BIC, a world leader in stationery, lighters and shavers, has partnered with international recycling leader TerraCycle to offer consumers a free and easy way to recycle their fully-used pens, mechanical pencils, markers and other stationery products and parts of packaging nationwide. As an added incentive, for every shipment of used stationery products collected and sent to TerraCycle through this program, collectors earn points that can be donated to a school or charitable organization of their choice, according to a press release.   “As families spend more time writing, drawing and coloring together, we want to provide them with a responsible way to dispose of their products once they are used. Our collection program with TerraCycle gives consumers a simple way to recycle their writing instruments and art supplies to make a difference in the world,” said Mary Fox, North American general manager for BIC. “Sustainability has always been at BIC’s core. We are thrilled to expand this program to the U.S. from Europe, where we have successfully recycled an astounding 46 million items.”   Through the BIC Stationery Recycling Program, consumers can now send in all brands of pens, markers, mechanical pencils, highlighters, glue sticks, watercolor dispensers and paint sets to be recycled for free. The program is also collecting the soft, flexible plastic packaging that some writing instruments are packaged in. Participation is easy: sign up on the TerraCycle program page terracycle.com/bic and mail in the used items using a prepaid shipping label. Once collected, the waste is cleaned and melted into hard plastic that is remolded to make new recycled products. The BIC Stationery Recycling Program is open to any interested individual, school, office or community organization.   The two organizations have also partnered to promote the circular economy by offering BIC products through LOOP, an e-commerce circular economy platform created by TerraCycle aimed at eliminating waste and reducing dependence on packaging.   For more information, go to terracycle.com.  

BIC, a world leader in stationery, lighters and shavers, has partnered with international recycling leader TerraCycle to offer consumers a free and easy way to recycle their fully-used pens, mechanical pencils, markers and other stationery products and parts of packaging nationwide. As an added incentive, for every shipment of used stationery products collected and sent to TerraCycle through this program, collectors earn points that can be donated to a school or charitable organization of their choice, according to a press release.   “As families spend more time writing, drawing and coloring together, we want to provide them with a responsible way to dispose of their products once they are used. Our collection program with TerraCycle gives consumers a simple way to recycle their writing instruments and art supplies to make a difference in the world,” said Mary Fox, North American general manager for BIC. “Sustainability has always been at BIC’s core. We are thrilled to expand this program to the U.S. from Europe, where we have successfully recycled an astounding 46 million items.”   Through the BIC Stationery Recycling Program, consumers can now send in all brands of pens, markers, mechanical pencils, highlighters, glue sticks, watercolor dispensers and paint sets to be recycled for free. The program is also collecting the soft, flexible plastic packaging that some writing instruments are packaged in. Participation is easy: sign up on the TerraCycle program page terracycle.com/bic and mail in the used items using a prepaid shipping label. Once collected, the waste is cleaned and melted into hard plastic that is remolded to make new recycled products. The BIC Stationery Recycling Program is open to any interested individual, school, office or community organization.   The two organizations have also partnered to promote the circular economy by offering BIC products through LOOP, an e-commerce circular economy platform created by TerraCycle aimed at eliminating waste and reducing dependence on packaging.   For more information, go to terracycle.com.

(StatePoint) The amount of trash people produce has increased a whopping 10,000 percent over the past 100 years, according to TerraCycle, a company that handles hard-to recycle materials.   Starting in April for Earth Month, personal care company Tom’s of Maine partnered with TerraCycle to inspire less waste going to landfills. With the average American producing over 30 pounds of trash per week, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, the #LessWasteChallenge is a simple pledge that encourages households to reduce trash by just one pound per week.   Reducing waste is actually easier than you may think. Some simple tips from TerraCycle to reach that one pound goal include:   • Use reusable containers when possible when packing lunch for you and your family. They travel better and reduce waste.   • Thirsty? Start carrying a reusable water bottle with you to refill throughout the day. By doing so, you can prevent more than three pounds of plastic from ending up in a landfill each year, according to Ban the Bottle.   • The average person’s yearly bill payments require the use of 23 pounds of wood to produce, according to Pay it Green Alliance. Modernize and green your banking by requesting to receive your bills online.   Likewise, environmental group 41pounds.org says you can reduce paper waste by 41 pounds annually by unsubscribing from junk mail lists and sending greetings online versus using paper holiday and birthday cards.   • Kitchens can also be a wasteful place. Skip the paper plates and take the extra moment to use real dishes. Likewise, swap out paper towels and stick to reusable dishtowels instead.   • Choose toiletries wisely. For example, opt for a razor with changeable cartridges instead of throwing out the disposable variety each week. Likewise, seek out brands that package products with recycled materials that can be recycled again after use.   • Be sure to learn what is recyclable in your jurisdiction and also put these materials in the proper bins. Also consider reaching out to TerraCycle to sign up your community or home for some of their recycling programs. It’s an easy way to keep items out of landfills, while also raising money for your favorite cause!   Are you up to the challenge of reducing waste this year? You can learn more by going to TomsofMaine.com/LessWaste to easily take the #LessWasteChallenge pledge with just one click.   A few simple steps today can help secure a happy and healthy future for our children and the generations yet to come.

