TERRACYCLE NEWS
ELIMINATING THE IDEA OF WASTE®
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Escolas da região da Penha são reconhecidas pela Câmara Municipal por ações de responsabilidade social
Instituições públicas e privadas receberam o título de "Escolas do Bem" pela contribuição para o alcance dos Objetivos de Desenvolvimento da ONU nas questões relacionadas à Primeira Infância.
Save the river, one butt at a time
50 million liters of water
"We know that a single cigarette butt pollutes up to 500 liters of water, so with our 100,000 butts, we want to protect 50 million liters of water in the river," says the organization's director, Claudette The station. All cigarette butts will then be donated to Toronto-based TerraCycle, which specializes in recycling, to make lawn chairs, says Légaré. The twenty or so organizers will also give smokers pocket ashtrays to encourage them to "collaborate in the preservation of the environment". According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, cigarette butts are at the top of the blacklist of the biggest polluters found near Canadian shores. Last year, a record number of cigarette butts, 560,432, were collected across Canada's shores.Five Zero-Wasters Share Their Top Tips for Going Zero Waste
These zero-wasters have ditched the trash can almost entirely. Pick and choose from their tips for going zero waste to shrink your own waste (plus any eco-guilt).
These days, knowing how to recycle isn’t enough. Zero waste is the sustainability method of the moment, and it’s not just a passing fad: Living with less is one way of preserving the environment and already-dwindling resources, and going zero waste is actually almost (dare we say it) easy.
There’s a lot of garbage out there. The United States sent 137.7 million tons of trash to landfills in 2015, according to the Environmental Protection Agency—and a recent report found we’re on track to run out of space in landfills within the next two decades. China is importing fewer of the recyclable plastics we’ve been sending there. And far too many items don’t make it to landfills or recycling plants in the first place: Think of all the litter along our roads and the sad stories about sea turtles with straws in their nostrils and whales with bags in their bellies.
In some ways, this problem is bigger than any one person. To make a real dent, we’d need our legislators to support more plastic bans, regulate wasteful industries, and be more aggressive about protecting the planet beyond the waste problem. Still, our actions do make a difference. The more consumers and voters start caring about waste reduction in their day-to-day lives, experts say, the more businesses and governments will make it a priority.
“The best thing we can do, environmentally speaking, is not produce waste in the first place,” says Jenna Jambeck, PhD, professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia and a National Geographic fellow specializing in solid waste. “I’ve been totally convinced by my research that, taken collectively, small choices make a difference. These choices, even if we aren’t perfect, add up to significant positive impacts over time.”
These choices include everything from utilizing zero waste disposal options to adopting a zero waste lifestyle—making decisions large and small that move the needle in the right direction, even a little. You’ll see the impact in your life too: less clutter, money saved, new peace of mind. You don’t have to take every step experts suggest here—do what works for you, and you just might find life is better with less garbage in it.
Start with these tips for going zero waste, straight from practiced zero-wasters—including the mind behind Zero Waste Home—and you’ll be off to a great start. You may even find yourself surprised by how easy using less can be.
and buynothingproject.org/find-a-group , or write a post on Nextdoor. You can also rent tools from many hardware stores and Home Depot locations.
Use what you already have.
“I don’t encourage anyone to go out and buy things, like a pretty stainless-steel water bottle or organic-cotton shopping bag, in order to go zero-waste,” says Tippi Thole, founder of the zero-waste website Tiny Trash Can. “We should be buying less, not more! If I have a plastic item in good working condition, I use it as long as I can.” Manufacturing reusable tote bags and water bottles tends to use a lot more resources and energy than manufacturing the disposable versions, so don’t churn through them.Refuse first.
People are constantly trying to give you single-use stuff: a flyer on the street, a sample in the store, a bag of stickers and knickknacks at a birthday party. “No matter how much you reduce, reuse, and recycle, you’re still the target of many items,” says Bea Johnson, author of Zero Waste Home ($11; amazon.com), who says her family of four creates only a pint of garbage per year. “Say no on the spot to stop it from becoming your trash problem down the line.”Rearrange the trash.
Moving the kitchen trash can somewhere inconvenient, like the garage, forces everyone in the house to consider whether items could be composted or recycled instead. “Just by rearranging the bins and shocking everyone out of the habit of tossing something into the can, we halved the amount of garbage we produced,” says Larkin Gayl, who shares zero-waste tips on Instagram at @unfetteredhome.Pack reusable necessities.
