Think about the last time you attended a professional conference or trade show. Were meals provided, or was it mostly coffee and light snacks? Were breaks catered by the host hotel or conference venue, or an outside company that transported pre-prepared foods? Were coffee and other refreshments served in ceramic mugs and plastic or glass tumblers, or paper and foam cups? Did meals come with actual reusable silverware and plates, or disposable forks and knives? Walking yourself through the answers to these questions may bring to mind the numerous times difficult-to-recycle food and beverage disposables are thrown in the garbage bin at conferences. By and large, used tabletop disposables and food packaging containers are not accepted by municipal recycling facilities due to their size, mixed material and contamination from contact with organic matter (aka leftover food). Also difficult to recycle are articles of the convenience packaging and single-serving food configurations that are ubiquitous with on-the-go environments like conferences or all-day meetings. Account for the hypothetical three cups for water or coffee a person might throw in the trash per day (assuming they don’t hold onto the same disposable cup). Add to that plastic cutlery, empty chip bags and other examples of difficult-to-recycle food packaging, then multiply that by the number of days in each conference, by the conservative number of at least 100 people attending, times the over 300,000 annual conferences in the U.S. that occur each year, and the reduced cost of labor and logistics associated with disposables is eclipsed by a large volume of avoidable waste that these events generate. Conference organizers can take responsibility for the unique volume of disposables created by these organized meetings by supplementing the largely insufficient waste management systems of host venues with custom solutions. For example, the upcoming Sustainable Foods Summit in San Francisco kicks off Jan. 18-20 with seminar sessions and interactive workshops dedicated to food production and supply chain sustainability and the impacts of food and packaging waste. By working with TerraCycle’s Zero Waste Box division, the organizers at the Sustainable Foods Summit will outfit Parc 55 San Francisco with recycling boxes for shipping and transport materials on the backend, and front-facing boxes for single-serving food and chip bags and plastic Solo cups on the show floor. Displaying them prominently alongside garbage receptacles and where refreshments are distributed, SFS walks the walk of its mission in a practical sense, allowing conference attendees, speakers  and personnel to do their part in the capture of these disposable, yet valuable, material resources. Another conference that recently demonstrated a commitment to achieving zero waste in a big way is Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN). For the third annual gathering of the Students for Zero Waste Conference, conference organizers actually requested that attendees “bring-your-own everything” (mugs, plates, silverware and napkins), and about half of the 400 attendees did, sporting everything from mason jars to camping gear to use for their lunch and snacks. A tub of reusable silverware from Goodwill took care of the rest of the attendees, and a washing station for people to clean their utensils between meals was also provided. By the end of the event, only two pounds of trash were headed for the landfill. Zeroing in on the unique logistical and waste management needs of conferences and large meetings acknowledges that every problem we have with waste comes down to two things: economics and planning. By taking the initiative to create custom solutions for these distinctive situations, conference and meeting organizers can work sustainability into the event format and add zero waste values to their programming.

Head & Shoulders bottles will use recycled plastics removed from beaches and waterways.

If you don’t like lifeless hair, dandruff on your shoulders and plastics in your ocean, you can tackle all three in the shower. Procter & Gamble announced Thursday that its Head & Shoulders shampoo bottles will be recyclable and made of up to 25 percent “beach plastics,” from trash removed from beaches, oceans, rivers and other waterways. It will be the first shampoo bottle made from recycled beach plastics, according to the company’s press release. “It’s important to understand how big of a disaster ocean plastics are. It’s horrendous,” Tom Szaky, founder of recycling company TerraCycle, told The Huffington Post. TerraCycle is partnering with P&G to make the bottles. “It creates problems for animals that eat them or get trapped in them. It’s a crisis, and I don’t think people understand the scale of it.” The oceans will contain more plastics than fish by 2050, according to a report from the World Economic Forum. At least 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year. That’s like tossing the contents of one garbage truck into the ocean every minute. The Head & Shoulder “beach plastic” bottles will be available in France this summer, with plans to expand to other countries after that. While most shampoo and conditioner bottles already can be recycled and some are made of recycled plastic, this is the first using recycled marine plastics, according to Szaky, who said that plastic rescued from oceans and other waterways is notoriously hard to collect and process because it is scattered, degraded and often filled with junk. Getting plastics from beach to bottle is an elaborate process, according to Szaky: Hundreds of organizations and volunteers collect plastics from beaches, harbors and other waterways. TerraCycle takes the collected plastic and sorts it, sending some of it, usually high-density polyethylene (HDPE), to P&G for its bottles. The rest is used to make benches and picnic tables that are given to nonprofits. P&G isn’t the first company to try to tackle the problem of ocean plastics in its products: Method has been making hand soap bottles out of ocean plastics for years, and Adidas launched a sneaker line made with recycled ocean plastics last year. And when it comes to removing plastics from our oceans, anyone can play a role. “Make sure you recycle,” Szaky said. “Go to your local ocean conservancy and participate in cleanup efforts. And really think about what you buy ― only buy what you need. Consumerism is behind many of our environmental problems.”  