If there is a man who appears to be the archetype of testosterone-fueled strength, it is California’s former governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. What do real men, men like Conan the Barbarian, the Last Action Hero and the Kindergarden Cop eat? Steak, of course. Giant heaping piles of it. Indeed steak is so synonymous with strength that “strength” is the title of this slightly weird marketing booklet from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.   Endurance athletes too are often urged to draw strength from meat. I have been paid to exercise at various points in my life and cannot count the times I have been served a giant bleeding hunk of cow the night before I set off into the depths of aerobic exhaustion. This practice, it seems, has historical precedent. According to one peer-reviewed article by respected sports science guru Asker Jeukendrup, and of course the film A Sunday in Hell, steak and chicken wings were the fuel of Eddy Merckx, perhaps the greatest cyclist ever to have turned a pedal.   But the times, and the breakfasts of champions, are changing. If you had access to the internet or the supermarket in the past few months, you are probably aware of The Game Changers, which features, among other luminaries, the seven-time Mr. Olympia himself. The film follows UFC fighter James Wilks as he attempts to recover from injury using a plant-based diet — and portrays ditching animal products as not only healthy, but also a significant boost to the performance of elite athletes.   Since the film’s release, it has come under pretty severe criticism from both sports nutritionists (including Jeukendrup himself) and other vegan advocates for its clear bias, use of logical fallacies and cherry-picking of evidence. Additionally, the film’s executive producer, James Cameron (who also, incidentally, directed Arnie’s Terminator), owns a plant-based protein company: Verident Foods.   But just because the film stretched the truth doesn’t mean there wasn’t truth in it. It has started a conversation on plant-based diets that, in the face of an epidemic of obesity, increasingly severe climate change and a growing global population, we really need to be having.      

Kernels of Truth

  We asked Registered Dietitian and athlete Matt Ruscigno, MPH, author of Plant Based Sports Nutrition, for his take on the film and on how a vegan diet can help athletes. Ruscigno is quick to point out that, although scientific rigor is important, especially to someone in his field, “it’s seeing experiences that help people change.” He adds that people are generally unaware that it is possible to be a top-level athlete and be vegan, so in this regard the film is doing a valuable job in raising awareness.   Ruscigno doesn’t necessarily say going vegan will transform your performance, but he does point to evidence that including more whole plant foods in your diet, as opposed to supplementing with vitamins, just might. One claim made in Game Changers (and all over the internet) is that plant-based diets reduce inflammation. The problem here is one of precision. Some inflammation is good; it is what lets the body know that it needs to build new muscle because the old stuff has been damaged. So loading up on Advil and Vitamin C supplements (which contain inflammation-fighting antioxidants) won’t make you faster, but eating a healthy plant-based diet might help moderate that inflammation and boost recovery.   “Inflammation is a real thing, and there is cellular damage from physical activity, and nutrition does play a role,” says Ruscigno. “There is some evidence that the antioxidants [from plants] do play a role in speeding recovery and reducing inflammation. How much of a difference? That’s not an answer I’ve seen.” Anecdotally, athletes from top US Olympic weightlifter Kendrick Farris to tennis legend Venus Williams credit their vegan diets with bouncing back faster.   A study published  in the Journal of the American Heart Association did show that a vegan diet reduced inflammation in people with heart disease more than the AHA’s recommended diet, but this doesn’t have a direct analog in terms of performance as an athlete. However, given that athletes are at a higher risk of cardiovascular issues, it might be a good idea to get out ahead of them with a diet that is likely to reduce that risk. It is certainly clear that eating a plant-based diet won’t harm your recovery, and it seems like eating lots of plants might help. It will certainly reduce your risk of dropping dead, even when compared to a healthy omnivorous diet.   The knee jerk objection to vegan diets is, of course, that you won’t get enough protein to replace all that steak that you could be eating. This idea is based in the myth that plant foods don’t contain enough of the amino acids that combine to form proteins; plant proteins are often called “incomplete proteins” for this reason.   Ruscigno says this belief is largely unfounded: “All whole plant foods have all of the essential amino acids! Every one of them. It’s a misnomer they are missing. This is because not every serving contains the exact minimum need for every amino acid. But that’s okay because we eat, or should be eating, a variety of foods and it adds up in the end.” So essentially, as long as you eat a varied diet you will get enough of all the essential amino acids to build muscle. The answer to the age old “where do you get your protein?” question is… from food.  

