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4 gestures to adopt for a responsible beauty routine

Serum, blush, hair mask: when the time comes to get new beauty products, you always know where to go. But when they are finished, do we really know how to dispose of them?   Each year, the cosmetic industry produces 120 billion packaging units, of which 2.7 billion plastic containers end up in landfills. "The complex design of beauty products makes them difficult to recycle," says Alex Payne, public relations manager for TerraCycle. This is why the environmental organization has been collaborating with many beauty brands - including L'Occitane en Provence, Burt's Bees, Weleda and DECIEM - for ten years to facilitate the recovery of these particular products, through various programs. collection. "Depending on the brand, consumers can send their cosmetics by post free of charge or go and wear them in stores," he explains. TerraCycle does the rest. Whether we go through this type of program or through its municipal recycling system, the goal of our consumption is to understand what is recycled (or not) and how we can get there. From the actions to adopt to reduce our environmental footprint to the list of companies that advocate a zero waste philosophy, there is indeed green at the end of the tunnel.  

4 actions to adopt for an eco-responsible beauty routine

  1. Look for zero waste products.
  From conditioner to facial scrub, more and more personal care is offered without packaging.   2. Small containers = perfect for the plane!   Is our eye cream finished? We collect the jar and fill it with our favorite moisturizer on our next trip: it will fit perfectly in our hand luggage!   3. Avoid single-use products.   Although practical, they are a real scourge for the environment. We swap our disposable makeup remover pads for a machine washable set. We leave the masks in individual format and choose the good old version in a jar (preferably in glass).   4. Favor large formats and bulk products.   It is a gesture not only economical, but which considerably reduces our consumption of plastic.  

Recyclage 101: which product goes where?

  These major lines are memorized to transform the once tedious recycling chore into child's play. Please note: the packaging of beauty products that cannot be recycled in our municipality can often be recycled through TerraCycle. We go to his site ( terracycle.com ) to get the correct time.   Plastic bottles   "All plastics are recyclable, except those on which the number 6 is stamped [figure found in a small triangle under the packaging] and on which there is nothing indicated", underlines Jean-François Lesage , planning advisor in the Direction of residual materials management of the City of Montreal. He reminded us that we have to clean our containers for hygienic reasons before sending them to sorting centers.   Pumps and pipettes   They do not recycle. So, if one of our products has one of these tips, we unscrew it and dispose of it before putting the container for recycling!   Makeup   As the cases of our cosmetics are often made of several materials that are difficult to separate from each other, they generally do not recycle. "Laminated tubes [a type of flexible plastic packaging often used for foundations and make-up bases] are also not accepted," says Jean-François Lesage.   Mascara   The tube, too difficult to clean, does not recycle. The brush is washed in soapy water and sent to the Appalachian Wildlife Refuge ( appalachianwild.org ), an organization in North Carolina that uses it to clean the fur of small, vulnerable animals.   Aerosols   As a safety issue, they cannot be recycled through the usual municipal recycling system. "Aerosols and pressurized containers can explode if they are heated or punctured," says our expert. We do not despair! They are accepted in eco-centers and when collecting hazardous household waste.   Makeup brushes   Like makeup cases, brushes do not mix with recycling because of the range of materials that make them up (plastic, metal, bristles, etc.). Before saying goodbye to them, we probe our surroundings to find out if a friend might need them, or we give them a second life by adding them to the children's artist's kit or using them as nail brushes, for example!   Glass containers   "Glass is fully recyclable and can be repeatedly collected without ever affecting its quality," said Alex Payne of TerraCycle. It makes it one of the most eco-friendly materials. ” Warning! In the case of a perfume, we make sure to separate the bottle from its atomizer, since the latter does not recycle.   Nail polish   Since the containers are almost impossible to clean, they cannot be recycled directly - they are part of the category of household hazardous waste (HHW). So we bring them to the ecocentre nearest to us.   Cleansing wipes   Unless they are biodegradable - we could then compost them - they take the garbage path.  

"Pamper the next one"

  If for various reasons (an impulse purchase, perhaps?) Unused products clutter our pharmacy, we turn to organizations for women in need. One thinks in particular of the Fairies Marraines ( feesmarraines.ca ), which give the necessities to the teenagers coming from underprivileged environments so that they can put themselves beautiful for their graduation, or The stuff of success ( dressforsuccessmontreal.org ), which supports women in difficult situations who wish to (re) enter the labor market.  

An app to facilitate recycling

  Last spring, the company RECYC-QUÉBEC launched the application C'est va Où? The objective: to clarify, according to our municipality, which products are intended for the trash, the recycling bin or the eco-center. The information remains summary, so if question marks persist, we complete our search on recyc-quebec.gouv.qc.ca.   The article 4 gestures to adopt for a responsible beauty routine appeared first on Elle Quebec .

