Plastic in and of itself isn’t to blame for the world’s waste problem. Rather, it's the way we use it. Companies send products and packaging into the world that are designed to be disposable — used just once, then thrown away — and consumers demand the convenience, accessibility and price points of single-use plastic items. Everyday examples include consumer product packaging or consumables, such as food and beverage and household goods, and disposable and single-use products, such as cleaning pads, coffee capsules and eating utensils. E-commerce is made possible with plastic, and manufacturing logistics and operations have come to depend on it. Inexpensively made, disposable plastic offers consumers the ability to purchase, use and toss, instead of repair or reuse, and at a lower cost than their durable counterparts. As a result, people own more things than ever before and easily can replace them, allowing consumers to buy again and again and again.

One (use) and done

Disposability is favored over durability in the global economy because it drives consumption. Many disposable items are lightweighted (made with less material or out of plastic instead of metal or glass), supporting mass production and increasing profits for manufacturers. The trade-off is that most examples of lightweighted and disposable items are considered unrecyclable in most consumer programs. Every step away from durable, reusable materials towards plastics and multi-compositional pouches and films effectively has cut recyclability in half. Producer efforts to instate reclamation systems and collection schemes to supplement and invest in recycling have not been developed at a comparable rate.  

Disposability is favored over durability in the global economy because it drives consumption.

Even the ubiquitous water bottle, thrown away in the United States at a rate of 60 million plastic water bottles every day,  often ends up in the garbage despite being considered recyclable.   Thus, single-use items are at best captured by well-managed disposal systems of landfilling and incineration. The rest of it ends up as litter, polluting communities where people live and contaminating the natural world. This systematic tracking of human-made material — material that cannot be absorbed by nature — on a one-way path to disposal is where plastic becomes problematic.

Who pays the cost for disposable plastics?

The linear, take-make-dispose economic model has delivered profits, created jobs and met consumers’ desire for accessible, innovative and convenient products. But it is not sustainable. Developing economies with a lack of waste management are most deeply awash in trash. That we might see more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050 is old news in light of the recent United Nations report that says we only have 12 years to steer ourselves away from climate catastrophe. It is today’s consumers, not producers of these disposable items, who bear the brunt of this waste. Making their way into marine environments, plastics never fully degrade, leaching chemicals, releasing greenhouse gases and breaking down into microplastics, which are mistaken by animals for food and thus penetrate the human food chain and water supplies.

Material of value

But again, plastic isn’t the bogeyman. While its single-use, disposable configurations lend value to businesses externalizing the environmental, social and financial costs, it has infused immense value to industry as a whole — an enabler for the packaging, construction, transportation, health care and electronics sectors. The idea that plastic, or any material for that matter, is disposable is what is causing problems. Plastic was once considered an expensive material and used to produce high-value items. Prior to World War II, products were repaired and consumables refilled in durable containers through service models such as the milkman. By the time the war ended, a matured plastics industry was freed up to create a culture of consumerism and feed a new disposable economy.  

Plastic can be made for reuse and can exist in a circular economy, as can glass, treated paper, lab-grown leather and 3D-printed produce.

Waste and disposability has been around only a bit more than 70 years. Is the world ready to go back to reusable packaging? Consumers are used to the convenience and cost of disposable, single-use packages.   Bulk and refilling stations that use reusable plastic, stainless steel and glass containers either provided by the retailer or the consumer do exist today, and they work best when consumers are incentivized to use them with discounts and promotions. But business must be on board for such systems to work. Bottle bills and container deposit schemes provide evidence that reusable, returnable packaging configurations work to change the perception that resources are disposable. Today the 10 U.S. states with bottle bills boast a 70 percent average recycling rate, compared with an overall rate of 35 percent. The challenge is that bottle bills not only are not growing but declining due to pressure from industry.