Changing for the Better

  There’s also a stigma around soy that is largely unfounded. There were some small studies 30 years ago that suggested it would somehow make you less manly, but those results haven’t been repeated. If you’re worried about phytoestrogens in soy making you grow man boobs, consider that there are actual estrogens in dairy milk and those, as well as the phytoestrogens in soy, are not going to be a problem unless you hook yourself up to some kind of dairy IV.   For elite athletes, it seems pretty clear that it is possible to be vegan and not see any compromises in performance. Venus Williams, Lionel Messi, Colin Kaepernick, legendary strongman Patrick Baboumian, and 11 members of the Tennessee Titans are vegan and doing just fine. Of course, these athletes do take great care over their diets, but everyday athletes could also benefit from a plant-based diet.   I started eating vegan about a year ago, and simply removing gas station candy bars and giant coffee shop muffins on long bike rides and grabbing something like a banana, or a pack of Swedish fish, has helped me get a little leaner. I also don’t tend to get that post-stop slump when I eat easier-digesting carbs and don’t load up on fat. Yeah, there are vegan muffins, and non-vegans could eat bananas, but taking the bad choices away and making it easier to eat plants reduces some of the decision fatigue that comes with healthy eating.   The case for going plant-based extends beyond the performance aspect, too. A pretty solid scientific consensus indicates that plant-based eating reduces your carbon footprint, and if you like to play outside, that should be important to you. It’s also true, as Ruscigno points out, that many of us turn to plant-based foods before and during exercise anyway because they digest easily. Bananas, peanut butter, oatmeal and bagels are staples of just about any pre-marathon breakfast buffet, and they’re all vegan. The other stuff we eat after competing because we know it might not sit so well… which might lead one to question if we need to eat it at all.   Of course, switching from an omnivorous diet to a vegan one is not easy, and you could get many of the benefits of a vegan diet from simply eating more plants and less meat. For me, the only really winning argument for a vegan diet was driving past cattle farms in the desert. I grew up farming sheep and spent a lot of time helping other people farm cattle. I don’t like seeing animals suffer and I don’t want to have any part in that. For me, the most compelling argument will always be the moral one.   Switching to a plant-based diet, in my n=1 experience, has helped me as an athlete. Most plant-based foods do contain carbohydrates, and carbohydrates play a crucial role in fueling exercise. It’s easy for athletes in endurance sports to under-consume carbs in the post-Atkins era. Now that I have switched chicken for chickpeas, I am getting more slow-digesting healthy carbs at every meal. As for protein, it really isn’t that hard to get. I eat quite a lot of food thanks to my endurance sport habit, and most of that food has protein. I haven’t noticed myself sucking, or shrinking.   If you’re looking to replace candy bars and protein shakes, there are healthy vegan options. But as Ruscigno points out, the best vegan snacks and protein products are the ones you already know about. Nuts and seeds last forever, taste great, don’t come with weird ingredients and boast a balanced nutrition profile. Like it or not, you might actually be pretty close to a plant-based diet already.  

