As a professional meeting planner and principal on event logistics for the food industry association, I increasingly challenge our team to make sustainability a goal by either donating uneaten food or partnering with facilities to divert waste from landfill. This year, at the 2020 Midwinter Executive Conference, we considered a pilot with our partner Unilever, which will now serve as a case study for 2020 and beyond.  

The Idea

  Did you know that Hellmann’s bottles are now made from 100% recycled plastic? In fact, across their portfolio, 50% of Unilever’s plastic packaging in North America comes from recycled content. Given their passion for sustainability, Unilever was a natural partner with FMI to deliver  a  zero waste Executive Awards Luncheon for the FMI Board of Directors and guests. Initially we thought to plan a meal with no disposable accessories (such as coffee stirrers and signage), but quickly we aimed higher on a collaborative effort that spanned multiple partners.  

The Partners

  It started with buy-in from our conference services team at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge, led by Chef Bryan and his talented team in the kitchen. Then Waste Management Sustainability Services provided us with Comprehensive Zero Waste Program Management that helped guide staff to evaluate the potential for compostable items. Recycled City LLC served as our local Arizona organic composter and TerraCycle’s provided zero-waste event boxes for recycling non-compostable items.  

Behind the Scenes

  Two days prior to the luncheon, the Waste Management team arrived onsite to establish a training system with the chefs, kitchen and banquet staff. All the food prep for the lunch would be monitored and trimmings would be sorted into organic collection bins rather than jettisoned into the trash.   Staff sorted packaging waste into recycling bins, including a bag which was shipped to TerraCycle for hard to recycle materials. After the lunch, plate waste was added to the bins for compost and our partner at Recycled City compost picked it up from the loading dock after the event.  

Lessons Learned

  The results were a giant success! We diverted hundreds of pounds of material by way of recycling, composting, reuse and donation with 0.0 lbs. going to landfill.   We learned a great lesson on how sustainability transcends traditional roles and functions. Many retailers, hotels and restaurants have relationships with food banks or food rescue organizations to assist them with food donations for excess food but going for zero-waste to landfill is a labor of love. I’m especially excited for the spring when I can actually “plant” my event program that was made from wildflower seeds.   Changing the way we approach the well-oiled machines of our businesses with an eye for material recovery and the elimination of waste-to-landfill requires commitment to go the extra mile. Estimating the right amount of food (from the ingredients to the plate) in a hotel environment with multiple concurrent meal events is the Mount Everest of the food-waste-reduction journey. All of us in the food industry have a role to play on this climb, and we’re here to share the stories of the pioneering scouts who are leading the way.   Sustainability, transparency and closing the loop on plastics weren’t just educational topics covered on stage at Midwinter – you could see our commitment during committee meetings, education sessions and our Tech Talks. For instance, in order to walk the talk of sustainability, we worked with Dasani and offered a water dispenser with still or sparkling options in our Refresh lounge.   Our organization looks forward to sharing more best practices and collaboration with partners in the near future. Namely, we’ll be releasing a lesson learned document with our association partners at the Food Waste Reduction Alliance.

As a professional meeting planner and principal on event logistics for the food industry association, I increasingly challenge our team to make sustainability a goal by either donating uneaten food or partnering with facilities to divert waste from landfill. This year, at the 2020 Midwinter Executive Conference, we considered a pilot with our partner Unilever, which will now serve as a case study for 2020 and beyond.  

The Idea

  Did you know that Hellmann’s bottles are now made from 100% recycled plastic? In fact, across their portfolio, 50% of Unilever’s plastic packaging in North America comes from recycled content. Given their passion for sustainability, Unilever was a natural partner with FMI to deliver  a  zero waste Executive Awards Luncheon for the FMI Board of Directors and guests. Initially we thought to plan a meal with no disposable accessories (such as coffee stirrers and signage), but quickly we aimed higher on a collaborative effort that spanned multiple partners.  

The Partners

  It started with buy-in from our conference services team at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge, led by Chef Bryan and his talented team in the kitchen. Then Waste Management Sustainability Services provided us with Comprehensive Zero Waste Program Management that helped guide staff to evaluate the potential for compostable items. Recycled City LLC served as our local Arizona organic composter and TerraCycle’s provided zero-waste event boxes for recycling non-compostable items.  

Behind the Scenes

  Two days prior to the luncheon, the Waste Management team arrived onsite to establish a training system with the chefs, kitchen and banquet staff. All the food prep for the lunch would be monitored and trimmings would be sorted into organic collection bins rather than jettisoned into the trash.   Staff sorted packaging waste into recycling bins, including a bag which was shipped to TerraCycle for hard to recycle materials. After the lunch, plate waste was added to the bins for compost and our partner at Recycled City compost picked it up from the loading dock after the event.  

