energy, which produces Earth-warming carbon dioxide. A byproduct of the linear model is material waste, which takes up space and may include contaminants. Trash ends up in undesirable places. The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch is only the most well-known example of global-scale plastic pollution. Yet products like steel and plastic can be reused, refurbished and recycled to capture untapped value. A totally circular economy—with no waste and no new materials at all—is likely impossible to achieve, but squeezing the maximum waste out of the system could curtail use of new resources.Sounds like recycling. How’s it different?
The two ideas are connected, but they’re not the same. The phrase “circular economy” pops up in the work of a few resource economists dating back at least to the 1980s. Its use in recent years has come to connote an approach that’s more systemic and ambitious than recycling. For example, to maintain quality, plastic bottle makers need to blend recycled plastic with virgin material. Instead, a truly circular economy would involve no new material inputs at all, reducing emissions, waste, and eventually costs. Some industries are already coming close to this—almost all of a car can be reclaimed, for example. But some have far to go—97% of the materials used to make clothing are brand new, and 73% of these products are incinerated or put into a landfill. This isn’t a totally new idea—the slogan “make do and mend” was popularized during World War II to encourage as little waste as possible.Is anyone skeptical?
Yes. Making a production cycle fully self-sufficient is virtually impossible. Some new input will always be necessary, and some waste will always be created. Recycling paper over and over, for example, produces paper of increasingly low quality. Also, building a circular economy can entail high upfront costs, requiring investment to redesign products and switch to recycled materials. The U.K. estimates the cost of shifting to a circular economy to be about 3% of gross domestic product. The expense can feed concerns that companies will go for quick fixes rather longer-term sustainable practices.What is feasible?
A more circular supply chain. This can mean changing to recycled materials, extending the life-cycle of a product and improving recovery at the end of its life. New Jersey-based TerraCycle has launched the “Loop” initiative, a collaboration with household names such as Nestle to provide common products—ice-cream for example—in packaging that can be returned and refilled. There is a multinational push by General Motors, BMW, and Toyota to create an aftermarket for used electric car batteries, which can be used for chilling beer at 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan or banking solar energy in Cameroon. And New York startup Rent the Runway offers designer dress hire for events like weddings and galas, allowing clients to dodge one-wear purchases, while earning the company a $1 billion valuation.What are governments doing?
They’re trying to push consumers and producers toward a more circular economy. The German government offers grants to design products that have a lower environmental impact or are cheap to repair. In Chile, the government said it will aim to make all plastic reusable. The Netherlands is investing $40 million in a special fund that will start financing deforestation-free agriculture, to be matched by a donation from Rabobank Group. The European Commission has a circular economy action plan, which includes transforming the way plastic products are produced and recycled. It’s also part of China’s five-year plan.Why you should tumble round the idea of a circular economy
Take, make, use, dispose. For decades, this has been the standard approach to production and consumption. Companies take raw materials and transform them into products, which are purchased by consumers, who ultimately toss them out, creating waste. But as warnings about climate change and environmental degradation grow ever louder, people are starting to challenge the sustainability of this model. Many business leaders and governments — including China, Japan, and the U.K.—argue that we should ditch this linear system in favor of a so-called circular economy of take, make, use, reuse, and reuse again and again.
What’s wrong with the linear economy?
It often leads to a system that is inefficient, costly, and depletes natural resources. The mining of commodities from gold to coal can spoil ecosystems and disrupt nearby communities. Making steel from ore requires a large amount of energy, which produces Earth-warming carbon dioxide. A byproduct of the linear model is material waste, which takes up space and may include contaminants. Trash ends up in undesirable places. The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch is only the most well-known example of global-scale plastic pollution. Yet products like steel and plastic can be reused, refurbished and recycled to capture untapped value. A totally circular economy—with no waste and no new materials at all—is likely impossible to achieve, but squeezing the maximum waste out of the system could curtail use of new resources.Sounds like recycling. How’s it different?