The role of business: moving the needle

Moving away from disposability and towards durability is the key to reducing waste and designing a more sustainable economy. Industry holds this key. It is the role of business to be a reflection of the needs and desires of consumers, who want access to the quality products and services they trust and, while they are at it, want to do the right thing. Companies that understand this and are able to make it easy for consumers tap into an increasingly conscious consumer base and are poised to grow and profit by doing the opposite of their counterparts stuck in the linear economy. This shift is already taking place. The biggest consumer product companies in the world have taken the initiative to lead us into a circular economy by working with TerraCycle to develop the global, first-of-its-kind shopping system called Loop. Through this service, consumers can shop for iconic and trusted brands such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, PepsiCo, the Clorox Company, The Body Shop, Preserve and more — redesigned to be smarter and waste-free. This model features durable, elegant packages owned by the brand, not the consumer, that deliver the world’s favorite products without sacrificing the convenience and affordability that make disposable products desirable, with the added value of delivery and refilling services. The aim is to make products even easier to buy and use, harkening back to the circular systems worked for us for millennia. Through Loop, consumers responsibly can consume products in specially designed durable, reusable or fully recyclable packaging made from materials such as alloys, glass and engineered plastics — plastics researched and developed to be life-resistant, beautiful and far from disposable — saving energy, resources and diverting pollution with every use. Changing perspectives around the value of our finite resources and the impact waste has on the planet can start with plastic. Plastic is valuable and worth capturing for recycling. It is useful and malleable enough to design for durability and certainly worth conserving. Plastic can be made for reuse and can exist in a circular economy, as can glass, treated paper, lab-grown leather and 3D-printed produce. Everything on this planet has value, even the human-made stuff. Consumers vote with their wallets every day for the future they want, and it’s up to companies and brands to spearhead the change they can buy into.

Another major coalition to reduce plastics waste has been announced (see PIEWeb of 17.01.2019) with consumer goods giants such as Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola participating. Established by waste management company TerraCycle (Trenton, New Jersey / USA; www.terracycle.com), Loop (Trenton; www.loopstore.com) is an e-commerce platform that will ship products in reusable packaging and collect it after use – "Loop is the milkman reimagined."

Reusable shampoo bottles (Photo: TerraCycle)

Consumers can order products from participating companies, and empty used containers are then put into dedicated shipping tote bags and collected by Loop directly from households. The packaging will be cleaned for refill and reuse, or recycled as appropriate. The aim is to eliminate waste from single-use packaging and shipping materials, such as cardboard boxes. "Through Loop, consumers can now responsibly consume products in specially-designed durable, reusable or fully recyclable packaging made from materials like alloys, glass and engineered plastics," says Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle. Loop was presented at the World Economic Forum(WEF, Geneva / Switzerland; www.weforum.org) that was held from 22-25 January 2019 in Davos / Switzerland. Two pilot projects in New York and Paris will start in the coming spring, with more locations to be added during 2019 and 2020. The other companies taking part in the initiative include Unilever, Mars Petcare, The Clorox Company, The Body Shop, Coca-Cola European Partners, Mondelēz International, Danone, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Lesieur, BIC, Beiersdorf, RB, People Against Dirty, Nature's Path, Thousand Fell, Greenhouse, Grilliance, Burlap & Barrel Single Origin Spices, Reinberger Nut Butter, CoZie and Preserve. French food retailer Carrefour is the founding retailer, and Tesco will pilot Loop in the UK later in 2019. Transportation company UPSand waste disposal group Suez are also participating.  

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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.”

