El inicio del Foro Económico Mundial ha coincidido con la puesta en marcha de una iniciativa pionera en Suiza para recoger y reciclar las colillas de los cigarros.

  Esta semana se reúnen en Davos los líderes mundiales para discutir de importantes temas económicos, y seguro que muchos aprovechan los recesos entre las largas sesiones para fumar. Pues bien, esos cigarrillos podrán ser un problema para la salud de los asistentes aficionados al tabaco, pero no tienen por qué serlo para el medio ambiente. Coincidiendo con el inicio esta semana del Foro económico Mundial en la ciudad suiza, se ha lanzado un nuevo programa de recolección y reciclado de residuos de cigarrillos, el primero de este tipo en el país alpino. Fruto de un acuerdo de colaboración entre la ciudad de Davos y la empresa TerraCycle, sus habitantes ahora puede reciclar sus colillas de cigarrillos gracias a la colocación de unos depósitos fácilmente accesibles y bien señalizados ubicados en lugares públicos a lo largo de las calles principales del municipio. Los residuos generados por los fumadores, principalmente las colillas de cigarrillos, son los elementos de basura más comunes en el mundo. Se estima que 766 millones de kilogramos de colillas de cigarrillo terminan esparcidos como basura en el mundo en un año. Eso equivale a que aproximadamente uno de cada tres cigarrillos terminan como basura sin recoger. Las colillas de los cigarrillos no son biodegradables y no se descomponen rápidamente, lo que los convierte –a pesar de su pequeño tamaño– en un serio peligro para el medio ambiente cuando no se recogen correctamente. Se espera que esta nueva iniciativa de reciclaje de residuos de cigarrillos en Davos aumentará la implicación ciudadana para ayudar a limpiar su comunidad, recogiendo miles de colillas de cigarrillos que actualmente terminan en basureros e incineradoras, o lo que es peor, en muchos casos desafortunadamente se convierten en basura que ensucia las calles y contamina el medio ambiente. Todos los residuos de cigarrillos recogidos en estos nuevos contenedores serán enviados a TerraCycle y luego reciclados en una variedad de productos plásticos útiles, tales como palés o tableros para la construcción, reduciendo la necesidad de utilizar plástico virgen. En cuanto a las partes orgánicas de los residuos –el papel y el tabaco restante– serán compostadas. Stefan Walser, alcalde de Davos, se ha mostrado orgulloso de que su ciudad se convierta en la primera de Suiza en colocar “ceniceros de reciclaje de residuos de cigarrillos claramente marcados en lugares públicos convenientespor toda la ciudad”, dijo . “Estamos facilitando que los ciudadanos contribuyan en mantener nuestra ciudad libre de colillas de tabaco y conseguir así un lugar más agradable para vivir y trabajar”, añadió. El CEO y fundador de TerraCycle, Tom Szaky, comenta que “TerraCycle ya lleva a cabo programas de reciclaje de residuos de cigarrillos en ciudades en un gran número de países alrededor del mundo. Esperamos que los líderes mundiales esta semana en el Foro Económico Mundial tomen nota de esta nueva iniciativa de reciclaje de cigarrillos y consideren la recomendación de soluciones similares que se implementan en otras ciudades y países”.

Today, Procter & Gamble announced that it has teamed up with us at TerraCycle and SUEZ, the largest waste management company in Europe, to source, develop and put out the first fully recyclable shampoo bottle made from up to 25 percent recycled beach plastic, for the world’s #1 shampoo brand, Head & Shoulders. The first 150,000 bottles will be available in France this summer, making it the world’s largest production run of recyclable shampoo bottles made with beach plastic, and a major step in establishing a unique supply chain that supports a new plastics economy. Working directly with hundreds of NGOs and other beach cleanup organizations, TerraCycle sources the shipments of rigid plastics collected through beach cleanup efforts, capturing these materials for recycling for the first time, at no cost to participants. TerraCycle’s partnership with SUEZ tackles logistics (collection and shipment) and processing (separation and material pelletization) of these mixed plastics so they can be used as recycled raw material. The scale of the beach plastics project focuses on the goal of incorporating more post-consumer recycled content (PCR) across other P&G brands and globally, inspiring other world entities to do the same. P&G has been using PCR plastic in packaging for over 25 years, last year using over 34,000 metric tons, and its Hair Care division is projected to see half a billion bottles per year include 25 percent PCR by the end of 2018. Today’s announcement is an important step in P&G’s mission to meet the Corporation 20/20 goal of doubling the tonnage of PCR used in plastic packaging. Using the program created by TerraCycle and SUEZ as a sourcing method, P&G is not only creating a market for recycled plastics, but a sustainable supply chain designed to feed back into itself. This collaborative partnership is a milestone in how organizations can look to partner up in order to deliver major environmental changes across industries. A year ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found that since most plastic packaging is used only once, 95 percent of the value of plastic packaging material, worth $80-120 billion annually, is lost to the economy after one use. These highlights challenged the world to drive greater recovery and reuse of plastics, and create solutions that see that plastics never become waste. The benefit of putting forth the resources to divert plastics from landfills and create a market for them in the value system is many-fold. Approximately 10–20 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year. These include microplastics, which result in an estimated $13 billion a year in losses from damage to marine ecosystems (not to mention the severe degradation to natural capital suffered by animals and their habitats) and financial losses to fisheries and tourism. If things don’t change, we are projected to see more plastics than fish in the ocean by 2050. Of the more than 300 million tons of new, virgin plastic produced globally per year, an estimated 129 million tons (43 percent) of the plastic used is disposed of in landfills; in the United States, the EPA’s most recent report places the plastics recovery rate for recycling at 9 percent. Linear solutions for plastic waste miss out on opportunities to capture and use these resources, reinforcing our dependence on fossil fuels and incurring an avoidable degree of structural loss. The interesting thing about beach plastic is that there is so much of it, and companies such as P&G see the ROI potential for harnessing those resources and rolling out their own sustainability initiatives. When consumer goods companies make the commitment to put out products made from non-virgin raw material, it creates a circular system that can be nurtured and expanded for sustainable growth and regenerative impacts.