The cheerful, singing voice inside your musical “Happy Birthday” card is enough to strike horror in the heart of your local recycler.   The musical cards, which play a recording when opened, look like plain cardboard, making them easy to accidentally throw in the recycling bin. But experts say the insides are laced with cheap electronics and toxic batteries – making them a nightmare to dispose of.   Such cards are just one example of what recyclers say is a growing trend in mixing different materials to create new types of products and packaging, which is making the work of recovering reusable products much harder.   “I call them ‘horrible hybrids’,” said Heidi Sanborn, who heads up the National Stewardship Action Council, a network of groups that seeks to get manufacturers to take responsibility for the proper disposal of the products they sell. “They are made of multiple materials or materials that are impossible to recycle. It’s a mushing of things.”   Discarded single-use plastics have become an international environmental flashpoint, as they have turned up in the bellies of birds and fish, flooded pristine beaches in remote countries with litter and even been detected in microscopic quantities in rainwater. Plastic products designed to be used for a few minutes can take decades or longer to decompose.   Studies have also shown the proliferation of single-use plastic is accelerating climate change through greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of its lifecycle. While environmental groups fighting to reduce the use of throwaway plastics have gained visibility in the last few years, the oil industry is investing heavily in a huge surge of plastic production – which the industry expects to grow by 40% by 2030. The increase in plastics production is to be fueled by the ultra-cheap shale gas flowing from the US fracking boom. The petro-chemical industry has already invested $200 billion to build new cracking plants that separate ethane from gas to produce the ethylene needed to make plastics. Another $100 billion in investments is planned.   Industry often points to recycling as the solution to all those new plastics. Yet only a fraction of plastic products end up recycled, a problem that was exacerbated when China shut its doors in 2018 to the deluge of plastics from other countries that it had previously been recycling.   The US municipalities and recyclers are scrambling to increase the amount of recycling they can do domestically. But these new formulations of hybrid packaging – items mixing materials like foil, paper and sometimes multiple types of plastics – stymie recycling solutions and mostly just end up in the trash.   Examples include shoes and clothing embedded with electronics; the increasingly popular flexible plastic pouches used to package things like detergent pods, rice and baby food; and recyclable bottles and cans tightly wrapped in extra plastic labeling.  

Tiny batteries

  Singing cards and other products with tiny electronics inside them are especially vexing to recyclers. Not only do they include toxic electronic waste, but when the small batteries get crushed in the machinery inside recycling plants, they have been frequently known to cause fires.   “One of the biggest problems for recyclers right now is all the products containing lithium ion batteries, such as the singing cards, balloons and other novelty products,” said Kate Bailey, the director of research at Eco-Cycle, a Boulder, Colorado, recycler. “These batteries can spark easily when they get caught in the processing equipment or run over by a front-end loader, and these sparks can lead to disastrous fires in the recycling center.”   Recyclers are urging manufacturers to simplify the products they make to make it easy to recycle them. But they say consumers can also help by searching for more recyclable products – and then voting with their dollars.   Bad: singing greeting cards Better: regular cardboard cards Best: cards made from recycled paper or E-cards   Bad: musical mylar balloons Better: colorful pinwheels Best: edible bouquets   Bad: tennis shoes with light-up wheels Better: regular tennis shoes Best: shoes made of natural or recycled materials  

Plastic pouches

  Another growing menace for recyclers are the plastic pouches increasingly used to hold everything from laundry detergent pods to cereals and juices. This flexible packaging is made with many thin layers of different types and colors of plastic and is sometimes layered with foil and wax.   Manufacturers and plastic producers tout these pouches for making packages smaller, reducing shipping costs and increasing the shelf life of foods. “A few thin, carefully chosen layers mean more value, less footprint,” says a video by the plastic producer lobbying group, the American Chemistry Council, promoting such pouches.   But recyclers say they are pretty much impossible to recycle. And they are apt to end up in the ocean and take decades to biodegrade. When choosing laundry detergent, they say, consumers might look for products in unlined boxes or try new formulations such as concentrated detergent strips, which require no plastic packaging.   Bad: detergent pods packaged in film plastic bag Better: detergent in recyclable see-thru plastic jugs or cardboard box Best: laundry detergent strips   Bad: Baby food sold in plastic pouches Better: The old recyclable glass jars Best: Make your own from fresh fruits and vegetables  

Plastic labels

Another bugaboo for recyclers is the increasing use of non-recyclable wrappers around perfectly recyclable bottles and cans. For instance most spray cleaners come in bottles made of high-density polyethylene, which can be readily recycled. But first consumers must remove the spraytops, as they are made from different plastics and are not recyclable. Then consumers must find a way to pry off the brightly-colored, printed plastic wraps that packagers are increasingly wrapping around bottles to make the labeling more attractive.   “Who does all that? Nobody,” said Sanborn. “We’ve made recycling too complicated. Who has the time to read a manual for everything they get rid of?”   Instead consumers can look for clear-colored or white bottles with the labeling printed on the bottle itself. It’s even better if they choose brands committed to using recycled plastic to make these bottles, such as Method cleaning products. Another great option is for customers to mix their own cleaners and reuse the plastic bottles.   Bad: plastic spray bottle wrapped with an extra layer of printed plastic Better: white or transparent bottle without the extra wrap Best: make your own cleaner and refill the bottles   Bad: beer cans with plastic wraps or vinyl stickers Better: regular, very recyclable cans   Sanborn says that the best recycling outcomes happen when companies pay to create programs to make sure the waste from their products gets recycled in the end. Such programs are often mandatory in other countries. In the US, a few companies are promoting this type of effort voluntarily, such as a program to recycle plastic disposable razors coordinated by the company Gillete in partnership with the recycling enterprise, Terracycle. The program allows consumers to mail in their razors to be recycled.   “We should have it so these companies have to have an end-of-life system for all their products,” said Sanborn. “That’s producer responsibility.”