Think about the single-use items you pick up most in the outside world (coffee cups? utensils? to-go boxes? straws?) and stash a reusable version in your bag or car so you always have it with you. “We even carry a growler in our car for beer emergencies!” says zero-waster Sarah Schade, an art and design student in Traverse City, Michigan. When you come home, remember to wash your reusables and put them back so they’re ready to go the next day.Borrow before buying.
You borrow books—why not borrow a weed whacker, stand mixer, or circle saw too? Borrowing things like tools and kitchen gadgets saves you from shelling out for something you’ll only use a few times a year. Plus, Lepeltier adds, “connecting with neighbors when you borrow something makes in-life connections and creates community.” Searchmyturn.comDo a trash audit.
It might sound icky, but poke through your garbage can to find your household’s worst waste offenders. (Or just make a note—and ask those you live with to do the same—of what you toss in a typical week.) “Pick the thing that shows up most in the garbage and find a swap for it,” says Gayl. For example, she noticed a ton of granola bar wrappers in her trash and started making batches of grab-and-go snacks instead.Don’t feel like you have to make everything yourself.
“I’ve experimented with sourdough and making kombucha, but I’m not running a Whole Foods at my home,” says Chloé Lepeltier, who blogs about her low-impact lifestyle on the site Conscious By Chloé. The idea is to find habits you can sustain, so only DIY if you enjoy it.Green your period.
If you’re up for it, Schade endorses switching to a reusable menstrual cup. Made out of silicone, it typically lasts a year, replacing the 240 or so tampons you might use during that time. (It also keeps packaging, applicators, and sometimes agrochemical-intensive cotton out of the trash.) Or consider period underwear like the ones from Thinx or Dear Kate—they may not eliminate your need for tampons entirely, but you’ll cut back in a big way.Raise tiny tree huggers.
“Kids are often the best place to start in your waste-reduction journey because they tend to be more sensitive to the problem and don’t have the bad habits we adults do,” says Thole. Ask children to help cook (and therefore eat less food packaged in plastic); fill up at the bulk bins together; and talk about the materials that go into making a plastic toy—and the landfill the toy will end up in. But be warned: Soon enough, they may call out your eco-blunders.Invest in a TerraCycle bin.
The company TerraCycle accepts many items that can’t always be recycled locally, like coffee capsules, toothpaste tubes, and potato chip bags. It partners with brands—including Arm & Hammer, Brita, Garnier, Honest Kids, even Solo cups—to offer free recycling of their products. Or you can buy a bin or pouch for a specific need. It’s pricey (pouches cost $42 and up), but that’s a deterrent to creating trash, says Gayl: “The cost to recycle motivates me to think before I purchase.”Economia Circular
Extrair, usar e descartar. Por décadas, esta tem sido a abordagem padrão de produção e consumo. As empresas fazem a extração de matérias-primas e as transformam em produtos, que são comprados pelos consumidores, que por sua vez os descartam, gerando desperdício. Mas, à medida que os avisos sobre a mudança climática e a degradação ambiental se tornam cada vez mais frequentes, as pessoas estão começando a desafiar a sustentabilidade desse modelo. Muitos líderes empresariais e governos – incluindo a China, o Japão e o Reino Unido – argumentam que devemos abandonar esse sistema linear em favor de uma chamada economia circular de fazer, usar, reutilizar e reutilizar de novo e de novo.
‘Plastic recycling is a myth': what really happens to your rubbish?
TerraCycle
coca cola
Nestle
Unilever
Include UK
Include USA
Procter & Gamble
Walgreens
Tesco
Head & Shoulders bottle
Loop
Tropicana
Häagen-Dazs
Pantene
Plastic waste ready for inspection before being sent to Malaysia; the UK produces more refuse than it can process at home – about 1.1kg per person per day. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
We want our waste hidden. Green Recycling is tucked away at the end of an industrial estate, surrounded by sound-deflecting metal boards. Outside, a machine called an Air Spectrum masks the acrid odour with the smell of cotton bedsheets. But, all of a sudden, the industry is under intense scrutiny. In the UK, recycling rates have stagnated in recent years, while National Sword and funding cuts have led to more waste being burned in incinerators and energy-from-waste plants. (Incineration, while often criticised for being polluting and an inefficient source of energy, is today preferred to landfill, which emits methane and can leach toxic chemicals.) Westminster council sent 82% of all household waste – including that put in recycling bins – for incineration in 2017/18. Some councils have debated giving up recycling altogether. And yet the UK is a successful recycling nation: 45.7% of all household waste is classed as recycled (although that number indicates only that it is sent for recycling, not where it ends up.) In the US, that figure is 25.8%.