As for what individual companies are doing at this moment — and plan to do moving forward in response to the report — is a little less clear although one report participant Unilever, has already publicly announced its intention to make all plastic packaging used it its multitude of brands “fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.” Says Paul Polman, CEO of the British-Dutch consumer goods behemoth, the world’s third largest, which owns a wide range of iconic food and personal care brands including Dove, Lipton, Noxzema, Marmite, Ben & Jerry’s, and Hellmann’s: Our plastic packaging plays a critical role in making our products appealing, safe and enjoyable for our consumers. Yet it is clear that if we want to continue to reap the benefits of this versatile material, we need to do much more as an industry to help ensure it is managed responsibly and efficiently post consumer-use. To address the challenge of ocean plastic waste we need to work on systemic solutions - ones which stop plastics entering our waterways in the first place. We hope these commitments will encourage others in the industry to make collective progress towards ensuring that all of our plastic packaging is fully recyclable and recycled. Dame Ellen MacArthur praises Unilever’s direction in a press statement released by the company: By committing to ambitious circular economy goals for plastic packaging, Unilever is contributing to tangible system change and sends a strong signal to the entire fast-moving consumer goods industry. Combining upstream measures on design and materials with post-use strategies demonstrates the system-wide approach that is required to turn the New Plastics Economy into reality.   Although not listed as a “participating organization” in the report, Procter & Gamble has endorsed the New Plastics Economy initiative and announced, in conjunction with the report's release, that it plans to develop world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle partially made from “beach plastic” — that is, plastic waste plucked from shorelines.   The shampoo bottles themselves — Head & Shoulders brand, by the way — will be composed of 25 percent plastic sourced by volunteers at beaches in Northern France. The pilot initiative, launched by P&G in collaboration with two companies that are listed as participating organizations in the report, the always fantastic upcyclers at TerraCycle and French water and waste management company Suez, will kick off later this summer in France. Says Jean-Louis Chaussade, CEO of Suez: Suez was pleased to contribute to the New Plastics Economy report, a collaborative case for rethinking the current plastics economy. As this report shows, a radical and joint rethink of both design and after-use processes will be required, in addition to other measures such as stimulating demand for secondary raw materials. We look forward to continued collaboration to enable better economic and environmental results in the plastic packaging value chain and to accelerate the transition towards the circular economy.” Outside of beach plastic Head & Shoulders bottles, P&G has also announced that by 2018 roughly 90 percent of all hair care bottles the company sells in Europe — 500 million bottles annually — will be composed of at least 25 percent recycled plastic. In addition to global business heavyweights including Nestle, SABMiller, Coca-Cola, Kimberly-Clark and IKEA, the NYC Department of Sanitation, Zero Waste Scotland, the London Waste & Recycling Board and the city of Atlanta were actively involved in the creation of the report alongside Dow Chemical, DuPont and Australian packaging giant Amcor among others. And not at all surprisingly, sustainable designer and Cradle to Cradle guru William McDonough served on the report's advisory panel. You can view The New Plastics Economy in full here. And be sure to keep an ear open from other major corporations aside from Unilever and Procter & Gamble on how they plan to work together and individually to combat the scourge of ocean-clogging plastic packaging waste.