Lessons Learned

  The results were a giant success! We diverted hundreds of pounds of material by way of recycling, composting, reuse and donation with 0.0 lbs. going to landfill.   We learned a great lesson on how sustainability transcends traditional roles and functions. Many retailers, hotels and restaurants have relationships with food banks or food rescue organizations to assist them with food donations for excess food but going for zero-waste to landfill is a labor of love. I’m especially excited for the spring when I can actually “plant” my event program that was made from wildflower seeds.   Changing the way we approach the well-oiled machines of our businesses with an eye for material recovery and the elimination of waste-to-landfill requires commitment to go the extra mile. Estimating the right amount of food (from the ingredients to the plate) in a hotel environment with multiple concurrent meal events is the Mount Everest of the food-waste-reduction journey. All of us in the food industry have a role to play on this climb, and we’re here to share the stories of the pioneering scouts who are leading the way.   Sustainability, transparency and closing the loop on plastics weren’t just educational topics covered on stage at Midwinter – you could see our commitment during committee meetings, education sessions and our Tech Talks. For instance, in order to walk the talk of sustainability, we worked with Dasani and offered a water dispenser with still or sparkling options in our Refresh lounge.   Our organization looks forward to sharing more best practices and collaboration with partners in the near future. Namely, we’ll be releasing a lesson learned document with our association partners at the Food Waste Reduction Alliance.

En 2020, Herbal Essences développe la transparence de ses ingrédients et une initiative de recyclage de ses contenants avec une nouvelle gamme de soins capillaires. La marque se soucie aussi de l'environnement. Cette année, elle proposera à nouveau trois flacons en édition limitée réalisés en partenariat avec le géant de la gestion des déchets TerraCycle. Ces nouveaux contenants comprennent 25% de déchets plastiques récupérés dans les océans et les rivières. En revanche, la vente de ces nouveaux contenants semble réservée au marché nord-américain.

Tom Szaky fell in love with tackling big problems while he was still in college: He founded his first company as a freshman at Princeton. Then he dropped out his sophomore year. "The irony in this country is if you leave one of those places, your credibility actually goes up," says the 38-year-old CEO of TerraCycle, who immigrated to Canada and then the U.S. in the 1980s. "I was born in communism in Budapest, and we left effectively as political refugees," he says. "I went from effectively communism to the heartland of capitalism and fell in love with entrepreneurship for all the obvious reasons." Originally created to recycle food waste from university dining halls into fertilizer, TerraCycle, based in Trenton, N.J., has grown into a company worth more than $20 million. In 2019, TerraCycle introduced Loop, a platform that harkens back to the simple days of the milkman. Loop collects and refills reusable containers for everyday household products — from Hellman's mayo to Tropicana orange juice and Tide detergent, among other big-name brands. Even though consumers are buying just the contents, the products cost about the same as those sold in single-use containers, in part to offset the cost of the development and manufacturing of the more durable containers, as well as cleaning and refilling them. Szaky's ascent from refugee to sustainability tech leader has not been without some inevitable stumbles along the way, but he notes how crucial that is to the process of entrepreneurship. "If you're a young entrepreneur, it's a really exciting path you may embark on. It's gonna be a ridiculous amount of work," he notes. "Chances are you will fail multiple times, so be prepared for that. Now the payoff is amazing. You get to really manifest your dream."  