One of the UK’s largest waste companies, attempted to ship used nappies abroad in consignments marked as waste paper
If you look at plastics, the picture is even bleaker. Of the 8.3bn tonnes of virgin plastic produced worldwide, only 9% has been recycled, according to a 2017 Science Advances paper entitled Production, Use And Fate Of All Plastics Ever Made. “I think the best global estimate is maybe we’re at 20% [per year] globally right now,” says Roland Geyer, its lead author, a professor of industrial ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Academics and NGOs doubt those numbers, due to the uncertain fate of our waste exports. In June, one of the UK’s largest waste companies, Biffa, was found guilty of attempting to ship used nappies, sanitary towels and clothing abroad in consignments marked as waste paper. “I think there’s a lot of creative accounting going on to push the numbers up,” Geyer says.
“It’s really a complete myth when people say that we’re recycling our plastics,” says Jim Puckett, the executive director of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network, which campaigns against the illegal waste trade. “It all sounded good. ‘It’s going to be recycled in China!’ I hate to break it to everyone, but these places are routinely dumping massive amounts of [that] plastic and burning it on open fires.”
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Recycling is as old as thrift. The Japanese were recycling paper in the 11th century; medieval blacksmiths made armour from scrap metal. During the second world war, scrap metal was made into tanks and women’s nylons into parachutes. “The trouble started when, in the late 70s, we began trying to recycle household waste,” says Geyer. This was contaminated with all sorts of undesirables: non-recyclable materials, food waste, oils and liquids that rot and spoil the bales.
At the same time, the packaging industry flooded our homes with cheap plastic: tubs, films, bottles, individually shrink-wrapped vegetables. Plastic is where recycling gets most controversial. Recycling aluminium, say, is straightforward, profitable and environmentally sound: making a can from recycled aluminium reduces its carbon footprint by up to 95%. But with plastic, it is not that simple. While virtually all plastics can be recycled, many aren’t because the process is expensive, complicated and the resulting product is of lower quality than what you put in. The carbon-reduction benefits are also less clear. “You ship it around, then you have to wash it, then you have to chop it up, then you have to re-melt it, so the collection and recycling itself has its own environmental impact,” says Geyer.
A materials recovery facility in Milton Keynes where waste is sorted. In the UK, there are 28 different recycling labels that can appear on packaging. Photograph: Alamy
Household recycling requires sorting at a vast scale. This is why most developed countries have colour-coded bins: to keep the end product as pure as possible. In the UK, Recycle Now lists 28 different recycling labels that can appear on packaging. There is the mobius loop (three twisted arrows), which indicates a product can technically be recycled; sometimes that symbol contains a number between one and seven, indicating the plastic resin from which the object is made. There is the green dot (two green arrows embracing), which indicates that the producer has contributed to a European recycling scheme. There are labels that say “Widely Recycled” (acceptable by 75% of local councils) and “Check Local Recycling” (between 20% and 75% of councils).
Since National Sword, sorting has become even more crucial, as overseas markets demand higher-quality material. “They don’t want to be the world’s dumping ground, quite rightly,” Smith says, as we walk along the Green Recycling line. About halfway, four women in hi-vis and caps pull out large chunks of cardboard and plastic films, which machines struggle with. There is a low rumble in the air and a thick layer of dust on the gangway. Green Recycling is a commercial MRF: it takes waste from schools, colleges and local businesses. That means lower volume, but better margins, as the company can charge clients directly and maintain control over what it collects. “The business is all about turning straw into gold,” says Smith, referencing Rumpelstiltskin. “But it’s hard – and it’s become a lot harder.”
