The Responsible Battery Coalition (RBC), Milwaukee, has entered into a joint research project with Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, to advance battery innovation and ensure that the batteries of tomorrow are designed for maximum recyclability, the coalition reports in a news release.   Argonne National Laboratory, operated by the University of Chicago for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is a multidisciplinary science and engineering research center focused on solving domestic energy and environmental challenges through innovative science and technology solutions. RBC, a leader in innovation and collaboration in responsible battery management, is a coalition of battery manufacturers and recyclers, car and vehicle makers, fleet owners, service providers and aftermarket retailers with a common interest in the responsible management of batteries.   The RBC-funded partnership is the first industry-sponsored project with the Argonne-led ReCell Center, a lithium-ion battery research and development initiative launched by DOE in early 2019 that also includes the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, RBC reports in a news release on the partnership.   “By modeling the full life cycle of a battery in advance, a manufacturer has the opportunity to compare and contrast different battery chemistries ‘in the lab,’ which reduces risks and production costs, and allows for the design of batteries that are environmentally responsible, from initial materials selection through end-of-life,” says RBC's Executive Director Steve Christensen. “Between the globally renowned scientists and top of the line facilities available at Argonne, we are confident that our investment will lead to tangible, real-world solutions benefiting industry and consumers.”   “As batteries play an ever-larger role in meeting society’s daily energy needs, in applications ranging from electric vehicles to powering homes to industrial-scale energy storage, evaluating and understanding life-cycle impacts is increasingly important,” says Jeff Spangenberger, director of the ReCell Center, who leads the research team at Argonne. “Using Argonne’s closed-loop recycling model, known as EverBatt, we will be able to generate critical information to help battery manufacturers design batteries with recycling in mind. Understanding the life cycle of a technology, such as advanced batteries, also supports the development of a circular economy, where all the components of a product are recovered and recycled at end of life.”   Developing a circular economy approach is especially important for advanced battery technologies, which currently rely on metals that are in limited supply or produced in unstable regions. Over the next 20 years, the projected global spent battery volume from electric vehicles alone will increase to more than seven million metric tons annually, with more than two million metric tons produced in the United States alone.   Without a breakthrough design and improved processes for recycling, RBC reports that there will be limited recovery of battery materials through recycling. “By understanding the full life cycle, batteries can be designed to help meet our energy needs, while also maximizing recyclability, which helps conserve limited resources and ensures good product stewardship,” Spangenberger says.   The RBC-Argonne project is expected to be completed by the end of 2019. RBC will work closely with Argonne to provide real-world manufacturing process input and help fill in any data gaps that may exist. Recycling best practices will be made available to battery manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers and recyclers following a real-world manufacturing process analysis.   RBC and its members are committed to the responsible reuse, recycling and management of energy storage or batteries used in the transportation, industrial or stationary sectors, inspiring the next generation of energy storage technologies.   RBC members include Advance Auto Parts, AutoZone, Clarios, Club Car, FedEx, Ford, Honda, LafargeHolcim, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Renova Energy, TerraCycle and Walmart.

Recognizing the significant energy, environmental, and economic benefits of battery recycling, the Responsible Battery Coalition (RBC) has entered into a joint research project with Argonne National Laboratory to further advance battery innovation and ensure that the batteries of tomorrow are designed for maximum recyclability.   Argonne National Laboratory, operated by the University of Chicago for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is a world-class multidisciplinary science and engineering research center focused on solving domestic energy and environmental challenges through innovative science and technology solutions. RBC, a leader in innovation and collaboration in responsible battery management, is a coalition of battery manufacturers and recyclers, car and vehicle makers, fleet owners, service providers, and after-market retailers with a common interest in the responsible management of batteries.   The RBC-funded partnership is the first industry-sponsored project with the Argonne-led ReCell Center, a lithium-ion battery research and development initiative launched by DOE in early 2019 that also includes the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.   “By modeling the full lifecycle of a battery in advance, a manufacturer has the opportunity to compare and contrast different battery chemistries ‘in the lab,’ which reduces risks and production costs, and allows for the design of batteries that are environmentally responsible, from initial materials selection through end-of-life,” said RBC Executive Director Steve Christensen. “Between the globally renowned scientists and top of the line facilities available at Argonne, we are confident that our investment will lead to tangible, real-world solutions benefiting industry and consumers.”   “As batteries play an ever-larger role in meeting society’s daily energy needs, in applications ranging from electric vehicles to powering homes to industrial-scale energy storage, evaluating and understanding lifecycle impacts is increasingly important,” said Jeff Spangenberger, Director of the ReCell Center, who leads the research team at Argonne.   “Using Argonne’s closed-loop recycling model, known as EverBatt, we will be able to generate critical information to help battery manufacturers design batteries with recycling in mind,” Spangenberger said. “Understanding the lifecycle of a technology, such as advanced batteries, also supports the development of a circular economy, where all the components of a product are recovered and recycled at end of life.”   Developing a circular economy approach is especially important for advanced battery technologies, which currently rely on metals that are in limited supply or produced in unstable regions. Over the next 20 years, the projected global spent battery volume from electric vehicles alone will increase to more than seven million metric tons annually, with more than two million metric tons produced in the United States alone.   Absent a breakthrough design and improved processes for recycling, we will continue to see limited recovery of valuable battery materials through recycling. “By understanding the full lifecycle, batteries can be designed to help meet our energy needs, while also maximizing recyclability, which helps conserve limited resources and ensures good product stewardship,” Spangenberger said.   The RBC-Argonne project is expected to be completed by the end of 2019. RBC will work closely with Argonne to provide real-world manufacturing process input and help fill in any data gaps that may exist. Recycling best practices will be made available to battery manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers, and recyclers following a real-world manufacturing process analysis.   RBC and its members are committed to the responsible reuse, recycling, and management of energy storage or batteries used in the transportation, industrial or stationary sectors, inspiring the next generation of energy storage technologies. RBC members include:  