BIC has partnered with TerraCycle to offer consumers a free and easy way to recycle fully used pens, mechanical pencils, markers and other stationery products. As an added incentive, for every shipment of used stationery products collected and sent to TerraCycle through this program, collectors earn points that can be donated to a school or charitable organization of their choice.   Through the BIC Stationery Recycling Program, consumers can send in all brands of pens, markers, mechanical pencils, highlighters, glue sticks, watercolor dispensers and paint sets to be recycled for free. The program is also collecting the soft, flexible plastic packaging that some writing instruments are packaged in. Participation is easy: sign up on the TerraCycle program page, terracycle.com/bic, and mail in the used items using a prepaid shipping label. Once collected, the waste is cleaned and melted into hard plastic that is remolded to make new recycled products. The BIC Stationery Recycling Program is open to any interested individual, school, office or community organization.   BIC and TerraCycle began partnering in 2011 to collect and recycle used stationery products in Europe. A similar program was launched in Australia and New Zealand last year.

Participamos de Programa de Coleta de Residuos para Reciclagem da Terracycle, e somos Ponto de coleta. Entre os residuos coletados estão Esponja de Cozinha, Residuos de Escrita, Capsulas de Café Expresso de algumas marcas específicas.

Right now, small brands are doing everything they can to stay afloat. And for the health of the planet, let’s hope that they do. It’s the indie labels that are making real progress towards creating a more sustainable beauty industry—and have been since before it was cool. Rather than slowly righting the wrongs of decades-old poor production ethics, the newcomers are delivering solutions. Solutions like reusable staples, refillable containers, waterless formulas, local sourcing, reforestation initiatives—ideas that started from founders who realized healthier options weren’t yet available en masse. Their missions to shake our longtime reliance on disposable products beg a closer look at the long game—in every possible way.   With the personal care industry being a top contributor to packaging waste, it’s worth taking a minute to assess what we really need from any brand. “Beauty packaging is tricky from a sustainability perspective because it’s often composed of a mixture of metal, glass, plastic, and sometimes paper—and they’re often not very reusable,” says Ashlee Piper, a sustainability expert and author of Give a Sh*t: Do Good. Live Better. Save the Planet. “Think of a foundation pump that can’t be opened, let alone refilled, or a traditional razor cartridge, which is typically a blend of metal, plastic, and other polymers,” she points out. Once these items are used up, the mixed materials mean that there’s no real way to recycle them. (Many of us don’t even see the bottom of the bottle before tossing it in the trash. “Recent surveys show that women treat their beauty regimens much like their wardrobes,” says Piper. “We tend to own an average of 40 makeup products, but use only five, about 12.4 percent.”)   The packaging issue is only the tip of the sustainability iceberg. Below, we spotlight the sustainable moves that brands are making in hopes to create greater change (and greater demand) as we reimagine our own routines.  

1. Graduating from disposables

  It’s no longer a secret that much of what gets thrown in your recycling bin is never recycled. “Some of the 4.1 pounds of trash individual Americans produce each day can be recycled, but according to the EPA, even though 75 percent of our waste is recyclable, only 30 percent actually makes it into the recycling stream,” says Piper. Plus, recycling still requires a ton of energy. “Before you recycle, think about reducing, reusing, and repurposing items already in your possession,” Piper suggests.   One way to reduce and reuse is to cut back on your use of disposables in the first place, even ones you think are bio-friendly. For instance: “Cotton production is problematic—it often involves child labor and the nastiest pesticides, but it’s also a massive water hog,” says Amanda McIntosh, founder of Take My Face Off. “A cotton ball takes about 17 ounces of water—about the volume of one S’well water bottle—to grow. This doesn’t even cover the processing, which uses more.” Furthermore, cotton is usually combined with plastic before it’s doused with some sort of makeup-removing formula to produce disposable wipes.   Indie brands are helping to solve this issue by coming up with reusable solutions that stick around for far longer than one simple use. According to McIntosh, a single Mitty Mini ($10) reusable cleansing cloth can save over two thousand cotton balls a year (give or take, depending on how many you use each day), or 88 packages of face wipes. Croon and Face Halo offer similar alternatives, which are not only a greener option, but many believe offer a deeper microfiber clean than traditional wipes.  