Towards the end of the line is the machine that Smith hopes will change that. Last year, Green Recycling became the first MRF in the UK to invest in Max, a US-made, artificially intelligent sorting machine. Inside a large clear box over the conveyor, a robotic suction arm marked FlexPickerTM is zipping back and forth over the belt, picking tirelessly. “He’s looking for plastic bottles first,” Smith says. “He does 60 picks a minute. Humans will pick between 20 and 40, on a good day.” A camera system identifies the waste rolling by, displaying a detailed breakdown on a nearby screen. The machine is intended not to replace humans, but to augment them. “He’s picking three tonnes of waste a day that otherwise our human guys would have to leave,” Smith says. In fact, the robot has created a new human job to maintain it: this is done by Danielle, whom the crew refer to as “Max’s mum”. The benefits of automation, Smith says, are twofold: more material to sell and less waste that the company needs to pay to have burned afterwards. Margins are thin and landfill tax is £91 a tonne.
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Smith is not alone in putting his faith in technology. With consumers and the government outraged at the plastics crisis, the waste industry is scrambling to solve the problem. One great hope is chemical recycling: turning problem plastics into oil or gas through industrial processes. “It recycles the kind of plastics that mechanical recycling can’t look at: the pouches, the sachets, the black plastics,” says Adrian Griffiths, the founder of Swindon-based Recycling Technologies. The idea found its way to Griffiths, a former management consultant, by accident, after a mistake in a Warwick University press release. “They said they could turn any old plastic back into a monomer. At the time, they couldn’t,” Griffiths says. Intrigued, Griffiths got in touch. He ended up partnering with the researchers to launch a company that could do this.
By moving from disposable to reusable, you unlock epic design opportunities
At Recycling Technologies’ pilot plant in Swindon, plastic (Griffiths says it can process any type) is fed into a towering steel cracking chamber, where it is separated at extremely high temperatures into gas and an oil, plaxx, which can be used as a fuel or feedstock for new plastic. While the global mood has turned against plastic, Griffiths is a rare defender of it. “Plastic packaging has actually done an incredible service for the world, because it has reduced the amount of glass, metal and paper that we were using,” he says. “The thing that worries me more than the plastic problem is global warming. If you use more glass, more metal, those materials have a much higher carbon footprint.” The company recently launched a trial scheme with Tesco and is already working on a second facility, in Scotland. Eventually, Griffiths hopes to sell the machines to recycling facilities worldwide. “We need to stop shipping recycling abroad,” he says. “No civilised society should be getting rid of its waste to a developing country.”
There is cause for optimism: in December 2018, the UK government published a comprehensive new waste strategy, partly in response to National Sword. Among its proposals: a tax on plastic packaging containing less than 30% recycled material; a simplified labelling system; and means to force companies to take responsibility for the plastic packaging they produce. They hope to force the industry to invest in recycling infrastructure at home.
Meanwhile, the industry is being forced to adapt: in May, 186 countries passed measures to track and control the export of plastic waste to developing countries, while more than 350 companies have signed a global commitment to eliminate the use of single-use plastics by 2025.
Yet such is the torrent of humanity’s refuse that these efforts may not be enough. Recycling rates in the west are stalling and packaging use is set to soar in developing countries, where recycling rates are low. If National Sword has shown us anything, it is that recycling – while needed – simply isn’t enough to solve our waste crisis.
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Perhaps there is an alternative. Since Blue Planet II brought the plastic crisis to our attention, a dying trade is having a resurgence in Britain: the milkman. More of us are choosing to have milk bottles delivered, collected and re-used. Similar models are springing up: zero-waste shops that require you to bring your own containers; the boom in refillable cups and bottles. It is as if we have remembered that the old environmental slogan “Reduce, re-use, recycle” wasn’t only catchy, but listed in order of preference.
Tom Szaky wants to apply the milkman model to almost everything you buy. The bearded, shaggy-haired Hungarian-Canadian is a veteran of the waste industry: he founded his first recycling startup as a student at Princeton, selling worm-based fertiliser out of re-used bottles. That company, TerraCycle, is now a recycling giant, with operations in 21 countries. In 2017, TerraCycle worked with Head & Shoulders on a shampoo bottle made from recycled ocean plastics. The product launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos and was an immediate hit. Proctor & Gamble, which makes Head & Shoulders, was keen to know what was next, so Szaky pitched something far more ambitious.
The result is Loop, which launched trials in France and the US this spring and will arrive in Britain this winter. It offers a variety of household products – from manufacturers including P&G, Unilever, Nestlé and Coca-Cola – in reusable packaging. The items are available online or through exclusive retailers. Customers pay a small deposit, and the used containers are eventually collected by a courier or dropped off in store (Walgreens in the US, Tesco in the UK), washed, and sent back to the producer to be refilled. “Loop is a not a product company; it’s a waste management company,” says Szaky. “We’re just looking at waste before it begins.”