The two ideas are connected, but they’re not the same. The phrase “circular economy” pops up in the work of a few resource economists dating back at least to the 1980s. Its use in recent years has come to connote an approach that’s more systemic and ambitious than recycling. For example, to maintain quality, plastic bottle makers need to blend recycled plastic with virgin material. Instead, a truly circular economy would involve no new material inputs at all, reducing emissions, waste, and eventually costs. Some industries are already coming close to this—almost all of a car can be reclaimed, for example. But some have far to go—97% of the materials used to make clothing are brand new, and 73% of these products are incinerated or put into a landfill. This isn’t a totally new idea—the slogan “make do and mend” was popularized during World War II to encourage as little waste as possible.Is anyone skeptical?
Yes. Making a production cycle fully self-sufficient is virtually impossible. Some new input will always be necessary, and some waste will always be created. Recycling paper over and over, for example, produces paper of increasingly low quality. Also, building a circular economy can entail high upfront costs, requiring investment to redesign products and switch to recycled materials. The U.K. estimates the cost of shifting to a circular economy to be about 3% of gross domestic product. The expense can feed concerns that companies will go for quick fixes rather longer-term sustainable practices.What is feasible?
A more circular supply chain. This can mean changing to recycled materials, extending the life-cycle of a product and improving recovery at the end of its life. New Jersey-based TerraCycle has launched the “Loop” initiative, a collaboration with household names such as Nestle to provide common products—ice-cream for example—in packaging that can be returned and refilled. There is a multinational push by General Motors, BMW, and Toyota to create an aftermarket for used electric car batteries, which can be used for chilling beer at 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan or banking solar energy in Cameroon. And New York startup Rent the Runway offers designer dress hire for events like weddings and galas, allowing clients to dodge one-wear purchases, while earning the company a $1 billion valuation.What are governments doing?
They’re trying to push consumers and producers toward a more circular economy. The German government offers grants to design products that have a lower environmental impact or are cheap to repair. In Chile, the government said it will aim to make all plastic reusable. The Netherlands is investing $40 million in a special fund that will start financing deforestation-free agriculture, to be matched by a donation from Rabobank Group. The European Commission has a circular economy action plan, which includes transforming the way plastic products are produced and recycled. It’s also part of China’s five-year plan.WANT TO SAVE THE PLANET? EXPERT SAYS DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF
Most things we buy today are wrapped in plastic, shipped in cardboard, and protected by styrofoam, but as more people become concerned about packaging, businesses are stepping in to provide alternatives. Still, some experts don’t think buying greener products will solve the world’s trash problems.
The Struggle of Eco-Conscious Consumers
Madelyn Miller has been bringing reusable bags to the grocery store for decades, way before it was cool. Over time, she’s seen an increasing amount of plastic on store shelves. At her home in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, she searches around the refrigerator, “Here we go, my ricotta — I love ricotta cheese,” Miller said, pulling out the plastic tub. But she doesn’t always feel good when she buys ricotta, cottage cheese, or yogurt. “Almost the entire dairy aisle is full of plastic containers,” she said. Miller worries that these plastics are creating a waste stream, much of which can’t be recycled. Plus, they’re made from fossil fuels, so their production contributes to climate change. She does what she can to discourage its use. As she was getting ready for a recent trip to California to visit her grandchildren, she wanted to bring them something, so she bought a membership to the zoo, because she said, it won’t wind up as plastic pollution in the ocean. “I think it’s terrifying,” Miller said. “What we’re giving to our children is a legacy of sea animals. They’re ingesting these plastics, it’s killing them.” But to prepare for her trip, she stacked twenty small plastic containers of cat food on the kitchen counter. She knows it’s more packaging than necessary, but it’s convenient. “For my neighbor who’s coming in to help feed the cats, it makes it easier for her. Plastics make life easier,” she admits.Movement Toward Greener Packaging