Bausch + Lomb, the global eye health company of Bausch Health Companies Inc., is partnering with recycler TerraCycle to launch a recycling program for contact lenses in Canada.   Called the Bausch + Lomb Every Contact Counts recycling program – and available in select eye care offices across Canada – the joint initiative allows Canadians who wear contact lenses to recycle their traditionally non-recyclable disposable contact lenses and blister pack packaging.   “More than 290 million contact lenses end up in Canadian landfills or waterways yearly…and as more consumers switch to wearing daily disposable lenses, this number will increase significantly,” said Matt Nowak, director of sales and marketing, Bausch + Lomb Canada. “With the launch of the Bausch + Lomb Every Contact Counts recycling program, they will finally be able to divert this waste away from landfills, lakes, rivers and oceans.   According to Bausch + Lomb, contact lenses and blister packs are considered non-recyclable through municipal facilities because they’re too small to be captured by standard sorting machinery. Through the Bausch + Lomb Every Contact Counts recycling program, consumers can search for their nearest participating eye care professional on the interactive map found at www.terracycle.com/en-CA/brigades/bausch-and-lomb-en-cato recycle all brands of disposable contact lenses and blister pack packaging through that location.   After being collected at an Every Contact Counts recycling location, the contact lenses and blister packs are shipped to a TerraCycle recycling facility, where they’re separated and cleaned. The metal layers of the blister packs are recycled separately, while the contact lenses and plastic blister pack components are melted into plastic, which can be remolded to create new products.   “Contact lenses are one of the forgotten waste streams that are often overlooked due to their size and how commonplace they are in today’s society,” said TerraCycle founder and CEO Tom Szaky. “By creating this recycling initiative, our aim is to provide an opportunity where whole communities are able to collect waste alongside a national network of public drop-off locations, all with the unified goal to increase the number of recycled contact lenses and their associated packaging, thereby reducing their overall impact on the environment.”   In addition to Canada, Bausch + Lomb also has similar contact lens recycling programs in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Australia.   TerraCycle is headquartered in Trenton, N.J.

A local business teamed up with global waste management company TerraCycle to help tackle the problem of plastic pollution in the beauty industry.   About 8 million tons of plastics enter oceans and marine environments annually — which, according to TerraCycle, is the same as dumping a garbage truck full of plastics into the ocean every minute of every day for a year.   In the beauty industry specifically, around 120 billion units of packaging are made each year, according to TerraCycle.   Plastic pollution has also been shown to have an impact on climate change, due to its contribution to global greenhouse gases.   Across the United States, small businesses are stepping up to combat the issue by better handling their waste.   Salacia Salts, a skin care and home fragrance shop in Savannah, is one of those small businesses.   They initially reached out to TerraCycle after discovering a lack of options in Savannah for recycling beauty products, especially the plastic kind, via curbside recycling or a municipal recycling program.         “I learned about TerraCycle when I was looking at different solutions on how to recycle different types of plastic packaging that was no longer recyclable in Savannah, and I found them as a major organization across the globe that was recycling really hard and difficult things, like cosmetic packages and compacts,” Salacia Salts founder Cari Phelps told WSAV.com Now.   TerraCycle offers several different types of Zero Waste Boxes to help with recycling difficult items, Phelps added.   The box Salacia Salts selected to add to their own store was geared the proper disposal of beauty product packaging.   Items like shampoo bottles, lip balm tubes, concealer sticks and eye shadow cases can be dropped inside.   “If you think about a cosmetic compact, there’s plastic, there’s glass, there’s metal, there’s tin, there’s all these different components, and it’s really hard to recycle in a local facility,” Phelps said.   “This box allows people to drop in a variety of different types of waste, and then they recycle it and turn it into really cool things, like toys or playground equipment,” she added.   The Zero Waste Box program helps another issue facing the beauty industry: “wishful recycling,”or “wish-cycling” for short.   “This phenomenon takes place whenever a well-meaning consumer tosses an item that they are unsure can be recycled—like an empty mascara container—into their curbside recycling bin in the hopes that it will be processed like any typical recyclable,” TerraCycle publicist Shaye DiPasquale told WSAV.com Now.   “In reality, this habit can be extremely counter-intuitive, since it places unnecessary stress on local municipal recycling facilities (MRFs),” DiPasquale said.   TerraCycle’s Zero Waste Box program offers people an eco-friendly way to discard their beauty waste.   Phelps says they first received their box over the holidays, and so far, they’ve gotten a positive response from customers who have already started to bring in their old beauty products.   “A lot of people say they want to come in because they’ve got things to drop off,” Phelps said.   “And that’s part of it, too, just educating people that there is a place,” she said.   Once the box is filled, Salacia Salts then ships it back to TerraCycle with a prepaid shipping label, and from there, the beauty waste gets properly handled.   With millions of pounds of plastic reportedly going into the oceans every day, Phelps says everyone can make a difference if they reduce, reuse or recycle.   “I think it’s something important for our community,” she said.   “We live on the coast, we love our beautiful marshes and beaches and waterways, and I think if you feel like you can do something really small, even if it’s recycling something once a week or once a month, you feel like you’re doing something for your own community,” she said.