When it comes to the federal government’s role in safeguarding the planet and its most valuable natural resources, the United States is about to perilously stumble headfirst into the great unknown. Domestic doom and gloom aside, this certainly doesn’t mean that some of the world’s largest and most powerful companies aren’t continuing to strive toward a better — and cleaner — future. Earlier this week at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the chichi Swiss ski resort of Davos, a 30-page report on plastic packaging waste with some rather sobering key findings was released to the public. Titled “The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics,” the report finds that most (95 percent) potentially reusable and recyclable plastic packaging material, worth $80 billion to $120 billion annually, is only used once before being discarded and lost to the economy. A staggering amount of this cast-off plastic packaging, about 8 million metric tons per year, eventually winds up in the world’s oceans. Per the report, that’s roughly a garbage truckload full per minute. And if we continue on this current track, by the year 2050, the oceans will be home to more plastic waste, by weight, than fish. Can you image ... more discarded plastic junk in the ocean than there there is fish? The good news? As revealed at Davos, 40 "industry leaders" — industry leaders responsible for producing plastic shampoo bottles, mayonnaise jars, and 2-liter jugs of diet soda that could potentially outweigh the world's marine life within a matter of only a few decades — have come together to reverse this troubling trend and embrace a global circular economy in which “plastics never become waste.” Published in collaboration between the WEF and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a British charity founded in 2009 by the record-breaking yachtswoman-turned-circular economy-promoting philanthropist, with support from the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment, the report describes itself as the first comprehensive vision for a plastic waste-free future.   Bringing together the world’s top purveyors of plastic packaging materials (those aforementioned soda bottles and mayonnaise jars) to endorse the report and subsequently work toward the common goal of keeping plastic packaging out of oceans and re-circulating well after its initial use will prove to be nothing but beneficial. As noted in the report, 20 percent of plastic packaging could be “profitably reused” while another 50 percent could be recycled. It’s up to global business leaders to figure out, via innovative (re)design solutions, how to tackle that remaining 30 percent of waste, equivalent to 10 billion garbage bags, that will inevitably wind up in landfills and incinerators. Currently, only 14 percent of plastic packaging waste is reused or recycled. Reads the report’s executive summary: The overarching vision of the New Plastics Economy is that plastics never become waste; rather, they re-enter the economy as valuable technical or biological nutrients. The New Plastics Economy is underpinned by and aligns with principles of the circular economy. Its ambition is to deliver better system-wide economic and environmental outcomes by creating an effective after-use plastics economy, drastically reducing the leakage of plastics into natural systems (in particular the ocean) and other negative externalities; and decoupling from fossil feedstocks.

Head & Shoulders bottles will use recycled plastics removed from beaches and waterways.

If you don’t like lifeless hair, dandruff on your shoulders and plastics in your ocean, you can tackle all three in the shower. Procter & Gamble announced Thursday that its Head & Shoulders shampoo bottles will be recyclable and made of up to 25 percent “beach plastics,” from trash removed from beaches, oceans, rivers and other waterways. It will be the first shampoo bottle made from recycled beach plastics, according to the company’s press release. “It’s important to understand how big of a disaster ocean plastics are. It’s horrendous,” Tom Szaky, founder of recycling company TerraCycle, told The Huffington Post. TerraCycle is partnering with P&G to make the bottles. “It creates problems for animals that eat them or get trapped in them. It’s a crisis, and I don’t think people understand the scale of it.” The oceans will contain more plastics than fish by 2050, according to a report from the World Economic Forum. At least 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year. That’s like tossing the contents of one garbage truck into the ocean every minute. The Head & Shoulder “beach plastic” bottles will be available in France this summer, with plans to expand to other countries after that. While most shampoo and conditioner bottles already can be recycled and some are made of recycled plastic, this is the first using recycled marine plastics, according to Szaky, who said that plastic rescued from oceans and other waterways is notoriously hard to collect and process because it is scattered, degraded and often filled with junk. Getting plastics from beach to bottle is an elaborate process, according to Szaky: Hundreds of organizations and volunteers collect plastics from beaches, harbors and other waterways. TerraCycle takes the collected plastic and sorts it, sending some of it, usually high-density polyethylene (HDPE), to P&G for its bottles. The rest is used to make benches and picnic tables that are given to nonprofits. P&G isn’t the first company to try to tackle the problem of ocean plastics in its products: Method has been making hand soap bottles out of ocean plastics for years, and Adidas launched a sneaker line made with recycled ocean plastics last year. And when it comes to removing plastics from our oceans, anyone can play a role. “Make sure you recycle,” Szaky said. “Go to your local ocean conservancy and participate in cleanup efforts. And really think about what you buy ― only buy what you need. Consumerism is behind many of our environmental problems.”  

A year ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found that most plastic packaging is used only once; 95% of the value of plastic packaging material, worth $80 billion-$120 billion annually, is lost to the economy after a short first use. In the design of a “New Plastics Economy,” which challenges institutions to move away from the existing linear, take-make-dispose economy, theoretically, these captured plastics can instead be recycled to be used over and over.