Spring Toys from Zuru

Are you running out of things to keep your kids occupied during this time of social distancing? If so, Zuru has so many new things for your kids to play with! Rainbocorns Sparkle Heart Surprise Rainbocorns Sparkle Heart Surprise   Rainbocorns Sparkle Heart Surprise includes a Rainbocorn collectible with a unique gem heart! Pop the gem in your Rainbocorn or onto your bling ring, and swap your rainbocorn’s hearts and wings to create your own cute surprise! Find other surprises including boo-boocorns, rainbocorn poop and much more in every pack! ?Ages 3+, two-pack SRP $4.99; four-pack SRP $9.99. Available at Amazon, Walmart and Target.   5 Surprise Mini Brands 5 Surprise Mini Brands 5 Surprise Mini Brands are real shopping brands that fit in your hands! Unwrap, peel, and reveal REAL miniature collectibles with 5 Surprise Mini Brands! Each capsule is a surprise unboxing with dozens of miniatures and surprise shopping accessories to find. What 5 surprises will you unbox? There are over 70 miniatures of your favorite brands to collect, including rare Metallic and Glow in the Dark minis, and Super Rare Golden Minis too! Collect them all to create your own mini shopping world! Ages 5+, SRP $5.99. Available at Amazon, Target and Walmart.   Crazy Bunch O Balloons Water Bunch O Balloons
The original and best-selling water balloons let’s one fill and tie 100 balloons in 60 seconds now come with a spark of color! Each Bunch O Balloons stem will come with a completely new mix of multi-colored balloons. PS, In addition, all ZURU Bunch O Balloons TM products in the USA are fully recyclable through ZURU’s TerraCycle Recycling program. ?Ages 3+; SRP $6.99   X-Shot Micro Fast-Fill and X-Shot Epic Fast-Fill micro fast fill water gun
Up your game with ZURU’s X-Shot dart and water blasters, the world’s number two brand in the category and winner of multiple toy awards including a finalist for this year’s Toy of the Year Outdoor Toy. The 2020 Spring line expands ZURU’s innovative Fast-Fill approach and Technology and ?brings new colors and real-to-life-size blaster fun to both the Micro Fast-Fill and Epic Fast-Fill. Micro Fast Fill   At nearly six-inches long, the newly-sized MICRO revolver-style water blaster can be refilled with one hand in just one second! Simply pull the hammer down, dunk, fill and blast. It is the perfect back-up blaster in water fights anywhere. ?Ages 3+, SRP $10.99 Epic Fast Fill epic fast fill water gun At nearly 21-inches long, the newly sized Epic Fast-Fill is the must-have water blaster for any kind of water fight, anywhere. Holding up to 1250 ml – more than 5 cups of water! – the Epic also fills in one-second and comes with a robust pump-action feature that enables kids to blast up to nearly 34 feet. In addition, four different nozzles allow one to blast four different ways. Ages 3+, SRP $19.99   5 Surprise Dino Strike Surprise Dino Strike
Unbox, build, and battle all new 5 Surprise Dino Strike! Assemble your battling dinos and get them ready to face off against their fierce enemies. Each dino comes with armor and headgear, customizable weapon backpacks and weapons that you can fire and swap for the ultimate combat combo. Collect all 13 battling dinos like the roaring T-Rex, charging triceratops and the fearsome velociraptors. Can you find and go into battle with the molten gold T-Rex fossil dino? Swap your weapons across each weapon backpack and even combine single and double blasters to make the ultimate triple blaster prehistoric predator ready for warfare!  
  • Every Capsule Includes a battling dino ready to be assembled, 1 customizable weapon backpack and 1 or 2 swappable weapons to battle with.
  • Unbox, Build and Battle all new 5 Surprise Dino Strike with customizable weaponry and armor.
  • Build the ultimate battling dino equipped with headgear, armor, scalable weapon backpack and firing weapons.
  • Swap weapons across different dino teams to create the ultimate combat crew
  • Collect them all and combine single and double blasters together to make the ultimate triple blaster.
  • Collect all 13 of the Dino Strike army including the rare molten gold T-Rex fossil.
  My take: My kids had a lot of fun with all of these toys! We were all very impressed with how tiny and detailed the 5 surprise mini brands were!   My daughter LOVED the Rainbocorns Sparkle Heart Surprises   My middle son got a kick out of assembling the dinosaur:   We even had one very warm day where the Crazy Bunch O Balloons Water and water guns were used which made for very happy kids!!

Leading by Example

With that, companies can no longer brush off sustainability's importance. Yet, several global companies have already led the charge with creative (and cool) initiatives. Let's take a look at some of the most notable examples. 08 02 lead by example coke The Coca-Cola Co.: Sustainability? No Sweat That world-renowned red bottle has dedicated part of its sustainability efforts to branded fashion. The Coke Store sells hoodies that are made of 50 percent cotton and 50 percent recycled plastic bottles. They promise superior softness. 08 02 lead by example unilever Unilever: Turning the Tide Unilever is committed to the plastics problem, particularly in the big blue seas, and is working with TerraCycle, a recycling company, to make product bottles that are comprised of 80 percent recycled plastic and 20 percent reclaimed ocean plastics. 08 02 lead by example pepsico PepsiCo: Let it Shine! Big companies have big power needs. PepsiCo announced a power pledge to be 100 percent renewable energy with wind and solar technologies throughout their global operations—at plants and offices. With their high energy needs to produce snacks and water, they are shining the light on their efficiencies. 08 02 lead by example boxed water Boxed Water: Forget the Plastic Ditch the plastic water for Boxed Water, and take the no-plastic pledge. That’s what Boxed Water is trying to do. The company’s 100 percent recyclable “boxes” of water, the company says, is more efficient to produce and distribute. Instead of reusing, they want to divert the potential 8.8 million metric tons of plastic that get tossed in the ocean. 08 02 lead by example patagonia Patagonia: Whatever They Could Find! The outdoor-clothing company offers a fleece made of 100 percent recycled polyester materials: reclaimed soda bottles, recycled waste and other recycled clothes. They also use ocean plastics for rain jackets and have since the 1990s. They’ll make clothes out of anything these days! 08 02 lead by example bagel Into the Deep Original Bagel Company’s Dave Harris took his family to Cancun for the holidays. When he decided to snorkel a reef he had SCUBA dove decades ago, he thought it’d be a stellar experience for the clan. What he didn’t expect was the snorkeling guide’s “lecture” to the group about the depleted reef life, a sad reality. “Seeing them then (30 years ago), and seeing them now? It is pretty staggering. And depressing,” Harris says. Harris took to the real-life impact of a personal experience, leaving him with motivation and inspiration for his company’s sustainability efforts.