A new shopping platform announced Thursday at the World Economic Forum aims to change the way we buy many brand-name products. Loop, as the platform is called, would do away with disposable containers for things like shampoo and laundry detergent from some of the world’s biggest manufacturers. Instead, those goods will be delivered in sleek, reusable containers that will be picked up at your door, washed and refilled. “Loop is about the future of consumption. And one of the tenets is that garbage shouldn’t exist,” says Tom Szaky, CEO of the Trenton, New Jersey-based international recycling company TerraCycle, which is behind Loop. “Removing plastics from the ocean is not enough. We need to get at the whole idea of disposability and single-use items,” says Szaky. “We’re going back to the milkman model of the 1950s. You buy the milk but the milk company owns the bottle, which you leave in the milk box to be picked up when you’re done with it.” Companies partnering with Loop include Nestle, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo and other top brands. “Our goal is that by 2030, all of our packaging will be reusable or recyclable,” says Virginie Helias, vice president and chief sustainability officer at Procter & Gamble. Loop, she said, “is a very new idea and somewhat risky because no one has tried it. But the response has been very positive, and we’ve selected 10 of our brands to be a part of the pilot project, with a plan to add more later pending positive results.” Pantene shampoo, for instance, “will come in a beautifully decorated, lightweight-aluminum pump container,” Helias says. “Tide in the U.S. will come in a stainless-steel bottle with a durable twist cap. Cascade will come in ultra-durable packaging. Crest mouthwash will come in a glass bottle. The idea is ultra-durability, convenience and also ultra-luxurious packaging.” Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream, a Nestle product, will be delivered in a posh, double-walled, stainless-steel tub designed to keep ice cream cold longer. And instead of adding dirty disposable diapers to landfills, soiled diapers can, starting only in the Paris area, be placed in sleek, durable diaper containers. When a container is filled, Loop will pick it up and deliver a clean, empty one. New technology allows Loop to process and recycle the dirty diapers, something TerraCycle has already started doing in Amsterdam. “We have only one planet, and we have to take care of it for the long term,” says Laurent Freixe, CEO of the Americas Region of Nestle, which hopes to do away with all its non-recyclable packaging by 2025. “We want to strive for Zero Waste at both the production and consumption level. Loop is so innovative that we felt we had to be a part of it and learn from it.” The rise of the “Zero Waste” movement and concern about the environment has led many businesses to try to reduce packaging and single-use containers. Loop is unusual in its international scope and the size of the companies participating. Initially, Loop will offer about 300 products, with plans to add to the list later. According to TerraCycle, partners include Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Nestle, Unilever, Mars Petcare, The Clorox Company, The Body Shop, Coca-Cola, Mondelez International, Danone, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, BIC, Nature’s Path, Thousand Fell, Greenhouse, Grilliance, Preserve, Carrefour, UPS and the sustainable-resource management company Suez. Greenpeace, which has criticized many big manufacturers for creating much of the plastic waste polluting the world’s oceans, joined in a panel about sustainable consumption at which Loop was announced in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. Jennifer Morgan, international executive director of Greenpeace, said beforehand, “While Greenpeace welcomes the aim of the Loop Alliance to move away from throwaway culture and disposability ... what the platform will mean for the environment depends on whether corporations worldwide are actually ready to change their business models, or if this effort just becomes a distracting side project to generate positive PR.” She warned that most businesses behind the initiative are still expanding production of single-use plastic, although company representatives focused on the progress they have vowed to make in adopting more sustainable packaging. Loop is slated to launch this spring in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and also in Paris and some of its suburbs. Shoppers will be able to buy Zero-Waste products from the Loop website to be delivered to their homes in specially designed shipping totes, and, eventually, at participating retailers, such as Carrefour grocery stores in Paris. Loop intends to expand to the U.S. West Coast, Toronto and the United Kingdom by the end of this year or early 2020, followed by Japan — ideally in time for the 2020 Olympics, Szaky says. “It means more delivery trucks, but far fewer garbage trucks,” he says.  

A new initiative pushes the responsibility back to the manufacturer.