New markets are opening up for environmentally-friendly packaging, as market analysts predict a five year growth of $70 billion for packaging that uses less energy and more recycled materials. For consumers, just Googling “alternative packaging,” brings targeted ads for things like toothpaste tablets sold in a glass jars, liquid soap in a cardboard box, and toilet paper rolls wrapped only in paper. Tom Szaky, CEO of a company called Loop, has been working with big brands like Tide detergent and Häagen-Dazs ice cream to redesign their packaging. “So for example your ice cream container now moves from being coated paper to double-layered stainless steel that is beautiful, reusable and more functional,” he said. People can buy these products at certain stores, in certain markets, or they can order on Loop’s website, and have them delivered in a special tote. Once the products are used up, people put the empty containers back in the tote, to be picked up and returned to Loop. “We clean it and provide it back to these manufacturers who refill them and around they go again,” he explained. Szaky said Loop is providing the convenience people are used to, without the disposability that can harm the environment. “This approach,” he said, “…we think is the silver bullet to get a large number of people to move away from a throw-away single-use lifestyle.” Loop is adding new products to its line every couple of days, according to Szaky. Loop is currently available in Paris, and some northeastern states including Pennsylvania. “I absolutely agree that that is a fabulous idea,” said Sarah Taylor, when she first heard about Loop. She’s a professor of environmental policy at Northwestern University, and author of a recently published book, “Ecopiety: Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue.” Its main theme is that we can’t buy our way out of problems like trash and climate change.Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Taylor says people get obsessed with small decisions. She knows, because she’s always asked about pressing personal choices, like, “So what do I do with my cat litter?” she laughed. “Should I use the plastic bags from the grocery store because I’m using them for my cat litter?” Taylor doesn’t want to be misinterpreted, she supports trying to buy ecologically-sound products. But instead of beating ourselves up about using a few plastic cat food containers, we should focus on the bigger picture. “The climate clock is ticking, it is ticking. So where is our action going to be more effective?” she asked. Taylor’s pushing for a focus on policy changes, like the plastic bag bans in Europe, some Asian countries and US cities. These changes are what she thinks will shift markets toward greener options. “I would say banning single use plastic would then support companies like Loop, or companies that provide these kinds of reusable packaging, so that they don’t have to fight the consumer culture upstream,” Taylor said. “They don’t just have to market to the eco-virtuous.” Because what’s really virtuous, according to Taylor, is pushing companies to make it easier for all consumers to do less damage to the environment.An old-school plan to fight plastic pollution gathers steam
TerraCycle
pepsico
coca cola
Nestle
Unilever
Include USA
Procter & Gamble
Walgreens
Häagen-Dazs
Kroger
Companies like Coca-Cola used to collect 98 percent of their bottles, and new entrepreneurs are learning from their tactics.
TRENTON, NEW JERSEYIn the flood of innovative solutions that have emerged in the last several years to save the world from plastic pollution, Tom Szaky’s fix may be one of the most audacious.
Don’t misunderstand. He has not tried to come up with yet another formula to make plastic magically biodegrade like leaves on the ground, a goal of many entrepreneurs that remains elusive. Nor has he devised new ways to remake disposable plastic packaging into new plastic packaging.
Instead, Szaky has gone old school with a concept that dates to the turn of the last century—returnable, refillable containers. The idea was introduced to the world by Coca-Cola in the early 1920s, when Coke was sold in expensive glass bottles that the company’s bottlers needed back. They charged a two-cent deposit, roughly 40 percent of the full cost of the soft drink, and got about 98 percent of their bottles back, to be reused 40 or 50 times. Bottle deposit programs remain one of the most effective methods ever invented for recovering packaging.
Ten months ago, Szaky launched Loop, an online delivery service that uses sturdy, reusable containers. The bold part of his venture—or risk, if you are one of his financial backers—is that Loop pushes far beyond the uniformity of returnable beverage bottles and sells more than 300 items, from food to laundry detergent, in containers of various sizes and made from various materials. His signature product is Haagen-Dazs ice cream that comes packed inside a sleek, insulated stainless steel tub guaranteed to prevent its contents from melting.