Many of the Loop designs are familiar: refillable glass bottles of Coca-Cola and Tropicana; aluminium bottles of Pantene. But others are being rethought entirely. “By moving from disposable to reusable, you unlock epic design opportunities,” says Szaky. For example: Unilever is working on toothpaste tablets that dissolve into paste under running water; Häagen-Dazs ice-cream comes in a stainless steel tub that stays cold long enough for picnics. Even the deliveries come in a specially designed insulated bag, to cut down on cardboard.
At Recycling Technologies in Swindon, nearly all plastics can be turned into plaxx, an oil that can be used to make new plastic. Photograph: Recycling Technologies Ltd
Tina Hill, a Paris-based copywriter, signed up to Loop soon after its launch in France. “It’s super-easy,” she says. “It’s a small deposit, €3 [per container]. What I like about it is that they have things I already use: olive oil, washing pods.” Hill describes herself as “pretty green: we recycle anything that can be recycled, we buy organic”. By combining Loop with shopping at local zero-waste stores, Hills has helped her family radically reduce its reliance on single-use packaging. “The only downside is that the prices can be a little high. We don’t mind spending a little bit more to support the things that you believe in, but on some things, like pasta, it’s prohibitive.”
A major advantage to Loop’s business model, Szaky says, is that it forces packaging designers to prioritise durability over disposability. In future, Szaky anticipates that Loop will be able to email users warnings for expiry dates and other advice to reduce their waste footprint. The milkman model is about more than just the bottle: it makes us think about what we consume and what we throw away. “Garbage is something that we want out of sight and mind – it’s dirty, it’s gross, it smells bad,” says Szaky.
That is what needs to change. It is tempting to see plastic piled up in Malaysian landfills and assume recycling is a waste of time, but that isn’t true. In the UK, recycling is largely a success story, and the alternatives – burning our waste or burying it – are worse. Instead of giving up on recycling, Szaky says, we should all use less, re-use what we can and treat our waste like the waste industry sees it: as a resource. Not the ending of something, but the beginning of something else.
“We don’t call it waste; we call it materials,” says Green Recycling’s Smith, back in Maldon. Down in the yard, a haulage truck is being loaded with 35 bales of sorted cardboard. From here, Smith will send it to a mill in Kent for pulping. It will be new cardboard boxes within the fortnight – and someone else’s rubbish soon after.
LANDISH: A MONTREAL STARTUP invests in a better balance and well-being at work
A young Montreal company is dedicated to the nutritional health and better fitness of people swept away by the whirlwind of long working hours, where poor nutrition, lack of energy and good nutrients are slipping into the agenda. This startup is called Landish, a word that comes from outlandish (strange, unknown) and which, unlike the latter, would mean "familiar, not so strange."
This name perfectly describes the brand new Landish products coming to the market, namely protein bars and powders, a range of natural products, nutrient dense and containing beneficial ingredients such as insects, algae and certain varieties of mushrooms. as many high-performance foods that have been consumed for ages in many parts of the world.
That's how six bars and five protein powders are offered to meet the needs of people in a hurry and overworked, whether for a quick breakfast, the small cravings in the middle of the day when the energy is on the decline, when traveling between two appointments, and even before or after training. In fact, all the reasons are good to eat with a Landish product, especially when the snack is both good for the taste and for health!
A question of balance and well-being at work ...
The Landish team is made up of dynamic and dedicated people, who are very aware of the importance of maintaining a good balance between a healthy and varied diet and physical exercise, despite the heavy workload in the office. With this in mind, they organize a series of outdoor activities every month that they offer to various businesses in downtown Montreal with the goal of getting their employees moving. These outings have already started in May and continue throughout the year, even in winter. Already, Mistplay, GoMaterials, Building Stack, Heyday and Life House companies have agreed to participate, knowing that moving in a group is always more stimulating and fun. Transportation is provided by Landish, not to mention the snack with protein bars during a well-deserved break!
... and a question of environment
Landish is also sensitive to the future of our planet and is constantly looking for solutions to reduce its environmental impacts. The young company relies heavily on responsible food and sustainable development. And it makes it a priority! It has therefore decided to tackle two problems: food packaging waste and deforestation.