 

  Instead of a use-it-once ice cream pint, Haagen Daaz containers in the Loop program are made of double-walled stainless steel, which keeps ice cream colder and available for hundreds of uses down the road. (Photo: Courtesy TerraCycle) It's now well-known that the packaging for our food and personal products is an unsustainable, garbage-producing mess. Even stuff that's recyclable mostly isn't — especially plastics. In all the years we've been diligently recycling, the truth is we haven't gotten very far. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, just 9 percent of plastic was recycled, 16 percent of it was burned, and 75 percent was sent to landfills in 2015. Looking at these numbers, it's easy to see why our oceans, and the animals that live there, are choked with plastics, and our beaches strewn with the stuff. Clearly the "recycle more" mantra has failed and we need another solution to packaging. Even the experts agree: "While recycling is critically important, it's not going to solve the waste problem," according to Tom Szaky, the CEO of TerraCycle, a company that has worked on issues around packaging and recycling for over a decade. Enter Loop, a program with a mission to "eliminate the idea of waste," says Szaky. Loop takes up the first part of the mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle" by creating returnable, reusable packaging for common consumer items. The idea for Loop was founded at the World Economic Forum by TerraCycle and some big names in the consumer products business, including Procter & Gamble, Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever, Mars Petcare, The Clorox Company, The Body Shop, Coca-Cola European Partners, Mondelēz International, Danone, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Lesieur, BIC, Beiersdorf, RB, People Against Dirty, Nature’s Path, Thousand Fell, Greenhouse, Grilliance, Burlap & Barrel Single Origin Spices, Reinberger Nut Butter, CoZie and Preserve.   A huge variety of products are already part of the Loop roll-out, from shelf-stable foods, to personal-care items. (Photo: Courtesy TerraCycle) How did TerraCycle come up with this large-scale reusable packaging concept? Szaky says he and his team dug deep and looked at some hard truths over several years: "If recyclability is not the foundational answer [to our waste problems], what's the root cause? The root cause of waste is disposability," says Szaky. And while it's easy to say "use fewer disposable items" — something many of us have dedicated serious time to, the truth is that all the rah-rah-reuse enthusiasm and personal changes it may have engendered hasn't been even close to enough. Our waste has increased over the past decade. It's time to get real: "Disposability is easy to vilify, but we also need to look at why disposability won — because it's cheap and convenient. That speaks to why consumers want it — they're willing to sacrifice the environmental negatives for the cheapness and convenience," said Szaky. It's not pretty to hear, but it's true. So, instead of trying to change the behavior of billions, TerraCycle looked at how to solve the root cause of waste, while still maintaining the virtues of disposables, like affordability and convenience. The birth of a circular system Loop works by creating a circular system — rather than a linear one — for packaging. (Photo: Courtesy TerraCycle) Loop takes some of its DNA from AirBnB and Uber, by understanding that consumers have no interest in owning a package, or having to deal with its disposal. Just like many people don't want to own a car, they just want to get from A to B, so Loop shifts the packaging responsibility back to the companies that make the products we want (the ice cream, olive oil or deodorant that's inside the packages). Szaky says some of the cues for this came from the past: "In the milkman model, the package wasn't owned by the consumer, but owned by manufacturer — so they were motivated to make it long-lasting. When packaging was shifted to become the property of consumer, it was all about making it as cheap as possible, to drive price down," says Szaky. How does Loop work exactly? You order from the Loop store, and your stuff will be shipped to you. On the first transaction, there's a deposit for the container — say 25 cents for a Coca-Cola. Once it's returned to the store, or sent back in the reusable shipping container, "no matter what state it's returned in (even if broken, because the container is the manufacturer's responsibility), you get your deposit back in full," says Szaky. Durability becomes a goal again Deodorant in reusable containers means you pay what you always did for the product, but it looks much higher-end in your bathroom vanity. (Photo: Courtesy TerraCycle) If you sign up for auto-refills timed to your schedule for personal care stuff (or, let's face it, ice cream!) the deposit stays in your account and you simply get your deodorant, toothpaste or razors refilled automatically — with literally no waste. You get what you want — the product inside — and the package is the company's to deal with. (Yep, you can even return dirty packages.) The huge boon to a new packaging model isn't just for the consumer or the planet we all share. It benefits the companies that make our stuff, too. When Pepsi owns the package, and the consumer owns the contents, the number of times the package can be reused becomes more important than its cheapness — and a durable package could even cost the company less in the long run if designed well — a win-win for the company and the environment. Durable, reusable packaging also allows companies to make containers that are more functional (like the Haagen Daaz container that keeps ice cream colder, longer). It also allows for way more fun, interesting and marketable design possibilities. Even Pampers gets a circular packaging upgrade in the Loop program. (Photo: Courtesy TerraCycle) Imagine: Instead of ugly, wasteful plastic bottles, what if we used high-design glass ones for our mouthwash? In the age of Instagram, it's actually a genius PR move for companies to make their product containers beautiful as well as functional. In France, Carrefour grocery stores have partnered with Loop, and a pilot program at Tesco in London will debut sometime later in 2019. About 125 products will be available for U.S. consumers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York via the Loop store, starting in March. Some of the biggest ocean-plastic polluters (see the Greenpeace list here) are the same companies that have invested in Loop. We've asked for a change, and they're giving it to us. This container sure looks a lot prettier than a disposable plastic one. (Photo: Courtesy TerraCycle)  