• Advance Auto Parts
• AutoZone
• Clarios
• Club Car
• Fed-Ex
• Ford
• Honda
• Lafarge Holcim
• O’Reilly Auto Parts
• Renova Energy
• Terracycle
• Wal-Mart

 

For more information, visit www.responsiblebatterycoalition.org.

Here, leaders at the forefront of the industry explain why brands are more successful when they improve upon the food system as a whole. Working at the farmers market during college, Patrick Mateer was excited by what he saw: consumers and farmers connecting over eager demand for fresh and local food. But he was concerned, too, about the excess that was coming back from the market unsold with no other clear outlet, and about the problem of aligning the daily output of the farm with the weekly opportunity of the market. Attempting to solve these problems for farmers, and meet consumer demand for local, Mateer created Seal the Seasons, a frozen fruit brand hitting the market with an unprecedented model. “We wanted to replicate that same local feel in the grocery store by introducing lines of locally sourced, locally frozen, and locally sold products,” says the company’s COO Alex Piasecki. That means contracting with local farmers, freezing the goods locally and distributing only to markets in the region—all within about a 300-mile radius. On the shelf, the frozen, bagged fruit Seal the Seasons brings to market, is nothing new. The innovation demonstrated is in the way it serves farmers, communities, consumers and retailers behind the product. And this may be the next wave of innovation in the natural products space. “It’s not always about engineering something new,” Piasecki says, “because we can always engineer something new. It’s all about understanding the story and who you’re supporting with your dollars, more so than what you’re buying.” In many ways, this view is the core and founding ethos of the natural and organic products industry, and the influence the industry exerts throughout the U.S. food system is undeniable. But even as innovation and competition in this now $219 billion industry reaches a fever pitch, many experts witness an ironic stagnation in meaningful change. Does the market need more flavor choices in popcorn or more format choices for matcha? Maybe. But what the world urgently needs is innovations that work to regenerate the systems—ecological, financial, cultural and climatic—so threatened by rampant consumption. “We brought this just amazing innovation to the food industry,” Robyn O’Brien says about the natural products industry, “and we’ve reinvented these toxic products, brought them back into this wholesome, nutritious product.” The author, speaker and vice president of impact investing firm rePlant Capital has been tracking the industry throughout her career. “But then we just got stuck, and we kind of kept trying to reinvent ourselves on that wheel. And it just became a wheel that, instead of moving us forward, started spinning in place.” Too much of the industry today, O’Brien believes, is focused on the end-user product. “But if you think about everything it takes to get there, we need innovation at every level, from distribution to packaging, to transportation.” Seal the Seasons may not hit every level, but it is pioneering something meaningfully different in distribution. The company has now replicated its model in six growing regions across the country, working with nearly 60 farmers and selling frozen fruit in 3,000 grocery stores, proving that a local focus doesn’t inhibit a company’s national growth potential. There are clear ecological benefits to its model (Piasecki says each two pounds of fruit eliminates one pound of greenhouse gases when compared to average frozen food), but the motivation for the brand is really in the people it serves: the farmers struggling in a global market, the retailers attempting to satisfy demand for local, and the consumers seeking that local product—whether to support the farmer they met at the farmers market or just to buy American. It’s only going to become more important, Piasecki predicts, as consumers increasingly care “not only what their food is, but where it’s coming from, what it’s treated with, who’s growing it, are they paid a fair wage?” Quality matters, too, and he believes Seal the Seasons delivers on this. But he distinguishes between brand promise and product promise, which is just a matter of quality standards. “Consumers want that product to be great,” he says about the interaction of those promises. “They want that product to be sold to them at a value they think is fair, and they want that product to be produced in a way that is fair to everyone.”