11 NEW PRODUCTS FOR THE LOAN WORK WEEK
Busy days are often synonymous with a diet on the go that provides no nutritional benefit. The Quebec company Landish has created several products with high nutritional density, in order to meet the daily reality of people in a hurry and to revolutionize the world of snacks. Its products stand out in nutritional and environmental terms. These are energizing foods (10 grams of protein for a single bar), perfect at work, at home or in any physical activity, whether in the gym or outdoors! The 11 new Landish products - 6 bars and 5 protein powders - are all easy to consume when time is of the essence and are also known for their high levels of protein, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other essential nutrients. With three distinctive components - reishi mushroom powder, spirulina powder and cricket powder - these products bring countless benefits.These functional protein bars and powders are composed of:
• Reishi mushroom, nicknamed the mushroom of immortality and recognized for thousands of years in oriental medicine, especially for its support for the immune system. Traditional Chinese medicine gives her many powers, including strengthening the whole body and helping her maintain optimal health and balance. The bars come in two flavors, vanilla chai and espresso chocolate, while powders are chai or chocolate-flavored. • Spirulina, a blue-green microalga containing an abundance of nutrients in a very small volume. Spirulina is indeed a powerful antioxidant and offers a significant dose of vitamin B, iron, magnesium, iodine and beta-carotene, giving it a reputation as an energizer. The bars come in two flavors, vanilla coconut and double chocolate, and the powder is vanilla flavored. • Cricket powder, known for its complete protein intake with the nine essential amino acids and vitamin B12, a profile that gives it a nutritional replacement for meat. Cricket powder also contains chitin, a prebiotic fiber that provides benefits for digestive health. This cricket powder comes from Canadian sources. The bars come in two new flavors, chocolate mint and cinnamon apple, while the powder is offered in chocolate and vanilla flavors. Landish functional protein bars contain very little sugar (three times less than conventional bars), are gluten-free, dairy-free, nuts and peanuts. Landish protein powders have no added sugar. Bars can be stored for up to nine months in a cool, dry place or in a refrigerator. The different powders are quickly added to a smoothie or yogurt, and even in hot chocolate, herbal tea, a mix of pancakes or homemade muffins! All Landish products are sold on the company's website, as well as in the eight Avril markets located in Quebec and at Lufa Farms. The company spares no effort to reduce the impact of its bar wraps, which are made of rolled aluminum to maximize the freshness of the product, like most of these products on the market. Recycling of this type of packaging is not offered by municipalities. Landish has partnered with TerraCycle, a company specializing in the recycling of "non-recyclable". The latter transforms difficult to recycle materials and makes them park benches, garbage cans, chairs, etc. To find out how to participate in this eco-responsible movement, simply register here. In addition, for each online order made on the Landish site from Quebec, the company planted a tree in the province, in partnership with the organization One Tree Planted. According to this organization, since 2001, Quebec has seen a decrease of seven million hectares of forest land.Young Matane discouraged by butts after picking up a ton of garbage Garbage collection chores in the region of Matane
During the garbage collection supervised by the Carrefour jeunesse-emploi (CJE) in the Matane region during the summer, allowing some twenty young people between the ages of 18 and 29 to harvest 2,358 pounds on the banks. The river and the Matane River, during six chores, a waste particularly discouraged the participants, unable to overcome and surprised by the extent of this invisible pollution: cigarette butts.
"It's a type of garbage they've found everywhere, and they have not been able to fully pick it up, so much so that some of the smokers in the group have begun to reduce their cigarette consumption and think about a way to to pick them up, for example in a pocket ashtray, "said Sylvie Dubé, of the CJE Matane region, in charge of the waste collection activity organized during the summer in collaboration with the Mission 100 tons. The latter, born last year in the province, encourages this kind of chores throughout Quebec, especially to reduce the amount of plastics encountered in the oceans, which could exceed the number of fish by 2050, according to information transmitted by the biologist Lyne Morissette, specialized in the conservation of marine ecosystems.Is Canada's Cannabis Packaging Excessive?
Have you ever ordered a gram of legal cannabis online in Canada only to have it arrive in a huge box that holds only a small plastic container?
Are you weary of a sea of plain packaging that features a stop sign-like red hexagon that signals the inclusion of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the psychoactive component of cannabis?