A first-of-its-kind, global shopping platform, Loop™ aims to offer zero-waste packaging options for the world’s most popular consumer products. Just a week after the launch of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste — a cadre of global companies from the plastics, chemicals and CPG value chain that has banded together to advance solutions to environmental plastic waste — a coalition of the largest consumer product companies, along with international recycling leader TerraCycle, today unveiled a first-of-its-kind, global shopping system called Loop™. The initiative is designed to change the world’s reliance on single-use packaging and offer a convenient and enhanced circular solution to consumers, while securing meaningful environmental benefits.   Launched at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Loop will enable consumers to responsibly consume a variety of products in customized, brand-specific, durable packaging that is collected, cleaned, refilled and reused. The content, if recoverable, will be either recycled or reused.   The idea for Loop was founded at the World Economic Forum by TerraCycle and consumer product companies Beiersdorf, BIC, The Body Shop, Burlap & Barrel Single Origin Spices, The Clorox Company, Coca-Cola European Partners, CoZie, Danone, Greenhouse, Grilliance, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Mars Petcare, Mondelēz International, Nature’s Path, Nestle, People Against Dirty, PepsiCo, Preserve, Procter & Gamble(P&G), RB, Reinberger Nut Butter, Teva Deli, Thousand Fell and Unilever. Additional partners are leading food retailer Carrefour as the founding retailer, with leading UK retailer Tesco to pilot Loop in the UK later in the year; along with primary transportation company UPS and sustainable resource management company Suez.   This approach to shopping was made possible as a result of innovation investments made by the founding partners, and their commitment to developing more circular supply chains from package design to manufacturing through consumer use. The aim was to offer a zero-waste option for the world’s most popular consumer products while maintaining affordability, improving convenience and returning used disposable or durable items to a circular life cycle either through reuse or recycling.   The environmental benefits of Loop durable packaging vs. single-use packaging have been proven and verified in Life Cycle Assessments under usage pattern assumptions that will be further validated in pilots scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2019 in France and the northeastern United States. Additional markets are expected to launch throughout 2019 and 2020. “As a response to the global challenge in managing waste and the opportunity to improve consumers’ experience, a group of committed global brands, retailers, infrastructure companies, along with the World Economic Forum have come together to create a new way to more responsibly consume products.” said TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky. “Loop will not just eliminate the idea of packaging waste, but greatly improve the product experience and the convenience in how we shop. Through Loop, consumers can now responsibly consume products in specially-designed durable, reusable or fully recyclable packaging made from materials like alloys, glass and engineered plastics. When a consumer returns the packaging, it is refilled, or the content is reused or recycled through groundbreaking technology.”   How Loop works:

• Shop: Consumers will go to the Loop website or Loop partner retailer’s websites and shop for trusted brands now redesigned to be packaging waste-free.
• Receive: Consumers receive their durable products in Loop’s exclusively designed shipping tote that eliminates the need for single-use shipping materials such as cardboard boxes.
• Enjoy: Consumers experience elegance and convenience all while eliminating the idea of throw-away packaging waste.
• Loop picks up: There is no need to clean and dispose of the package; as consumers finish their products, they place the empty package into one of their Loop totes, which Loop will pick up directly from their home.
• Loop cleans: Loop’s team of scientists has developed custom cleaning technologies so that each product packaging may be safely reused.
• Loop refills, recycles or reuses: Loop promptly replenishes products as needed and returns the refilled shipping totes to the consumer. If there is recoverable product, it will be reused or recycled.

  “At P&G, we are building on 180 years of innovation and world-class consumer insight to enable responsible consumption at scale,” said Virginie Helias, VP and Chief Sustainability Officer at P&G, also part of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. “Through leading brands such as Pantene, Tide and Cascade, we have developed new, durable and refillable packaging that is delivered in a waste-free and hassle-free way as part of the LOOP platform.”   Along with the P&G brands Helias mentioned as being included in the service, Crest, Ariel and Febreze are also available in durable, refillable packaging; and toothbrush heads by Oral-B, and razors and blades by Venus andGillette will be recycled by the service. And Pampers and Always will be test-collecting used hygiene products from consumer homes for further recycling, using groundbreaking, proprietary technology developed by Fater — a P&G and Angelini Group Joint Venture — that turns used absorbent hygiene products into secondary raw materials for higher-value applications.   Roberta Barbieri, Sustainability VP at PepsiCo, commented: “Taking action to design our packaging to be recyclable and reusable is a critical goal of ourPerformance with Purpose agenda; and as we look to build a PepsiCo where plastics need never become waste, we are also exploring a number of ideas to reinvent the ways consumers can enjoy our products. Our participation in Loop builds on this commitment as well as providing the added convenience of e-commerce and home delivery.   “Initially we will be launching Quaker and Tropicana offerings in Paris, and have created vessels which we hope will excite our consumers, combining durability with high aesthetic design. As we work towards our sustainable packaging goals, we will continue to explore our own in-house innovations as well as participate in collaborative efforts to reduce waste.” Brands are responsible for designing their own packaging; TerraCycle consults on the packaging development process and tests all packaging for cleanability and durability prior to approval in the platform. The lifespan of each package will vary, as variables including aesthetics can cause a package to be taken out of circulation and recycled.   “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 reuse," said Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever. "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.” Loop already offers hundreds of products across its two dozen partners; as partners are added, this number will constantly increase.