January 30, 2020 - The beauty industry has a plastic packaging problem. Zero Waste Week reports the global industry creates 120 billion units of packaging every year, most of which isn’t conventionally recyclable. Salacia Salts, a high quality collection of skin care and home fragrance products made with natural ingredients, has teamed up with TerraCycle to combat the beauty industry’s massive output of plastic products and packaging waste through the Zero Waste Box program.   “We care deeply about this beautiful planet that we get to call home,” says Salacia Salts CEO, Cari Clark Phelps. “We want to do what we can to restore our land.”   By placing the Beauty Products & Packaging Zero Waste Box inside their studio, Salacia Salts helps customers and Chatham County community members conveniently recycle their beauty empties and reduce their environmental impact. The zero-waste initiative aligns with the brand’s focus on sustainability and the conservation of Earth’s natural resources.   Salacia Salts uses post-consumer recycled packaging whenever possible with the goal of eliminating plastic from the product line. The first product developed for the company was a salt soak packaged in a reclaimed, “upcycled” wine bottle.   Like most plastic packaging, this conventionally unrecyclable beauty waste would have otherwise been landfilled, incinerated, or may have even contributed to the pollution of marine habitats. The collected beauty and skin care packaging will now be sorted, shredded and recycled into a variety of new products such as park benches, bike racks, shipping pallets and recycling bins.   TerraCycle, the world’s leader in the collection and repurposing of complex waste streams, created the Zero Waste Box program to provide solutions for difficult-to-recycle waste that cannot be recycled through TerraCycle’s brand-sponsored, national recycling programs or via standard municipal recycling.  Salacia Salts hopes to become a well-known spot for locals to recycle empty beauty products in an appropriate manner.   “The foundation of the company was built on my love and passion for sustainability,” says Phelps. “By recycling products appropriately, we are helping to alleviate waste in our water systems which leads to an overall happy and healthier lifestyle.”   More information regarding Salacia Salts can be found by visiting their website, https://salaciasalts.com/. All collected materials from the Zero Waste Box program are sent to TerraCycle for recycling, where they undergo a series of treatments before getting turned into new items. For more information on TerraCycle, please visit www.TerraCycle.com.   TerraCycle offers Zero Waste Boxes for nearly every category of waste. By purchasing Zero Waste Boxes, companies and consumers save trash from landfills and help reach TerraCycle’s goal of creating a waste-free world.

The Detox Market isn’t just talking about sustainability. It’s taking action to become more sustainable as a business and help protect the environment beyond its doors.

When Romain Gaillard, founder and CEO of the retailer, saw a blue-to-red visualization created by British scientist Ed Hawkins called Warming Stripes showing yearly increases in average global temperatures from 1850 to 2018 on the cover of The Economist in September, the dire threat of climate change crystallized in his mind. “I was born in 1980, and that’s where it starts to become pinkish and orange. I have two kids. They are 4 and 2. It’s purple red and very dark red in 2015 and 2017, the years they were born. Those are the warmest years ever recorded,” he says. “We all know about global warming, but this was really a big aha moment for me. From then on, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what we could do.”   The Detox Market landed on a comprehensive effort it’s dubbed Sustainability Starts Now kicking off today that encompasses an initiative named Earth CPR to become carbon negative by planting 500,000 trees this year and 2.5 million by 2025 through nonprofit Eden Reforestation Projects, turning its seven stores into hubs for beauty product recycling in partnership with TerraCycle, evaluating operations to diminish its environmental footprint, assembling a selection of eco-friendly products, and putting up posters in lower Manhattan with the Warming Stripes visualization as well as installations in its locations to spur other people to have Gaillard’s aha moment.   “One thing we’ve been great at as a company is to make people aware of toxicity in personal care. Our next mission is to encourage people to switch to sustainable products. It’s clean beauty times 10,” says Gaillard. “When you have this aha moment, there’s no way back from it. I’m not saying that you will suddenly become like Greta Thunberg and travel by bike everywhere, but, with everything you do, you start to pay attention, and it can have a great impact.”       The Detox Market, which plans to open two locations this year, is certainly paying attention to the materials it relies on in an attempt to eliminate excess. For example, it’s swapped out disposable makeup applicators in its stores to bamboo versions, and nixed an insert in the packaging of its body care line Detox Mode to reduce potential waste. To incentivize beauty product recycling, The Detox Market is doling out loyalty points to customers who recycle in its shops. The products they recycle don’t have to be from brands available at The Detox Market. Credo has a similar recycling program.   Inside stores, The Detox Market is spotlighting an array of eco-oriented products from brands including OrganiCup, Meow Meow Tweet, David’s Natural Toothpaste, Erbaviva, Olas Oral Care, Stasher and Jungle Straws. It’s placing a refill station with Detox Mode hemp soap in stores, and selling a sustainability set for $30 featuring Stasher, Jungle Straws and Baggu. Gaillard says, “We curated beauty products along with products that aren’t beauty-related, but are products you use in your daily routine that we felt are great.” The Detox Market isn’t the first retailer to edit a collection of green products. Net-a-Porter’s Net Sustain assortment of 27 beauty and 45 fashion brands focuses on sustainable merchandise, and Farfetch has launched a sustainable category.       Gaillard estimates The Detox Market will spend roughly 2% of its revenues this year on activities to become carbon negative and closer to 10% on advertising to promote Sustainability Starts Now. “If just a few big companies follow what we are doing, it could make a very interesting change,” says Gaillard. “If we are planting half a million trees, that’s as if Ulta was planting half a billion trees, and Amazon was planting 10 billion trees. For us, it’s a very aggressive number.”   Asked about expected sales results from the Sustainability Starts Now effort, Gaillard responds, “I don’t know what we are going to see. I think we will see a lot of visibility. By visibility, it’s not necessarily for Detox Market, but about this problem to bring that to the center of the discussion. One thing we are good at is being loud about a specific problem. We were very loud about toxicity in personal care—and we still are—but my goal is to make as much noise as we possibly can now about sustainability.”       In their purchasing behavior, Gaillard doesn’t believe customers currently prioritize the eco-friendliness of products. However, he projects they will begin to prioritize it in the near future. “If you look at the Stripes and you fast forward five to 10 years, it’s clear it’s going to be beyond a priority,” he says. “There will be a time when consumers ask for complete transparency on the impact of companies on their communities and on the planet.”   To improve transparency at The Detox Market, the retailer is developing sustainability guidelines for the brands it stocks. “It’s not a black or white type of situation, that’s why it is complex. It would be hard to say, ‘No more plastic,’ and tell all the brands, ‘You have 60 days to remove plastic.’ We are working on what to do. My idea is to really encourage brands to join our movement and to find better solutions,” says Gaillard. “Packaging for small brands is complicated because the MOQs [minimum order requirements] are high. It can be that some small brands work together or work with us to get to higher MOQs, and we together convince packaging companies to work on sustainable solutions.”