Dairy Alternative Company Follow Your Heart Ramps up Sustainability Efforts

Vegan brand Follow Your Heart has been ahead of the curve when it comes to implementing sustainability measures, and the 49-year-old dairy alternative company is taking new measures to boost them even more. Earth Island, the facility where FYH currently produces its vegan products in, has an entire department dedicated to advancing sustainability measures.  

A Leader in the Plant-Based Industry

  A zero-waste commitment has lead FYH to become the first-ever plant-based brand to achieve the Platinum Level Zero Waste Certification by Green Business Certification Incorporated. For the past four years, the company has diverted over 98% of its waste from landfills through recycling, composting, reduction, or reusing. FYH has also recycled a total of 270 tons of material and has a garden on the grounds of their solar-powered office which yields yearly over 1,000 pounds of fresh produce for employees to enjoy. To add to this extensive green effort, FYH is now taking recycling efforts one step further by partnering with TerraCycle, a global leader that specializes in recycling materials that are traditionally difficult to recycle. TerraCycle is helping FYH to reduce employee waste by adding three new recycling boxes to all of their offices and warehouses. These new boxes are for hard-to-recycle items including office supplies, plastic packaging and food wrappers. The bins will collect this waste to repurpose it into functional items like shipping pallets, recycling bins, benches and bike racks for the office.   Beyond the internal reduction of waste at FYH facilities, the company is also making it easier for customers of the brand to reduce and recycle. They've changed the labeling of their products, in hopes that consumers opt to recycle their packaging rather than throwing it away. FYH continues to try to improve on sustainability efforts and actively engages employees to adopt greener habits by offering free electric car charging, providing “Meatless May” lunches and organizing employee volunteer events to help local non-profit organizations like Food ForwardHeal the Bay, and TreePeople.

A tale of two snack pouches

Spoon-fed applesauce has become something of a relic of the past in little over a decade, replaced by on-the-go fruit pouches that toddlers can squeeze in one hand and slurp. The pouches are easy to stash in a purse, last for months in a pantry and are relatively nutritious.   But while parents appreciate the convenience of these minimal-mess snacks, many also cringe when they toss the single-use packaging into the trash. Most of these pouches are made of layered films and other plastic materials that are difficult, if not impossible, for U.S. municipal recycling systems to peel apart and process. So, to the landfill they go.   Demand for flexible food packaging is set to become a $3.4 billion market by 2022, a growth of nearly 4 percent per year, according to a Freedonia Group report several years ago. That includes an array of pouch designs beyond the juvenile market, such as stand-up zippered bags for things like popcorn and cookies. Food companies increasingly favor the bendable, smashable packaging for being lightweight and therefore low-carbon when it comes to shipping, so it's in their best interest to improve the sustainability of the materials while winning over the vocal segment of ecologically-aware, social media-savvy millennial moms and dads. And sales of baby-food pouches appeared to flatten or dip slightly in the past couple of years, according to market research by Spins and IRI.   That's partly why two leaders in the world of pureed-fruit pouches have invested years toward reinventing their packaging, some of which is set to reach the market as soon as this spring. GoGo Squeez maker MOM Group and Nestlé's Gerber have each taken a different tack, ultimately picking different polyolefins for their primary material: polyethylene for GoGoSqueez and polypropylene for Gerber.   At this point, however, neither of the new pouches will be accepted by most mainstream recyclers in the United States, which mostly focus on paper and corrugate and lack the materials sorting-and-stripping capabilities to handle flexible plastics. The companies appear to be banking on the potential that recycling innovations that are widespread in Europe will eventually reach U.S. shores, yet this is largely beyond their reach. (Nestlé is making separate investments in this direction; more on that below.)   Here's what's inside the pouch-reinvention efforts by each company.    