After more than six months of legalized cannabis in Canada, the way in which legal cannabis is packaged is definitely a far cry from the dime bag packaging of illegal cannabis.
While the government is making safety their number one priority, there has been some not-too positive feedback about cannabis packaging, saying it is excessive and expressing concerns over its environmental impact.
So is Canada’s cannabis packaging excessive? Let’s take a look.
Requirements galore
Ordering a gram of cannabis myself from the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS), I was surprised when the package arrived in a large box that contained a bulky plastic jar for the small amount of cannabis that was inside.
It turns out I’m not the only one who has shown concern over the excessive packaging, with other consumers taking to Twitter and Reddit to voice their opinions.
Users have called the packaging “excessive” and “overkill.” One customer weighed the packaging and found it was nearly 40 times heavier than the cannabis she bought — 38 grams to one gram.
“Once you open it, it’s just such overkill,” Candace MacDonald told the Growth Op. “There’s one itty-bitty bud in it, and I could probably pack half an ounce in there.”
The Cannabis Act, which legalized cannabis in Canada, included many packaging requirements that aim to create as safe a legal environment as possible.
Requirements include labels that must feature a yellow health warning and a red THC symbol, and packaging that must keep the cannabis dry, be in a plain uniform solid colour, be either opaque or translucent, and tamper-evident.
“We have arguably more regulations than more controlled substances,” Canopy Growth’s Community Engagement Specialist Courtney Langille said. “Some of this includes being waterproof, airtight, child-resistant, suitable for food-grade materials, [as well as] extensive labelling requirements that are definitely unique to the cannabis companies, [such as] font size, placement.”
These requirements do influence how producers design their packaging, according to Langille.
“Our packaging has to be larger to accommodate all that information,” she said.
Environmental concern
A big environmental concern with cannabis packaging is their use of plastic. Most plastics don’t biodegrade, which causes it to accumulate and end up in places such as landfills or the ocean. Washington state’s cannabis industry produced so much plastic waste that it clogged gutters, sewers, and landfills, the Washington Post reported the summer of 2018. Plastic seems to be top of mind for Canadians. A 2018 EcoAnalytics report found that 65 percent of respondents feel governments should work quickly to ban single-use plastics such as plastic bags, straws, and bottles, and 32 percent said plastics in the ocean were the top three environmental issues they worry about the most. While there is no regulatory requirement for cannabis producers to use plastic, according to Health Canada, many have turned to it to meet the child-proof requirement given its affordability. According to Aphria’s Vice President of Marketing, Megan McCrae, during the legalization period last October, many Liquor Boards required non-glass packaging solutions, which lead many LPs facing tight deadlines to adopt “off-the-shelf” child-proof packaging. Most cannabis packages are recyclable, but some municipalities have trouble accepting them due to their mix of materials and because they house cannabis, which is considered a sensitive material, Langille said.Edibles could make things worse
Things might get worse before they get better with cannabis packaging. Edibles are set to hit Canadian stores by mid-December, and with the new wave of legalization come their own regulations on packaging that do not seem to take excessiveness into account. “From an environmental standpoint, it’s going to get much worse,” said Michael Garbuz, founder of cannabis companies Materia Ventures and High 12 Brands. “It’s going to be a hugely excessive amount of packaging [for edibles].” The Health Canada regulations for edibles include a limit of 10 mg of THC per edible package, which is essentially a single serving size per package. Garbuz says that with dried flowers you can at least get multiple doses in one package, but that won’t be the case with edibles, which will also have to be child-proof. “[It will] take so many packages to satiate a group of people or even an individual with heavy consumption,” he said. The edibles packaging regulations could also raise the price for consumers. Doug Vidic, the founder of cannabis edibles company Dank D’Lights says that limiting each package to 10 mg, which he finds a “little low,” adds to the cost of packaging that is carried over to the customer. “We don’t want to spend half of your product on packaging distribution versus the actual product,” he said, mentioning that if individual packaging wasn’t required, there could be economies of scale that could reduce the overall price. “If you have to package every 10 mg piece, it does add to your cost.” In Colorado and Washington, edibles packages can contain multiple servings and have less strict dosage limits.Workarounds