TORONTO and TRENTON, N.J. – Bausch + Lomb has partnered with TerraCycle to launch contact lens recycling in Canada.   Through the joint initiative, Canadians who wear contact lenses now have a way to recycle their traditionally non-recyclable disposable contact lenses and blister pack packaging.   Contact lenses and blister packs are considered non-recyclable through municipal facilities because they are too small to be captured by standard sorting machinery. Through the Bausch + Lomb Every Contact Counts recycling program, consumers can search for their nearest participating eye care professional on the interactive map found here to recycle all brands of disposable contact lenses and blister pack packaging through that location.   After being collected at an Every Contact Counts recycling location, the contact lenses and blister packs are shipped to a TerraCycle recycling facility where they are separated and cleaned. The metal layers of the blister packs are recycled separately, while the contact lenses and plastic blister pack components are melted into plastic, which can be remoulded to create new products.   “More than 290 million contact lenses end up in Canadian landfills or waterways yearly,” said Matt Nowak, director, sales and marketing, Bausch + Lomb Canada.   “As more consumers switch to wearing daily disposable lenses, this number will increase significantly. Our customers and their patients are concerned about the environmental impact of the packaging going to landfills, and they want to act to protect the environment.”   “Contact lenses are one of the forgotten waste streams that are often overlooked due to their size and how commonplace they are in today’s society,” said Tom Szaky, founder and CEO, TerraCycle.   “Initiatives like the Bausch + Lomb Every Contact Counts recycling program allow eye care professionals and patients to work within their communities and take an active role in preserving the environment, beyond what their local recycling programs are able to provide. By creating this recycling initiative, our aim is to provide an opportunity where whole communities are able to collect waste alongside a national network of public drop-off locations, all with the unified goal to increase the number of recycled contact lenses and their associated packaging, thereby reducing their overall impact on the environment.”   In addition to Canada, Bausch + Lomb also has similar contact lens recycling programs in The Netherlands, the United States and Australia.

No ano passado apresentamos para vocês um projeto muito bacana que nasceu em nossa cidade. Um trabalho que tem como objetivo recolher materiais para reciclagem e ainda usar isso para gerar retorno financeiro para instituições beneficentes. E como quase tudo nesse mundo pode ser reciclado, o assunto também sofreu um “refresh” e atualizamos algumas informações para vocês.  A Ana e a Marina fizeram questão de trazer tudinho para nós. Acompanhe!!!!!