MOM Group: GoGo Squeez

  GoGo Squeez is, if you will, the mother of all applesauce pouches, selling 1.5 billion a year and commanding two-thirds of the market share for fruit and dairy squeezers. You may praise (or blame) CEO and Chairman Michel Larroche of parent company MOM Group, for popularizing squeeze-and-slurp pouches for applesauce and other fruit purees in the United States, starting in 2008. (To be fair, Plum Organics brought its baby food pouches to market a year earlier.)   The products are based around a French predecessor Poms Potes, which Larroche, a 10-year veteran of Heinz in Europe, once smuggled across cross-Atlantic flights by the suitcase-load to his brother's family in Manhattan. When Larroche joined MOM Group, a company with century-old roots in France, the father of three athletic daughters saw an opening in the snack-happy North American market.   Americans quickly snapped up GoGo Squeez, first in Costco, Whole Foods and Target stores. In two short years it reached $100 million in annual retail sales, becoming ubiquitous in playgrounds and playgroups.   "We have a very nice product, very convenient," Larroche told GreenBiz. "But my obsession is to make it perfect, and making it perfect means we need to make progress on recycling. This movement is going to grow. The sensitivity of consumers to better protect the earth is very important, especially among the youth, and something we fully embrace."     GoGo Squeez describes four CSR focus areas in terms of "caring nutrition, environmental footprint, sustainable agriculture and well-being." It prides itself on running factories located near apple orchards outside Boise, Idaho and Traverse City, Michigan. And it snubs artificial sweeteners and preservatives, offering GMO-free, organic fruit that's highly preferable over a mush-prone banana in a hot diaper bag.   Five years ago MOM Group began reinventing its pouches. The current format is made of multiple materials including inner aluminum with a BPA-free plastic layer, a "recyclable" outer paper layer, and oxygen barriers for freshness.   By 2022, all of GoGo Squeez's new, all-polyethylene packages will adopt a format that reduces some of the layering. Eliminating aluminum will slash the CO2 impact in half, Larroche said. It also makes for more flexibility, which spurred the company to rework "the origami of the pouch." The signature propeller-shaped polyethylene cap will feature 40 percent less plastic.   A collaboration since 2011 with upcycling innovator TerraCycle enables consumers to mail in empty GoGo Squeez packs with caps so they can be repurposed into playground equipment, notebooks and other products. The MOM Group says the new pouches will also become easier for upcycling through TerraCycle.   "Not everything will be recycled in the beginning but at least we’ll push in the right direction," Larroche said of the fact that stateside recycling programs are generally unlikely to handle even the new designs. Yet he hopes that consumers will see MOM Group's efforts as sincere and innovative. He hopes people will pressure political and business leaders to improve the nation's recycling infrastructure, as he also aims to do. The sorting technology exists, but it will take some time, he insists, before it is widely adopted across recycling infrastructure.   "It’s not the end of the story," Larroche said.    

Nestlé: Gerber

  Nestlé's Gerber has also partnered with TerraCycle to offer upcycling options for some of its snack pouches and other containers for children's food. This alliance, launched in fall 2019, should enable the baby food maker to recycle the 20 percent of its packaging that otherwise would not be, in order to meet Nestlé's goal of 100 percent recyclability or reusability across all product lines by 2025.   Swiss conglomerate Nestlé seeks to communicate a corporate message of responsible packaging, sourcing and supply chains. Its commitments toward a circular economy include joining the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's New Plastics Economy commitment to reduce plastic waste in November. Two months earlier, the food giant launched the Institute of Packaging Sciences, which seeks to accelerate environmentally benign packaging and reduce plastic waste.   And back in 2016, Gerber directed research and development toward its fruit puree pouches.   "We started to dig in, asking, what’s the best way to make this a sustainable solution?" said Tony Dzikowicz, associate director of packaging at Nestlé Nutrition. "We started to look at a broad range of suppliers with kind of an open goal, asking, what are the different ways we can get there?"     The Nestlé subsidiary teamed up on the project with Gualapack Group in Italy, with which it had worked for a number years on pouches made of polyethylene (PET), nylon and a multi-layer laminate. Gualapack specializes in low-footprint, circular solutions for packaging, which span a range of processes including extrusion, lamination, printing, pouch making and injection molding. It has nine production plants in seven countries and nearly 2,000 people on its payroll.   "That’s when it got more real, from exploratory investigations to doing more trials.  That’s when we found the path," Dzikowicz says. "From there it’s been a series of evolutions. Multiple iterations ultimately got us to the first monomaterial pouch."   In 2018, the team settled with Gualapack on what it calls the industry's first single-material pouch. The pouch and cap are both 100-percent polypropylene, which was chosen for its recyclability in Europe. The results are open source, so other companies can use the technology if they like.   "We had to design our pouch to be intrinsically recyclable, meaning anywhere you go you can remelt and extrude it and make something out of it," said Michelle Marrone, Gualapack's product innovation and sustainability project manager.   In Europe, recycling facilities commonly feature optical infrared high-speed scanners that can "read" incoming garbage and sort out even flexible materials, such as the snack pouches. European Union policy on the circular economy includes a goal for all plastic on the market to be reusable or recyclable by 2030.   In the United States, by contrast, the technology has not been widely invested in and installed. "If [the packaging] is not properly separated and sent to a recycler there’s really no control we have over that," Marrone said.       Gerber will start in May by selling its new pouch, containing organic banana mango puree, on its website. Then it'll take time to scale up to its portfolio of 80 different types of pouch snacks. Anything that contains dairy, which is more challenging to keep fresh than fruit alone, will require a different approach. "This is a step in the process," Dzikowicz said. "There are many things that come together. It’s not only with us, what we as a manufacturer can provide, but the entire system needs to work."   Enter Nestlé's broader packaging mission, which includes supporting local recycling infrastructure. Nestlé joined Materials Recovery for the Future (MRFF) several years ago as a founding member alongside Dow Chemical, PepsiCo, SC Johnson and several other big corporations. The research program from the American Chemistry Council is piloting curbside recycling for flexible plastic packaging.   Under the experimental project, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, has become the first U.S. community to collect and recycle thin-film plastic. Gerber says that both its current and future fruit pouches can be recycled with the technology at play there, which involves sophisticated optical sorting systems. Material from the pouches can be turned into plastic pellets or industrial materials such as composite lumber or roofing.   The ultimate goal of the MRFF project is to accelerate such advancements nationwide. Still, there's a long road ahead before popular flexible packaging can be diverted at scale from the junkyard. Its use keeps on rising, particularly as companies favor the lightweight packaging for reducing energy use and carbon emissions at shipping time.   Representatives on the recycling and materials recovery side tend to curse product designers for failing to consider what happens after their creative packaging is spent. Wanda Redic, senior recycling specialist for the City of Oakland, California, is among those critics who describe the widespread practice of "wish cycling" by consumers who unwittingly  contaminate household recycling bins with items they assume to be recyclable.   A product is not recyclable if no one can recycle it, she said, warning of "putting the cart in front of the horse. They're making a better container that one day will be recycled. In the meantime, it’s going to the landfill."   The people behind GoGo Squeez and Gerber's pouches say they hope they're doing their part to advance better packaging solutions, while recognizing that the patchwork U.S. recycling system leaves much to be desired. One hope is that down the road, if more flexible polypropylene and polyethylene are available for recycling in these new types of formats, they would be collected at greater volumes. And if more plastics enter the market for upcycling purposes, that might spur investment in recycling infrastructure. It's a kind of chicken-versus-egg situation. In this case, the designs may come first.   "We're doing the piece we can do, we’re supporting the MRFF project, but we really need the system to come together," Dzikowicz said.