2. Refillable beauty is no longer niche

  Within the cosmetics industry, refillable packaging has become more expected. Alima Pure Pressed Eyeshadows ($26) are packaged in refillable mirrored cases, while Jane Iredale PurePressed Base Mineral Foundation ($44) refill pans pop in and out of recyclable compacts. Elate Cosmetics even offers discounted refillable bamboo packaging that’s been flawed in production. As small as the efforts might seem, the savings adds up. “According to a Pew Research Center Survey, 59 percent of Americans believe ‘most types of items’ can be recycled,” says Piper. “While there are exceptions, here are some things from common beauty products that most areas will not recycle: plastic caps, mirrors, pumps, applicators or magnets.” Those pumps and caps are often tied to the staples that are arguably the most easily refillable.   In Canada, Saponetti’s delivery service drops bulk soap refills right at your doorstep in reusable glass mason jars. “There’s been a lot of focus on bottled water and how bad it is, but beauty is more than double the bottled water industry,” says John Cascarano, founder of Beast Brands, of the beauty industry’s ability to generate waste. For its shower range, the label developed an oversized aluminum Beast Bottle that can hold body wash or be used as a water bottle. “Aluminum is infinitely recyclable, and our refill pouches offer a 78 to 82 percent water, energy, and plastic saving versus a plastic bottle,” he says, pointing out that since one fill lasts about half a year, they will have saved over 20,000 plastic bottles in the first six months as a brand.   Likewise, with Bathing Culture’s new one-gallon Home Refills Kits of Mind & Body Wash, the biodegradable, organic, Rainforest-Alliance-certified soap is packaged with 100-percent pre-existing recycled material. Plus, it lasts for three years while refilling eight of their 16 ounce glass pumps.  

3. Utilizing other industries’ by-products to build a beauty movement

  “One third of all food produced is wasted. It’s one of the most wasteful industries in the world, meaning that it gives companies a huge number of ingredients from which to do better things,” says Anna Brightman, co-founder of UpCircle Beauty. By creating a “by-product beauty movement,” UpCircle’s range of coffee-based skin-care products has already saved 250 tons of coffee grounds (collected from small coffee chains, independent shops, and restaurants) from being sent to landfill “where it rots, producing methane.” Again, UpCircle’s sustainable solution is good for the environment and the consumer: “The level of antioxidants in coffee increases through the brewing process, so it arguably becomes even better for your skin,” Brightman explains.  

4. Moving towards a palm-free future

  “I believe the biggest environmental impact cosmetics have is really in their supply chain,” says Brianne West, founder of Ethique. “So many ingredients, such as surfactants, emulsifiers, and emollients, are made of palm oil, which is almost all unsustainably produced, in an industry full of forced labour, land theft, and environmental destruction on an incredible scale. There are very few cosmetics out there that don’t contain it simply because it is so hard to avoid.”   That’s because many chemicals and materials in the beauty industry (and in many other industries, as well) are derived from palm (alcohols, sulfates, and the list goes on). Ethique’s waterless products are certified palm-free, which presents its own challenge. Finding and using chemicals that are palm free is incredibly difficult, because it means that brand founders must rigorously research raw materials and find certifications of products made from other sources. Often times that means supply chains can’t be streamlined for efficiency while manufacturing.   Still, every company should consider making the same effort toward change. Palm oil plantations contribute to the deforestation of Amazonian rainforests that indigenous people, along with the entire planet, depend on for survival. Through its Beyond Carbon Neutral initiative, Rahua helps fund legal fees for Ecuadorian tribes to secure property titles to their ancestral land in order to prevent corporations from destroying the “lungs” of our planet. “The protection of ancient forests and its veteran trees are not only producing oxygen and preserving precious biodiversity, but sequestering CO2 output for approximately 100,000 people per year,” says Rahua co-founder Fabian Lliguin. “Through these means, in under one year, we have saved 95,000 acres—that’s over six times the size of Manhattan—of pristine and biodiverse tribal lands with oxygen-producing trees in the Rainforest.”  