While the situation may seem bleak concerning excessive cannabis packaging, some companies are making efforts to make it more environmentally friendly. Canopy Growth has partnered with a recycling company TerraCycle to help recycle cannabis packaging properly. Langille said that Canopy Growth subsidiary Tweed has recycling bins in its stores in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland where customers can drop off their cannabis packaging, regardless of whether it is a Canopy Growth product or not. If you don’t have access to a Tweed location, you can also send your package by mail free of charge by setting up a TerraCycle account and requesting a label. Langille says that the packaging is ground into plastic pellets in Canadian facilities and given new life instead of ending up in landfills or incinerators. So far, over 350,000 pieces — weighing over 7,000 pounds — have been collected, according to the company. “TerraCycle is world-renowned for recycling hard-to-recycle materials,” Langille said, mentioning the company has also partnered with Febreeze and Nespresso for their coffee pods. “[They work] with packing that falls outside of the comfort zone for a lot of municipal recycling programs.” Langille expressed hope that as the industry evolves, new packaging formats will be introduced that are more environmentally conscious, such as ones that are lighter or biodegradable. Health Canada has already amended its regulations to allow for “accordion or peel back-type labels” that should allow smaller packages and “reduce the amount of waste created by cannabis product packaging,” according to the agency. Other companies are exploring more environmentally-friendly packaging for cannabis. Sana Packaging is packaging its cannabis in… cannabis, go figure, by using hemp. Hemp is biodegradable, but also more expensive than petroleum-based plastic. Tweed uses a mixture of tin, which is recyclable, and a plastic child-proof cap for its packaging. Cannabis services company Kushco announced in March an agreement with IEKO Corp. to produce compostable and biodegradable packaging for the cannabis and CBD industries.Marketing impact
Health Canada’s cannabis packaging regulations not only make it tricky to create environmentally-friendly packaging, but also have an impact on companies’ ability to market their products. The regulations outline that packaging cannot be appealing to young people, depict a person, character or animal, or associate with a “way of life” that includes “glamour, recreation, excitement, vitality, risk or daring.” “The biggest challenge of packaging to date has been around the labels [guidelines],” Garbuz said. “We’re still at a stage where the brand isn’t given as much freedom as I think it should be to express to the customer what the product is and how it is differentiated.” Currently only one “brand element” is allowed on cannabis packaging, such as a logo. If looking into a legal dispensary, you’ll often find a sea of plain white packages. “If the package is covered with warning labels, it’s really hard for the company to quickly distill down to the end consumer the key points about the product that they need to know before consuming it,” Garbuz said. “It turns off a lot of consumers and keeps them within the black market.” McCrae agrees that the regulations do hamper competitiveness with the black market. “Without the ability to build brands and offer consumers a compelling reason to purchase from legitimate channels, we will always be challenged in swaying users away from illegal products,” she said. McCrae notes the limitations are “way beyond what is required by alcohol companies.” Garbuz says that while the industry has begun with regulations more in line with tobacco than alcohol, he thinks over time the industry will move more towards “alcohol-style marketing” as people find cannabis is even more benign than alcohol. Garbuz says that cannabis may even go beyond alcohol in certain ways, such as distribution, given that non-psychoactive products can be made from it that make use of its cannabinoids, such as cannabidiol, or CBD. Right now those products, such as topicals, have the same warnings and plain packaging as cannabis flower, but McCrae says this is “just plain excessive.” “To have a bottle of face cream in a health-warning laden child-proof container is just plain excessive,” she said, mentioning these products carry “virtually no risks.” For now, though, Garbuz says the government is taking a “go slow” approach to see the potential drawbacks of cannabis legalization. “They don’t want to introduce the other end of the spectrum, which is full-blown marketing, before taking a look at true legalization and what actually has played out compared to hypotheses,” he said.The Wrap
Since Canada is the first major world economy to legalize recreational cannabis, it is a leader in the industry and has decided to play it safe with regulations that may be much more strict than we’ll see years down the line. While plastic containers are a quick and cheap option for companies, customer feedback could make them change their tune soon. As for marketing, time will tell as well if the labelling restrictions will change, and the uniform white cannabis packaging will be replaced with a rainbow of different brands.FREE 12 PAGE RECYCLE ACTIVITY PACK FOR KIDS WITH RECYCLING TIPS FOR PARENTS
So now you can teach kids about recycling, let them munch on healthy treats like apples, grapes, strawberries, and oranges, and let them color while they eat and drink tasty treats.
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Don’t forget to PIN and share this post with friends. When we spread the word about recycling, we help everyone pitch in to do good things for the planet.