A tale of two snack pouches

    Spoon-fed applesauce has become something of a relic of the past in little over a decade, replaced by on-the-go fruit pouches that toddlers can squeeze in one hand and slurp. The pouches are easy to stash in a purse, last for months in a pantry and are relatively nutritious.   But while parents appreciate the convenience of these minimal-mess snacks, many also cringe when they toss the single-use packaging into the trash. Most of these pouches are made of layered films and other plastic materials that are difficult, if not impossible, for U.S. municipal recycling systems to peel apart and process. So, to the landfill they go.   Demand for flexible food packaging is set to become a $3.4 billion market by 2022, a growth of nearly 4 percent per year, according to a Freedonia Group report several years ago. That includes an array of pouch designs beyond the juvenile market, such as stand-up zippered bags for things like popcorn and cookies. Food companies increasingly favor the bendable, smashable packaging for being lightweight and therefore low-carbon when it comes to shipping, so it's in their best interest to improve the sustainability of the materials while winning over the vocal segment of ecologically-aware, social media-savvy millennial moms and dads. And sales of baby-food pouches appeared to flatten or dip slightly in the past couple of years, according to market research by Spins and IRI.   That's partly why two leaders in the world of pureed-fruit pouches have invested years toward reinventing their packaging, some of which is set to reach the market as soon as this spring. GoGo Squeez maker MOM Group and Nestlé's Gerber have each taken a different tack, ultimately picking different polyolefins for their primary material: polyethylene for GoGoSqueez and polypropylene for Gerber.   At this point, however, neither of the new pouches will be accepted by most mainstream recyclers in the United States, which mostly focus on paper and corrugate and lack the materials sorting-and-stripping capabilities to handle flexible plastics. The companies appear to be banking on the potential that recycling innovations that are widespread in Europe will eventually reach U.S. shores, yet this is largely beyond their reach. (Nestlé is making separate investments in this direction; more on that below.)   Here's what's inside the pouch-reinvention efforts by each company.    

MOM Group: GoGo Squeez

  GoGo Squeez is, if you will, the mother of all applesauce pouches, selling 1.5 billion a year and commanding two-thirds of the market share for fruit and dairy squeezers. You may praise (or blame) CEO and Chairman Michel Larroche of parent company MOM Group, for popularizing squeeze-and-slurp pouches for applesauce and other fruit purees in the United States, starting in 2008. (To be fair, Plum Organics brought its baby food pouches to market a year earlier.)   The products are based around a French predecessor Poms Potes, which Larroche, a 10-year veteran of Heinz in Europe, once smuggled across cross-Atlantic flights by the suitcase-load to his brother's family in Manhattan. When Larroche joined MOM Group, a company with century-old roots in France, the father of three athletic daughters saw an opening in the snack-happy North American market.   Americans quickly snapped up GoGo Squeez, first in Costco, Whole Foods and Target stores. In two short years it reached $100 million in annual retail sales, becoming ubiquitous in playgrounds and playgroups.   "We have a very nice product, very convenient," Larroche told GreenBiz. "But my obsession is to make it perfect, and making it perfect means we need to make progress on recycling. This movement is going to grow. The sensitivity of consumers to better protect the earth is very important, especially among the youth, and something we fully embrace."     GoGo Squeez describes four CSR focus areas in terms of "caring nutrition, environmental footprint, sustainable agriculture and well-being." It prides itself on running factories located near apple orchards outside Boise, Idaho and Traverse City, Michigan. And it snubs artificial sweeteners and preservatives, offering GMO-free, organic fruit that's highly preferable over a mush-prone banana in a hot diaper bag.   Five years ago MOM Group began reinventing its pouches. The current format is made of multiple materials including inner aluminum with a BPA-free plastic layer, a "recyclable" outer paper layer, and oxygen barriers for freshness.   By 2022, all of GoGo Squeez's new, all-polyethylene packages will adopt a format that reduces some of the layering. Eliminating aluminum will slash the CO2 impact in half, Larroche said. It also makes for more flexibility, which spurred the company to rework "the origami of the pouch." The signature propeller-shaped polyethylene cap will feature 40 percent less plastic.   A collaboration since 2011 with upcycling innovator TerraCycle enables consumers to mail in empty GoGo Squeez packs with caps so they can be repurposed into playground equipment, notebooks and other products. The MOM Group says the new pouches will also become easier for upcycling through TerraCycle.   "Not everything will be recycled in the beginning but at least we’ll push in the right direction," Larroche said of the fact that stateside recycling programs are generally unlikely to handle even the new designs. Yet he hopes that consumers will see MOM Group's efforts as sincere and innovative. He hopes people will pressure political and business leaders to improve the nation's recycling infrastructure, as he also aims to do. The sorting technology exists, but it will take some time, he insists, before it is widely adopted across recycling infrastructure.   "It’s not the end of the story," Larroche said.    