Taking a step back

TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky distinguishes between two different types of innovation. Even when trying to solve big problems, innovators often employ what he calls “twist innovation,” wherein tweaks are made to existing product concepts to make incremental improvements. What inspires Szaky, is what he calls “step back” innovation. By stepping back to look at the problem being solved, Szaky says, innovations can stimulate monumental leaps into the future. “Uber’s a good example, right? It’s not a better cab or a better price, it’s thinking about the concept of mobility within what resources are on the road today,” he says. “Or taking an arbitrary example of oral hygiene, I take a step back and first understand why it is the problem of oral hygiene even exists, what are the causes?” That, he says, is when innovators start thinking about not just the object, but the way the consumer receives it and interactes with it. Once the source problem is understood, he says, “you may land on an answer that doesn’t look like a toothbrush at all.” That would be a unique market advantage compared to a toothbrush “incrementally twisted” to feature new bristles or a better handle. “And I think that’s where you’re going to get the biggest opportunity to succeed, especially as an entrepreneur or a smaller company.”

Package deal

TerraCycle exists to eliminate the very idea of waste through collection and remanufacture programs. This intersects with the food and household goods industry on packaging. After all, even as islands of single-use plastics continue to pollute the oceans, “packaged” remains the middle name of the CPG world. (Indeed, TerraCycle’s programs include working with P&G to package the world’s top-selling shampoo, Head & Shoulders, in recycled ocean plastic.) For TerraCycle’s most ambitious program to date, the team applied a step back approach to packaging, asking why packaging exists and how those needs can be met without giving in to single-use materials. This step back also included a look back. “In the past, garbage didn’t exist,” Szaky says. “Things were reusable, things were beautiful, things were more durable, things were higher quality.” All major positives, he says, especially when compared to the disposable, low-quality packages we use today that don’t often deliver a particularly good consumer experience beyond the most basic function. The exploration resulted in Loop, a bold plan to create packaging that is both durable and appealing to consumers and can be returned, cleaned and reused—not recycled—at the same value level again and again, and to build it with the biggest players in household goods: P&G, Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Clorox and Unilever. This required “thinking beyond the three-dimensional design of the product and the two-dimensional artwork that adorns it,” Szaky says, and tackling the system behind it. Each of these brands, and others, are participating to create what Szaky calls an ecosystem, and thereby a critical mass of offerings consumers can interact with—something he believes is required to create the momentum necessary for Loop to be successful. Presently the programs are handled by mail, but eventually will involve major retailers selling goods and collecting empties. In other words, not settling for a new twist on packaging has the potential to be, Szaky says, “a monumental reinvention of the very concept of that idea in a very futuristic way.” The program is off to a good start. Since its launch early this year—with a few hundred products in a handful of cities—Project Loop has engaged over 10,000 consumers. “The world is falling deeply out of love with packaging,” Szaky says. “Seeing the negative, losing the delight on the positives, it’s an existential crisis for packaging at the moment, which is the perfect time to open and question all the foundations around it.” Any potential success is a product of timing, Szaky says. “If you go back to the 1970s and 1980s, people were so in love with [packaging], you couldn’t foundationally have those discussions, because people didn’t see the problems. They had the love but not the negative.” Now, he says, everything is open to change. “It’s a massive ask of these brands,” Szaky says, “to ask them to reinvent everything: how they account for physical product itself, how it’s filled, the entire economic backbone to it, so on and so forth. But now with this particular time where we are, those conversations are on the table. Enthusiastically.”

Now’s the time

Innovation, of course, is always a question of timing. Changes in the collective consciousness make way for new opportunities to solve more fundamental problems. Are sufficient numbers of consumers eager enough to embrace the motivation behind the innovation? Are we ready to reassess some of the fundamental assumptions of capitalism? “In a way, it’s the same problem Wall Street has, where it’s just this insatiable drive to consistently be on your earnings model, quarter after quarter after quarter,” says O’Brien. “And when you get into that mindset of demanded, extracted growth, we pay a price.” O’Brien would like the industry to go deeper, like Seal the Seasons and TerraCycle have. “The invitation is to really think of the entire supply chain, the entire sourcing process, and think about ways we can do this in a smarter, more holistic way,” she says. “That’s the higher calling. I mean, that’s really what we’ve been called to do in the industry, is to innovate on the food system, not just the food product.”