5. Taking a cradle-to-cradle approach

  “Packaging and the CO2 footprint only tells one part of the story,” says OWA founder Kailey Bradt, who developed the brand’s Moondust waterless shampoo ($29). “A life cycle assessment (LCA) considers the impact of a product or service from the procurement of raw materials all the way to how the materials are disposed of—components are generally described as the following: procurement, production, distribution, use, disposal,” says Bradt, explaining that cradle-to-cradle certification, which uses the LCA metric, is defining the next wave of responsible production.   Environmental impact categories include water source depletion, ozone depletion, particulate matter, and land use to name only a few. For example, brands practicing responsible “procurement” might harvest chemical-free ingredients locally. Why? “By sourcing a large percentage of our organic ingredients within a 100-mile radius of our headquarters, we are meaningfully contributing to our local economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by not shipping ingredients over long distances,” says Greg Starkman, co-founder of Innersense Organic Beauty. “According to a McKinsey report on Sustainability in Supply Chains, the typical consumer company’s supply chain accounts for more than 80 percent of their greenhouse-gas emissions and more than 90 percent of the impact on air, land, water, biodiversity, and geological resources,” he says.   Local organic farming, meanwhile, has the reverse impact on CO2. “Soil farmed organically has been shown to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, reversing climate change and utilizing that carbon to feed the plants,” says Alison Czeczuga, sustainability and social impact manager at Gaia Herbs. While they grow and manufacture their expansive range of supplements and internal wellness blends on their farm in North Carolina, regenerative agriculture practices like cover crop rotation, pollinator-friendly plants, and crop diversity enabled Gaia Herbs to capture approximately 2,490 tons of CO2 in 2019.  

6. Reducing waste in water streams

  Hair dyes don’t have an invisible footprint. “The EPA reports that a large portion of the world’s fresh water resides underground, stored within cracks and pores in the rock that make up the Earth’s crust. Half of the United States population relies on groundwater for domestic uses as local water waste management can only decontaminate only 50 percent of the water waste,” says Bill Deliman the director of business development at Green Circle Salons, of the impetus to help salons (like Biolage) across the U.S. and Canada recycle toxic waste from dyes and chemical treatments that are normally washed down the drain and seep back into groundwater.   “While all hair dyes are not the same, some of the most common and dangerous ingredients we want to keep out of water are: ammonia, peroxide, p-phenylenediamine, diaminobenzene, toluene-2,5-diamine, resorcinol. Our chemical recycling partners use a centrifuge to separate the solid chemical waste from the liquid waste,” Deliman explains. “We have two solutions: The solid waste (5 percent) is incinerated and pushed into clean energy power grids and the liquid waste (95 percent) is decontaminated and goes to greywater treatment plants for recirculation into parks, golf courses, and more.”   More broadly, in ocean water, the oxybenzone chemical filter in sunscreens has been proven to deplete coral reefs. “In a 2016 study, a team of international scientists found that a common chemical in many sunscreen lotions and cosmetics is highly toxic to juvenile corals and other marine life. Oxybenzone is found in more than 3,500 skin-care products worldwide for protection against the sun’s harmful effects,” shares Josie Maran, the founder of an eponymous skin-care brand. “The compound has been found entering the environment both through wastewater effluent and directly from swimmers wearing sunscreens.” Formulated without oxybenzone or octinoxate, two common ingredients found in chemical sunscreens that are known to cause harm to marine life, Josie Maran Argan Daily Moisturizer Mineral SPF 47 ($34) offers a reef-safe solution that protects more than just your skin.  

7. Considering the end life of all products

  “In terms of beauty products, you can also check whether the brand or store you purchased the product from has their own recycling program,” says Piper. “A few examples? Credo Beauty has a partnership with TerraCycle, a third-party recycling program, and will take empties in exchange for customer loyalty points.” Since partnering with TerraCycle three years ago, 6,300 customers have brought their empties into Credo stores, resulting in the proper recycling of over 30,000 pounds of products.   Hawaiian skincare company MAHALO highlights that beauty brands have to account for 8 to 15 percent of product loss in their bottom line (which is reflected then in how items are priced on shelves). This can include bottles, caps, and packaging. It’s a stat that inspired the indie brand to launch its Perfectly Imperfect Program (aka PIP), which redirects damaged products from landfills to people’s countertops through clever customer discounts on lightly dinged packaging. Since 2017, MAHALO has been able to save over 3,000 hand-made products this way.   “The estimated amount of glass containers recycled in the U.S. in 2017 was 3 million tons, or 33.9 percent of generation across all industries,” says Belinda Smith, founder of St. Rose, who developed the sustainable initiative The Cool Factor. “About 13 percent of the glass containers and packaging waste generated was combusted with energy recovery, while the remainder 53.1 percent was landfilled.” St. Rose’s Recycle Program encourages customers to mail their empty Eau de Parfum bottles back for proper disassembly and ensured recycling processing. In return, they’re issued a $25 gift card towards their next purchase. Ayond’s containers (including caps, pumps, and droppers) as well as recyclable containers from other beauty brands can be returned for free recycling in the box the Ayond products were mailed.   If these initiatives are an expense that small brands can cover, larger brands have no excuse to not follow suit. If these ideas are ones that small brands can facilitate, why can’t the companies that bring in billions a year do even more? The answer is that they can. Let’s demand that they do.  