Nestlé: Gerber

  Nestlé's Gerber has also partnered with TerraCycle to offer upcycling options for some of its snack pouches and other containers for children's food. This alliance, launched in fall 2019, should enable the baby food maker to recycle the 20 percent of its packaging that otherwise would not be, in order to meet Nestlé's goal of 100 percent recyclability or reusability across all product lines by 2025.   Swiss conglomerate Nestlé seeks to communicate a corporate message of responsible packaging, sourcing and supply chains. Its commitments toward a circular economy include joining the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's New Plastics Economy commitment to reduce plastic waste in November. Two months earlier, the food giant launched the Institute of Packaging Sciences, which seeks to accelerate environmentally benign packaging and reduce plastic waste.   And back in 2016, Gerber directed research and development toward its fruit puree pouches.   "We started to dig in, asking, what’s the best way to make this a sustainable solution?" said Tony Dzikowicz, associate director of packaging at Nestlé Nutrition. "We started to look at a broad range of suppliers with kind of an open goal, asking, what are the different ways we can get there?"     The Nestlé subsidiary teamed up on the project with Gualapack Group in Italy, with which it had worked for a number years on pouches made of polyethylene (PET), nylon and a multi-layer laminate. Gualapack specializes in low-footprint, circular solutions for packaging, which span a range of processes including extrusion, lamination, printing, pouch making and injection molding. It has nine production plants in seven countries and nearly 2,000 people on its payroll.   "That’s when it got more real, from exploratory investigations to doing more trials.  That’s when we found the path," Dzikowicz says. "From there it’s been a series of evolutions. Multiple iterations ultimately got us to the first monomaterial pouch."   In 2018, the team settled with Gualapack on what it calls the industry's first single-material pouch. The pouch and cap are both 100-percent polypropylene, which was chosen for its recyclability in Europe. The results are open source, so other companies can use the technology if they like.   "We had to design our pouch to be intrinsically recyclable, meaning anywhere you go you can remelt and extrude it and make something out of it," said Michelle Marrone, Gualapack's product innovation and sustainability project manager.   In Europe, recycling facilities commonly feature optical infrared high-speed scanners that can "read" incoming garbage and sort out even flexible materials, such as the snack pouches. European Union policy on the circular economy includes a goal for all plastic on the market to be reusable or recyclable by 2030.   In the United States, by contrast, the technology has not been widely invested in and installed. "If [the packaging] is not properly separated and sent to a recycler there’s really no control we have over that," Marrone said.       Gerber will start in May by selling its new pouch, containing organic banana mango puree, on its website. Then it'll take time to scale up to its portfolio of 80 different types of pouch snacks. Anything that contains dairy, which is more challenging to keep fresh than fruit alone, will require a different approach. "This is a step in the process," Dzikowicz said. "There are many things that come together. It’s not only with us, what we as a manufacturer can provide, but the entire system needs to work."   Enter Nestlé's broader packaging mission, which includes supporting local recycling infrastructure. Nestlé joined Materials Recovery for the Future (MRFF) several years ago as a founding member alongside Dow Chemical, PepsiCo, SC Johnson and several other big corporations. The research program from the American Chemistry Council is piloting curbside recycling for flexible plastic packaging.   Under the experimental project, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, has become the first U.S. community to collect and recycle thin-film plastic. Gerber says that both its current and future fruit pouches can be recycled with the technology at play there, which involves sophisticated optical sorting systems. Material from the pouches can be turned into plastic pellets or industrial materials such as composite lumber or roofing.   The ultimate goal of the MRFF project is to accelerate such advancements nationwide. Still, there's a long road ahead before popular flexible packaging can be diverted at scale from the junkyard. Its use keeps on rising, particularly as companies favor the lightweight packaging for reducing energy use and carbon emissions at shipping time.   Representatives on the recycling and materials recovery side tend to curse product designers for failing to consider what happens after their creative packaging is spent. Wanda Redic, senior recycling specialist for the City of Oakland, California, is among those critics who describe the widespread practice of "wish cycling" by consumers who unwittingly  contaminate household recycling bins with items they assume to be recyclable.   A product is not recyclable if no one can recycle it, she said, warning of "putting the cart in front of the horse. They're making a better container that one day will be recycled. In the meantime, it’s going to the landfill."   The people behind GoGo Squeez and Gerber's pouches say they hope they're doing their part to advance better packaging solutions, while recognizing that the patchwork U.S. recycling system leaves much to be desired. One hope is that down the road, if more flexible polypropylene and polyethylene are available for recycling in these new types of formats, they would be collected at greater volumes. And if more plastics enter the market for upcycling purposes, that might spur investment in recycling infrastructure. It's a kind of chicken-versus-egg situation. In this case, the designs may come first.   "We're doing the piece we can do, we’re supporting the MRFF project, but we really need the system to come together," Dzikowicz said.        