A year ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found that most plastic packaging is used only once; 95% of the value of plastic packaging material, worth $80 billion-$120 billion annually, is lost to the economy after a short first use. In the design of a “New Plastics Economy,” which challenges institutions to move away from the existing linear, take-make-dispose economy, theoretically, these captured plastics can instead be recycled to be used over and over.

Head & Shoulders, een merk van Procter & Gamble (P&G), maakt naar eigen zeggen ’s werelds eerste recyclebare shampoofles die voor 25 procent bestaat uit gerecycled strandplastic. Voor de productie van de verpakking heeft Procter & Gamble op het World Economic Forum in het Zwitserse Davos een samenwerking gesloten met TerraCycle en Suez. De innovatieve shampoofles is vanaf deze zomer verkrijgbaar als limited-edition in Carrefour-supermarkten in Frankrijk. Volgens de bedrijven gaat het om de grootste productiegang van recyclebare flessen die zijn gemaakt met gerecycled strandafval.

Duurzame innovatie

“Wij vonden dat het leidende shampoomerk in verkoop moet leiden in duurzame innovatie, en we weten dat wanneer we dit doen, het de hele industrie aanmoedigt om hetzelfde te doen”, zegt Lisa Jennings, vicepresident van Head & Shoulders en Global Hair Care Sustainability Leader van Procter & Gamble, in een persbericht. “We hebben geluk gehad dat we mogen werken met zulke geweldige partners als TerraCycle en Suez om van deze visie werkelijkheid te maken.” Donderdag was Wieger Droogh, algemeen directeur van Suez Nederland, te gast in DuurzaamBV Radio, waar hij sprak over de duurzame shampoofles.

Gerecycled plastic

Als aanvulling op de aankondiging maakte P&G bekend om in Europa tegen het einde van 2018 meer dan een half miljard flessen per jaar wil maken met 25 procent gerecycled plastic. Dit vertegenwoordigt meer dan 90 procent van alle haarverzorgingsflessen van P&G die in Europa worden verkocht. Het project vereist de toevoer van 2.600 ton gerecycled plastic per jaar – hetzelfde gewicht als acht volgeladen Boeing 747-jumo jets, meldt P&G.

In 2018 worden jaarlijks een ½ miljard shampooflessen van P&G Hair Care Products gemaakt van gerecycled plastic. Procter & Gamble Company heeft aangekondigd dat Head & Shoulders, ‘ s werelds eerste recyclebare shampoofles heeft gemaakt, en daarbij tot wel 25% gerecycled beach plastic heeft gebruikt. In samenwerking met recycling experts TerraCycle en SUEZ, zal deze innovatie komende zomer in Frankrijk als een limited-edition H&S fles beschikbaar zijn voor consumenten in de Carrefour supermarkten. Dit zal ‘s werelds grootste productie-run van recyclebare flessen met post-consumer gerecycled (PCR) beach plastic zijn, en een eerste belangrijke stap in de oprichting van een unieke supply chain die met de steun van duizenden vrijwilligers plastic afval gaan verzamelen op stranden. Bovendien, heeft P&G aangekondigd dat in Europa tegen het einde van 2018 meer dan een half miljard flessen per jaar tot 25% post-consumer gerecycled plastic zullen gaan bevatten. Dit vertegenwoordigt meer dan 90% van alle haarverzorging flessen die verkocht worden in Europa. hetzelfde gewicht als acht volgeladen Boeing 747 jumbo jets – Voor het project zal een levering van 2.600 ton gerecycled plastic per jaar nodig zijn. P&G zet met het gebruik van PCR kunststof in haar verpakkingen een belangrijke stap en heeft als doel om in 2020 een verdubbeling van de tonnage van PCR plastic te gebruiken in de productie van verpakkingen.