Slightly disheveled in jeans and a hoodie, Szaky looks every bit the millennial entrepreneur. Now 38, he dropped out of Princeton 17 years ago to become an innovator in the garbage business. He founded TerraCycle, a small waste management company, 10 miles from the Princeton campus.
He figured out a way to recycle diapers, cigarette butts, and a long list of other non-recyclables. In time, he became more interested in restoring the circularity of that earlier era and eliminating the disposability from packaging altogether.
“Loop’s theory is let’s learn from the past and go back to a model where when you buy your deodorant, you’re borrowing the package and just paying for the content,” he says.
This refillable steel Häagen-Dazs ice cream container is from Loop, a company that packages everyday items into reusable containers.
Loop is part of the resurgence of refillables as a serious option to plastic waste. The beverage industry is expanding its use of returnable bottles; an Oregon brewery claims to have started the United States’ first state-wide refillable beer system. More significantly, efforts like Loop’s to reinvent packaging for products that don’t fit easily into the refillable category have attracted startups and some of the world’s largest corporate players.
Starbucks and McDonalds are partnering in a pilot program in California known as the NextGen Cup Challenge to sell coffee in reusable cups. If it works, the companies could spare the world the remains of billions of paper cups lined with a thin film of plastic that prevents leakage.
And in Chile, a small startup called Algramo is working to replace single-serving packets known as sachets that are sold by the billions in Africa and Asia. The concept was to make coffee, toothpaste and other products affordable to impoverished people who couldn’t afford to buy in larger amounts. Sachets are mostly not recyclable and have made the glut of plastic litter in those nations worse. Algramo, whose name means “by the gram” in Spanish, is creating a vending machine system to dispense food and cleaning products into reusable containers. Last December, it won the National Geographic and Sky Ventures Ocean Plastic Innovation Challenge’s prize for using circular economy principles and a $100,000 purse.
As Szaky tours Loop’s warehouse, where newly filled containers are shipped out and returned empties taken in, he notes the irony that this age-old method has only flowered again because waste has become a global crisis.
“Five years ago, we couldn’t have done this,” he says. No one would have signed on. Not consumers, who pay a healthy, refundable deposit. And not the companies he’s convinced to join his experiment.
Consumers and product retailers might have laughed at the idea as too unrealistic and inconvenient, neither being the ingredients for success.The shipping expenses alone, which involve up to six transfers, would have given investors pause.
Then, almost overnight, the game changed. Szaky pitched his idea to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and convinced Nestle, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, among others, to sign on.
A spotlight on plastic waste grows
It’s easy to lose sight of how quickly the landscape of plastics has shifted. Only a decade ago scientists and plastic manufacturers and retailers were still arguing about whether disposable plastic was even a serious issue. In 2011, when Ocean Conservancy met with scientists, activists, and plastics industry executives in an effort to set up what eventually became, in 2012, the Trash Free Alliance so all parties could work together, no consensus on the issue existed. “There was the question, is this just unsightly or a real problem?” recalls George Leonard, the conservancy’s chief scientist. “People retracted back into their corners. The NGOs said, ‘The world is coming to an end,’ and the industry sector said, ‘We don’t think it’s a problem.’” The debate effectively ended with publication in 2015 of the first solid numbers showing plastic waste washing into the ocean at an average rate of 8.5 million tons a year. The years that followed produced a glut of anti-plastic campaigns, bans of shopping bags and other products, pledges by retailers to use more recycled plastic in new packaging, industry investment in recycling facilities, and cleanups of existing waste. A count of scientific studies assembled by Richard Thompson, the British marine scientist who coined the term microplastics, reveals how rapidly plastic came to be considered an environmental crisis. In 2011, the year of Leonard’s meeting, 103 scientific studies containing the words “plastic” and “pollution” were published. The count in 2019, using the same code words, was 879 studies. “Thank goodness we’re over the hump,” says Chelsea Rochman, a marine scientist at the University of Toronto who is leading a working group of scientists trying to sort out which of the various