Hippie Haven offering no-contact recycling at downtown store

Rapid City’s first zero-waste store wants to help residents live sustainably during the COVID-19 quarantine.   Eco-friendly Hippie Haven opened last year downtown to help customers reduce their environmental impact by offering plastic-free, vegan and cruelty-free alternatives to everyday products. The store stopped allowing customers inside on April 6, and now is offering no-contact recycling for items that cannot be recycled elsewhere in Rapid City.   Hippie Haven owner Callee Ackland said the store’s location at 806 St. Joseph St. has an entryway outside the store’s front door where people can safely drop off recycling without coming in the store or leaving recycling on the street.   “Everything changes so quickly (because of COVID-19), but we definitely plan to continue accepting recycling,” Ackland said.   In partnership with TerraCycle, since Hippie Haven opened last year it has participated in the Zero Waste Box program to provide solutions for difficult-to-recycle waste. Ackland said her store can accept the following: all razors and razor blades; contact lenses; contact lens packaging, contact solution bottles and plastic contact lens cases; pop can tabs; crayons; sunglasses and eyeglasses; tennis balls; shoes; any type of makeup and makeup packaging; shampoo, conditioner and hairspray containers; soap and lotion bottles; shaving cream packaging; toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes and floss containers; and plastic straws.   In March, Hippie Haven also co-sponsored a TerraCycle Straws Zero Waste Box at Pure Bean Coffee House.   “There are so many pieces of plastic out in the world with more and more being made every day,” Ackland said. “These plastics break down into microplastics that impact all levels of life. Recycling every bit that we can and preventing new plastic from entering the ecosystem is crucial."   Hippie Haven is still accepting orders online or by phone for its eco-friendly home goods and beauty products. Customers can have products shipped or use the store’s curbside pick-up service, Ackland said.   For the health and safety of its customers, Ackland said Hippie Haven has moved its upcoming workshops online. A schedule of upcoming workshops will be finalized and announced later this week, Ackland said. Go to facebook.com/hippiehavenshop/ and at @hippiehavenshop for announcements and a schedule of upcoming virtual events.   Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender, in keeping with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control for slowing the spread of COVID-19, is urging everyone to stay home as much as possible. He said Monday he would likely soon make a citywide recommendation for people to stay home. One sustainable stay-at-home activity Ackland is especially excited to support is gardening.   “I’ve been so happy to see the resurgence of victory gardens. Food sovereignty is one of the most important issues of our lifetime. We want to help in any way we can,” she said.   Ackland and her staff encourage people to start with what they have at home; a recent social media post provided tips on growing vegetables from food scraps. On her weekly podcast at hippiehavenpodcast.com, Ackland recently explained how to grow $700 worth of food in 100 square feet. The podcast focuses on a range of sustainability topics.   “We’re going to be hosting a planting party on Instagram live soon and we’re inviting viewers to be planting gardens along with us,” Ackland said. “People can use this extra time they might have to learn how to reduce their waste, even in these changing conditions.”

Green is good: Inspiring ways to recycle

Sweat the small stuff

Investment research firm Corporate Knights has released its list of Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations. To do it, data scientists sift through financial and ecological data on 7,500 organisations in the $1 billion-plus revenue club. [1] Leading the way with ‘clean revenue’ from sustainable products is bioscience company Chr. Hansen. More than 80% of its money comes from natural solutions that preserve food, protect crops and remove the need for animal antibiotics. [2] Its ‘good bacteria’, for example, help stop food waste by making fresh products last longer. In Europe alone, these magic microbes reduce around 440,000 tonnes of yogurt waste. [3] Buy or cook too much food? You can share excess food with people in your neighbourhood with apps such as OLIO.  

Fashion faux pas

In second place on Corporate Knights’ list is Kering SA, which owns fashion houses Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen. By sourcing more than 40% of its products from certified sustainable sources, Kering is acknowledging the huge toll fashion takes on the environment. [4] New lines, synthetic fibres and the strain on crops like cotton all pollute the environment. So much so that experts say fashion consumes more energy than the aviation and shipping industries combined. [5] Thankfully, more brands are waking up to the damage. High street favourite Zara has promised to sell only sustainable clothes by 2025 – using organic, sustainable or recycled materials. In 2019, the retailer announced you can bring in unwanted Zara clothes to its stores to recycle – and take home new purchases in paper carriers swapped for plastic bags. Follower of fashion? Consider a capsule wardrobe – a collection of basic but high-quality clothes you can mix, match and update with seasonal accessories. It’s simple, stress free and kinder on the environment.  

Plastic fantastic

Our oceans are so polluted that scientists predict there will be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050. [6] That’s why many clothing brands are giving plastics a second life as trainers, jackets and swimsuits. One brand riding the refurb wave is Patagonia. It recently revamped its long-sleeved Tshirt into a ‘Responsibili-Tee’ made from 4.8 plastic bottles. [7] Refreshingly, Patagonia is transparent about the products that aren’t so eco-friendly . And that includes clothing made from synthetic materials – and repurposed plastic. The microplastics found in synthetic textiles such as nylon, acrylic or polyester break down when we wash them. Just one washload of polyester clothes releases 700,000 microplastic fibres into the environment. They harm vegetation, animals and, eventually, us, as they sneak up the food chain. That’s why Patagonia labels all clothing made from synthetic materials with information on how to care for them and help reduce microfibre shedding. Looked at the label? As well as choosing clothes made from sustainable materials, you can place synthetic garments such as running tops and yoga pants in a filter bag. These bags help reduce the flow of microfibres into your drain.  