It is easier than you think and can be an important part of your office culture. Thinking about going zero waste at work? Whether your office is focused on sustainable design or you just want to reduce your garbage output, going zero-waste can be an important—and beneficial—part of your office culture. Diverting all or most waste into reuse or recycling may sound challenging, of course, but there’s a pretty easy roadmap to getting there. “The word ‘zero’ can be daunting,” says Tiffany Threadgould, global vice president at waste management company TerraCycle, which offers a broad, national recycling program. Begin where you are, she advises, and look for the low-hanging fruit. “Our office is a great example of one that’s evolved over time,” she says. To get started, conduct an audit to determine what waste materials your office is generating most. Is it fabric samples? Junk mail? Chip bags? The audit doesn’t need to be formal, but it should include observing the contents of garbage cans, amount of paper on desks, and single-use items in break rooms. To go zero-waste, it’s crucial to heed the three Rs—reduce, reuse, recycle, and in that order. Once you’ve identified your biggest culprits, figure out how to cut back. For many offices, lunch is a problem area. Replace disposable drink- and flatware with reusables. Terracycle’s Loop program offers snacks, cleaning products, and more in reusable packaging that can be returned and refilled. And increasingly, subscription compost services will pick up your organic matter, too. Pre-cycling—the concept of considering how much waste a product will create before you even buy it—is also essential. How recyclable or reusable is a particular office supply? Do you really need it? “It’s about being cognizant of what you’re buying and what you’re using,” says Threadgould. Where it comes to paper, for example, by some accounts the average American office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper annually. Reduce that by sharing documents digitally. When printing is necessary, a high-efficiency printer will use less ink and toner. Invest in quality, durable goods built to last, consider renting equipment you use only occasionally, and look for manufacturers—like office furnishings leaders Herman Miller and Humanscale—that meet high sustainable standards and offer take-back programs. And for materials that can’t be easily recycled regionally, check out Terracycle’s extensive recycling programs, many of which are free. At LPA, a sustainable architecture firm based in Southern California, the zero-waste program includes eliminating personal garbage cans at desks, which reduced bins in their 280-person office from 300 to 24. The goal was twofold: minimizing waste by changing behavior, but also increasing collaboration by getting workers up from their desks. The move saves on maintenance costs, too. The program is also a talking point with clients, many of whom feel inspired to go zero-waste, too. “It’s a great PR opportunity for us,” says Rick D’Amato, the design director and principal who steered the effort. “But the minute you start talking about the bottom line, that really gets their attention.” For any zero-waste program to succeed, educating employees is critical, and chances are good you’ll meet a little resistance. It helps to clearly spell out benefits to staff, says D’Amato, who admits he’s had to nudge a few co-workers into compliance. “Stick to your guns, though,” he says. “If everyone is on board, change happens much more quickly.”

Graças à democratização dos meios digitais, a internet deixou de ser uma ferramenta voltada para o público mais jovem e ganhou a confiança da maioria. Os avanços tecnológicos e a mudança de perfil e comportamento dos consumidores trouxeram novas perspectivas a 5àsec, rede de lavanderias originária da França, que investe no conceito de omnichannel ou multicanal, como é conhecido aqui no Brasil. Estamos falando sobre a integração dos meios de venda, neste caso entre as 448 lojas físicas e o canal de e-commerce. Além de proporcionar benefícios e praticidade aos consumidores, a maior rede de lavanderias do mundo também busca aumentar as vendas nos pontos de operação. Sobre este novo momento da empresa, conversei com o diretor de Marketing da 5àsec, Rafael Palucci: “Temos o objetivo de transformar cada vez mais o e-commerce em uma frente de destaque nos nossos resultados”.

Volunteers from the group Sherbrooke en transition (SET) headed to the CHUS Fleurimont Monday as part of the initiative, Operation Zero Butts. The goal of the operation was threefold: to make smokers aware of the importance of not tossing their cigarette butts, to divert hundreds of cigarette butts from the environment, and to recover them and send them to Toronto-based company Terracycle where the ash and tobacco are composted, and remaining material is melted into hard plastic and remolded into industrial products. “Studies have shown that a single cigarette butt can contaminate 500 litres of water. In the snow, we talk about one cubic metre of contamination. All the toxic agents released end up in our soils and waterways,” explained Karyne Blanchette, SET member and co-organizer of the ‘Operation Zero Butts’ event. 

Gerber, the early childhood nutrition leader, has partnered with international recycling company TerraCycle to help give hard-to-recycle baby food packaging a new life. This partnership is rooted in Gerber and TerraCycle's shared values around eliminating waste and supports the recovery of hard-to-recycle baby food packaging on a national scale.