Loop, the zero-waste, refillable packaging delivery service, has announced that it is expanding nationally in the US this summer and coming soon to the UK, Canada, Japan, and Australia. Terracycle, which runs the service, has partnered with Kroger and Walgreens in the US, Loblaw in Canada, Tesco in the UK, and Carrefour in France. Terracycle piloted the Loop service in New York and Paris and later expanded to a few regions along the US east coast. Consumers order products from over 200 brands, including products from major international consumer goods companies such as Unilever, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Procter & Gamble. Customers place orders online and receive it in a reusable Loop tote, with all of the products within coming in refillable packaging. Goods range from pantry items, perishables, home goods, and personal care products. Once finished, users request a pickup for empties, which is then picked up. Your empty containers go back to Terracycle, where they are then cleaned, sanitized, and refilled for the next customer. The announcement comes as consumers flock to grocery delivery services from companies such as Instacart and Amazon over fears of contracting COVID-19 and being in the vicinity of possibly contagious shoppers in-store. While delivery services provide relief from possible contact with coronavirus, Loop is the only service that offers zero-waste packaging. Loop is currently inviting interested consumers to sign up on their waiting list.

As boating season approaches — although, with the current pandemic, who knows when it will actually start — so does the time to pull the shrink wrap off. And with some 100,000 boats registered in Rhode Island, that could add up to be tons of shrink wrap hauled off to the landfill or thrown into an incinerator.   That figure doesn’t even include the farmers and businesses that use shrink wrap, also known as low-density polyethylene and the most abundant source of microplastic pollution worldwide, to cover farm beds and wrap products for shipping.   “Aside from the boats that are wrapped or the mega yachts that erect huge seasonal plastic houses in the winter, we also see similar applications of this wrap across sectors,” said Max Kraimer, program coordinator at Middletown-based Clean Ocean Access (COA). “In the farming and agriculture world they create seasonal greenhouses in the winter with this plastic wrap, and manufacturers use it to ship products and goods year-round.”   To figure out what to do with all this discarded plastic wrap, Clean Ocean Access partnered with Newport-based 11th Hour Racing to create a shrink-wrap recycling project.   “In the realm of everything Clean Ocean Access does, we have kind of a wide range of different grant projects and a lot of them fall under our clean program, which is mainly focusing on eliminating marine debris,” Kraimer said. “And on the other side of our clean ocean program, we’re working on this idea of now creating more of a circular economy with plastic wrap and shrink wrap.”   The shrink-wrap recycling program was born two years ago after China effectively banned the import of plastic trash slated for the country’s recycling facilities. Up until that point, the United States was annually exporting some 700,000 tons of trash to China.   But after China found its facilities unable to handle the growing amount of contaminated recyclables, it stopped buying them and the United States found itself with a problem: what to do with all of its plastic waste. Incineration and landfilling became the leading solutions.   “This really raised the awareness of our recycling streams and how they need to be rethought, so that was kind of the spear behind our program, as well as the fact that it ties into our projects of really working to eliminate useable material that are going into our landfill or worse, into our incinerators,” Kraimer said.   The plan is to collect plastic shrink wrap — be it from boaters, farmers, or manufacturers — and ship it to TerraCycle, a recycling business based in New Jersey, to be turned into pellets and resin.   “The idea there is that we want to take the material and a feedstock of pellets or resin, then provide it to a domestic manufacturer who can make it into a product that can then be sold,” said Dave McLaughlin, COA’s executive director. “So, for example, you can use pellets and resin to make rain barrels, and then we could sell the rain barrels and portion of the profit could be used to cover costs of new recycling processes.”   In the first few months of the project, Clean Ocean Access has collected more than 12,000 pounds, or some 6 tons, of shrink wrap.   “We kind of looked at it this way: shrink wrap is single use; it’s convenient but it comes with a cost, and these costs are hidden, they’re impacting the environment,” McLaughlin said. “So, we were like OK, there is a single-use issue here that we need to think about, do something about.”