Smart packaging

You can’t recycle the thin, crinkly plastic found on ready meals or the brittle plastic of takeaway containers. In response, Stasher has invented a range of reusable storage bags you can take to the shops and store fresh food when you get it home. It makes packs from non-toxic silicone you can wash in the dishwasher and zap in the microwave. [8] TerraCycle is another company that makes a business out of reusables. It collects and recycles the problem plastics most authorities won’t touch – including coffee capsules, pens and plastic gloves. And it recently released a service called Loop, which lets you buy your favourite products online or in some stores (including food, beauty and cleaning products) in special packaging, which it collects, washes and re-uses. Unsure what to bin? See which plastics you can and can’t recycle in the Sustainability Guide.  

Homes of the future

  One of the problem plastics we can’t recycle is straws. In 2018, furniture giant Ikea displayed its 'Last Straw' at the Design Museum, London. (It now uses recyclable paper straws.) But it’s not all publicity stunts. To date, Ikea has spent $1 billion on wind farms, solar panels and sourcing wood from more sustainable locations. The company's on-track to use 100% renewable energy. [9]   And Ikea is helping customers become eco-friendlier with:   §  Induction cooktops 50% faster and more energy efficient than ceramic or radiant heat hobs.   §  Lightweight and space-saving drying racks that reduce electricity bills and wear-and-tear from tumble drying.   §  Energy-saving blinds which insulate and help reduce heating costs by up to 20%. Cushions are covered, too. Ikea has pledged to use only up- and re-cyclable materials in its textiles by 2020. [10] A smart meter helps you track your energy use and find ways to reduce consumption. Discover more ways to go greener at home. Arguing the case for a more sustainable workplace? Corporate Knight’s research found that sustainable companies:   §  Live longer. The average age of companies on the list is 87 years compared with the MSCI All Country World Index (ACW I) average of 63. §  Have happier investors. Between 2005 and 2018, top 100 companies made a net investment return of 127% compared with 118% from ACW I firms. §  Have better pay equality. The top 100 have a lower CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio than average (76:1 vs 140:1). So, profits are spread more equally across the organisation. References [1] ‘2019 Global 100 results’ (2019). Available at: https://www.corporateknights.com/reports/2019-global-100/2019-global-100-results15481152/ (accessed 18 September 2019). [2] Karsten Strauss, ‘The Most Sustainable Companies In 2019’ (2019). Available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2019/01/22/the-most-sustainablecompanies-in-2019/#4f14039a6d7d (accessed 18 September 2019). [3] Ibid. [4] Holly Johnson, ‘Green leaders: The world’s most sustainable companies in 2019’ (2019). Available at: https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/innovationtechnology/worlds-sustainable-companies-2019/ (accessed 18 September 2019). [5] Ian Tucker, ‘The five: ways that fashion threatens the planet’ (2019). Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/jun/23/five-ways-fashion-damages-theplanet (accessed 18 September 2019). [6] Ellen MacArthur, ‘More plastic than fish in the sea by 2050’ (2016). Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/19/more-plastic-than-fish-in-the-seaby-2050-warns-ellen-macarthur (accessed 18 September 2019). [7] Emma Henderson, ‘10 best brands turning recycled plastic bottles into clothes’ (2019). Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/fashion-beauty/bestbrands-turning-recycled-plastic-bottles-into-clothes-a8774446.html (accessed 18 September 2019). [8] Whitney Jefferson, ‘25 Eco-Friendly Brands You Can Feel Good About Spending Your Money W ith’ (2019). Available at: https://www.buzzfeed.com/whitneyjefferson/green-ecofriendly-stores-shops-business (accessed 18 September 2019). [9] Kim Speier, ‘6 Eco-friendly Brands That W ill Inspire You to Go Green’ (2016). Available at: https://www.mainstreethost.com/blog/eco-friendly-brands/ (accessed 18 September 2019). [10] Ellen Scott, ‘Ikea will only use recycled polyester in textile products by 2020’ (2019). Available at: https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/06/ikea-will-use-recycled-polyester-textileproducts-2020-9834231/ (accessed 18 September 2019). [11] Karsten Strauss, ‘The Most Sustainable Companies In 2019’, (2019). Available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2019/01/22/the-most-sustainablecompanies-in-2019/#4f14039a6d7d (accessed 18 September 2019).

Positive Luxury launches webinar series to inspire and promote change

Sustainability platform Positive Luxury has launched a brand-new weekly webinar series designed to educate, innovate and inspire viewers to be a catalyst for change.         Every Thursday at 2pm (UK time), a group of experts will explore various topics from leadership to creativity in The Power Series. The next edition on 9 April, The Power of Narrative, will feature a panel including journalist and author Dana Thomas, deputy editor at the Financial Times How to Spend It Magazine Beatrice Hodgkin, and CEO of Garrard & Co. Limited Joanne Milner.   They will discuss how the stories we tell can still be powerful, even without a product launch or big announcement. The format of the free Power Series is a 30-minute discussion followed by a Q&A from the audience, with all webinars being subsequently uploaded to YouTube. Other upcoming episodes will delve into The Power of Good Leadership (16 April), The Power of Circularity (22 April) and The Power of Wellness (30 April), with panellists including Valerie Keller, CEO of Imagine; Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle; Vanessa Jacobs, CEO of The Restory and mindfulness coach Terrence The Teacher. Positive Luxury, co-founded by Diana Verde Nieto, is the company behind the Butterfly Mark, the symbol awarded to luxury brands to demonstrate a positive social and environmental impact. Christian Dior, GivenchyAnya Hindmarch and Yves Saint Laurent Beauty are some of the luxury brands which have earned the mark.