24 Jan 2019 --- Recycling specialist TerraCycle has launched a first-of-its-kind reusable packaging home delivery service in partnership with a host of leading global brands. Taking place today in Davos at the World Economic Forum (WEF), the launch fuses e-commerce and sustainability in a way that a green-minded public has long been calling for. Consumers will be able to use durable, reusable or fully recyclable packaging made from materials such as alloys, glass and engineered plastics. Could this be a step closer to saying goodbye to single-use plastics? Innovation in the booming e-commerce market must, arguably, go further than recyclability. Within the online groceries market alone, growth is occurring at a double-digit rate in the past years. However, the levels of waste in e-commerce packaging remain high, which coupled with extended fuel usage for personal deliveries, makes it a market with sustainability issues. Within the booming industry, only 2 percent of companies use reusable or returnable packaging models, according to Jan Berbee, Partner in the reusable packaging for e-commerce startup, RePack, tells PackagingInsights. Global giant P&G will be introducing reusable and refillable packaging on some of its most popular products. The freshly launched Loop is a global packaging and shopping circular solution which aims to offer an improved environmental performance compared to current e-commerce solutions. The basic premise of the initiative is that consumers will order their product, receive it via shipping then after use it will be picked up at their homes. The products are then cleaned, refilled and either reused or recycled. Available products range from detergent and toothbrushes to ice-cream and peanut butter. The platform will launch in Paris and New York in the spring of 2019. Among the brands taking part are Procter & Gamble (P&G), Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, Mars Petcare, The Clorox Company, The Body Shop, Coca-Cola European Partners, Mondelēz International, Danone, Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Lesieur, BIC, Beiersdorf, RB, People Against Dirty, Nature’s Path, Thousand Fell, Greenhouse, Grilliance, Burlap & Barrel Single Origin Spices, Reinberger Nut Butter, CoZie and Preserve. “As a response to the global challenge in managing waste and the opportunity to improve consumers’ experience, a group of committed global brands, retailers, infrastructure companies, along with the World Economic Forum, have come together to create a new way to more responsibly consume products,” says TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky. “Loop will not just eliminate the idea of packaging waste, but greatly improve the product experience and the convenience in how we shop. Through Loop, consumers can now responsibly consume products in specially designed durable, reusable or fully recyclable packaging made from materials like alloys, glass and engineered plastics. When a consumer returns the packaging, it is refilled, or the content is reused or recycled through groundbreaking technology.” Personal care Global giant P&G will be introducing reusable and refillable packaging on some of its most popular products. An array of the company’s brands, including Pantene, Tide and Oral-B, will be participating.

• Pantene is introducing a unique bottle made with lightweight, durable aluminum for its shampoo and conditioner.
• Tide's purclean plant-based laundry detergent will be available in a new durable bottle made from stainless steel with a simple twist-cap and easy pour spout.
• Cascade has developed a new ultra-durable packaging for Cascade ActionPacs which enable consumers to skip the prewash.
• Ariel and Febreze are participating with durable, refillable packaging that is also available in stores, testing a new direct-to-consumer refill and reuse model.
• Oral-B will test circular solutions for both its electric rechargeable and manual toothbrushes.
• Oral-B CLIC, a new iconic design for manual toothbrushes features a durable handle equipped with a unique mechanism that allows consumers to only exchange the brush head. The Loop platform will recycle used brush heads for both manual and electrical brushes.
• Pampers and Always will test collecting used hygiene products from consumer homes for further recycling using ground-breaking proprietary technology developed by Fater, a P&G and Angelini Group Joint Venture. The technology turns used absorbent hygiene products into secondary raw materials for higher value applications.

“The time to act is now. We are passionate about harnessing the power of our global reach and the strength of our trusted global brands to scale-up more sustainable solutions. Transformative partnerships are key to achieve this mission as no one can succeed alone,” says Virginie Helias, P&G’s Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer. Among the participating brands is also Nestlé’s Häagen-Dazs. Food and beverage Among the participating brands is also Nestlé’s Häagen-Dazs. With the launch of Loop, Häagen-Dazs is debuting a reusable stainless steel double-walled ice cream container, designed by Nestlé’s global research and development group in Bakersfield, US. The design and transportation will keep the ice cream fresh and cold from the moment the canisters are filled until they are delivered to consumers’ homes, the company report. The canister also ensures that when it is opened, the ice cream melts more quickly at the top than at the bottom of the container. Consumers shopping for Häagen-Dazs on Loop can select from non-dairy options (Chocolate Salted Fudge, Coconut Caramel and Mocha Chocolate Cookie) or from traditional favorites (Vanilla or Strawberry) during the New York City pilot of the program, scheduled to launch in the first half of 2019. At the moment of the launch, no information on the costs of the initiatives on the participating consumer have been shared. A key theme at the World Economic Forum is the adoption of a circular economy over a linear one. The Loop initiative is a clear example of how a rapidly growing market, which will undoubtedly continue to grow as the year continues, can adapt to sustainable calls. It no longer needs to be “business as usual.” By Laxmi Haigh