solutions are most effective. The consulting firm Systemiq, with offices in London, Munich, and Indonesia, is also making a similar assessment. The results of both projects may further shape the debate on how to proceed. In the meantime, it helps to consider where things stand today: Of the 9.2 billion tons of plastic ever manufactured, 6.9 billion tons have become waste. Most of that—6.3 billion tons, or to put it another way, a whopping 91 percent—has never been recycled. The number seemed so shocking that the UK’s Royal Statistical Society named it the international statistic of the year in 2018. That’s the same year that China stopped buying the world’s waste, and recycling has only become more troubled since. Beyond recycling, 12 percent of plastic waste is incinerated, mostly in Europe and Asia. About 79 percent goes to a landfill or leaks into the natural environment. As a measure of how quickly plastic production accelerated in recent decades, half of all plastics ever made has been produced since 2013. Production is projected to double in the next 20 years, according to a 2016 report by the World Economic Forum. Finally, plastic is exceedingly cheap to make. And its low cost is one of the main impediments to developing an economically viable, global system for recycling or otherwise disposing of plastic waste. “Recycled and reclaimed plastic has little value. Virgin plastic is cheaper to make,” Leonard says. “Why would you do anything else other than make more new plastic? It’s not a good business decision to do anything else.”Back to the future
Aside from the economics, most of the solutions that might reduce plastic waste are hobbled by a passel of problems: still-to-be-solved technical challenges, misinformation, a lack of uniform standards that leaves consumers confused. Biodegradables often don’t actually biodegrade, especially in the oceans, where they’re much more likely to fracture into microplastics. Most compostables need very high heat to break down, requiring processing in special, industrial composters. Compostable material will not biodegrade, for example, in landfill. The two terms are often used interchangeably by consumers, but are not the same. Material labeled biodegradable can contaminate compostable material if added to the mix. Mechanical recycling, which involves grinding plastic waste into small bits that are melted and remade into new plastics, is also easily contaminated by incompatible types of plastic, dirt, and food residue. Plastics reprocessed by this method can only be remade so many times before losing strength and other characteristics. Chemical recycling, which returns plastics to their requisite molecules, alleviates much of both problems. Industry analysts regard it as the option showing the most promise, and the numbers of companies involved in developing chemical recycling is growing. But it’s still a big bet. It’s expensive and questions remain as to whether it can be scaled up enough to make a difference. In any event, both forms of recycling, as well as composting, are dependent on what remains the most dysfunctional component of dealing with plastic waste: Someone has to collect it all and sort it. Loop first launched last May in and around New York and Paris. It plans to expand to the UK, Toronto, and Tokyo later this year, and to Germany and Australia in 2021. The product line, Szaky says, grows by one or two a week and a new retailer joins, on average, once a month. Because consumer behavior is very hard to change, Szaky thinks the refillables business must come as close as it can to mimicking the ordinary shopping experience. He has partnered with Walgreens and Kroeger to set up aisles of refillables, similar to bulk food aisles, making refillables even more convenient to use. As technicalities of handling plastic waste are eventually resolved, it is the consumers who may become the toughest challenge of all. Plastic as a material is not the villain, but the way it’s used, he says, and the idea of single-use plastic is a concept that is now 70 years old. He poses a rhetorical question: “What do we as shoppers care about? Convenience, affordability, and performance. Not one of those three things has anything to do with sustainability.” He argues that consumers are the most important actors in sorting out the plastics mess, with the ability to effect corporate change with their wallets. “We vote blindly, day after day after day, with money, telling companies what we want, and we need to take that seriously,” he says. “We should buy less and make sure the things we buy are circular.”Giant brands love Loop’s zero-waste packaging—and now it’s coming to a store near you
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TerraCycle
Dove
Nestle
Unilever
Glad
Include USA
Procter & Gamble
Carrefour
Walgreens
Tide
Tesco
Loop
Nature’s Path
Reinberger Nut Butter
Häagen-Dazs
Love Beauty and Planet
Kroger
Loblaws
Seventh Generation
Hellman’s