Learn when it’s better to rehome your running shoes and when it’s best to let them take on a new life.

From changing how products are shipped to what containers they're sold in and the product packaging itself, here's how retailers are tackling a myriad of issues. Cara Salpini   Permission granted by Loop As retail, a fundamentally environmentally unfriendly industry, works to become more green, it faces challenges at every turn. Those include that products must be packaged somehow, and then if a consumer buys online, those packaged goods must be placed in another package to safeguard them through whatever shipping route they're on. But as more consumers demand sustainability from the brands they buy from, startups are launching to solve common challenges and retailers are reinventing aspects of their operations to better account for their impact on the environment. Not all are tackling sustainability to the same degree, though, or with the same amount of success. Some companies are "just riding the bandwagon on sustainability and saying, 'Okay, we're doing this, we're doing XYZ,' but not necessarily tying that to what the impact means, and what kind of results that action will yield," Jessica Ching, senior principal analyst at Gartner, said. Brands that have more serious commitments to sustainability spell out the impact of their actions, Ching said, like the amount of carbon emissions it takes to make a product or how many were saved from a different type of production, for example. Rather than simply announcing commitments, dedicated brands also educate consumers about those commitments and what they really mean, rather than leaving it up to consumers to do the hard work themselves. When it comes to shipping, for example, some brands offer incentives for slower delivery, according to Ching, though communicating with customers on the impact of their shipping and packaging choices is still not widely done. "I think it's a clear opportunity there for brands and retailers to lean on. We haven't seen it as much yet," Ching said. She noted grocery delivery service Ocado is an example of a company playing around with this, as consumers can select "greener" delivery slots when they're in the checkout process. Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of Terracycle and Loop, is coming at the problem from a different angle. Loop, which makes refillable packaging for products, sends consumers their orders in reusable shipping containers and schedules pick-up times based on factors like when a consumer is scheduled to get another shipment, rather than making an extra trip. The company is also setting up a network of retail partners that use its refillable packaging so that consumers can return their empty containers themselves to any retailer in Loop's system. Looking long-term, Szaky thinks retailers' focus with packaging will be on increasing the recyclability of packages, more advancement on reuse (like what Loop is doing) and how to sell products with no packaging at all. But whatever advancements come, the challenge will be making sustainable choices as convenient as a consumer's current product choices. "Whatever innovations come, they have to compete head-to-head with the convenience of disposability," Szaky said. "And the closer they feel to the convenience of disposability, or in an ideal world even better, that's going to be the winner. I would predict that in reuse, you're not going to see a mega scale up of refill stations because of the sheer cost and complexity of doing filling at a store level. Now some products, it will work, like dry cashews or gummy bears or ground coffee and whole bean coffee, but I don't think it's going to necessarily get significantly broader than that. Because how would you do insect repellent in a refill station or ice cream in a refill station or things of that nature?" That's the reason Loop's model relies on the company being responsible for cleaning empty bottles and putting them back into circulation, rather than the consumer doing that work. In Szaky's view, taking the work out of it will get more consumers to make the sustainable choice. There are tons of ways retailers are experimenting with more environmentally friendly packaging and shipping choices, but here are a few recent ones Retail Dive is watching.

1. Olive's attempts to consolidate e-commerce deliveries

Olive, launched earlier this year by Jet co-founder Nate Faust, is tackling sustainable shipping by consolidating consumers' e-commerce deliveries from multiple brands into one to cut down on single-use boxes. The company boasts hundreds of e-commerce sites for retailers to purchase from, including Adidas, Free People and Saks Fifth Avenue, among others. The company also handles returns, and retailers can schedule a pickup of either their empty, reusable shipping container or their returns. Olive and Loop are both third-party companies trying to solve shipping problems by partnering with retailers, but some individual brands and retailers are also making strides on their own platforms. "I think it's incumbent on brands and retailers to really make sure that they can do what they can," Ching said. "We have also seen a lot of brands give the option at checkout for consumers to opt into eco-friendly packaging, or taking kind of a multifunctional approach to packaging." Ching cited Ralph Lauren as one company that allows customers to check a box to receive eco-friendly packaging, for example. Apparel retailers, in particular, can also do their part through pre-order, rental and resale models, Ching noted, so that they cut down on creating excess products altogether and have a second life for them when they do.

2. Ulta's partnership with Loop on refillable packaging

Ulta's partnership with Loop is part of broader efforts on sustainability at the retailer Permission granted by Loop   In addition to several other retail partnerships, Loop in March officially launched at Ulta Beauty, marking the "first-ever circular beauty platform," according to a release on the partnership. For Ulta, the Loop partnership was one of several recently announced moves to tackle sustainability. While Ulta is not the only company Loop has partnered with, beauty is an especially interesting category to Szaky for several reasons. He noted there are more beauty products that can't be recycled than food or beverage products, and there's a higher range of complexity involved in the packaging of beauty products. But it also meets several other criteria Loop looks at when deciding which areas to focus on. "One is how quickly does the object become waste from the moment you purchase it? So a coffee cup is quick, while a Swiss watch will be very slow, right?" Szaky said, adding that "how often an item is purchased is actually not that important. The second is how much design improvement opportunity is there: so if you move a shampoo bottle, like a plastic bottle, into a reusable one, there's actually a massive, massive opportunity for design improvement." The third factor is if there are stakeholders involved that care about the category. Those factors have helped define Loop's priorities, which include fast-moving consumer goods (packaged food, beverages, home care and personal care), takeaway food packaging and then textiles ("everything from reusable diapers to baby clothing"). The Ulta partnership is starting small, but plans are to expand it over time. At the moment, consumers can only use Loop's online experience, which means Loop has to come pick up used containers from consumers, but Szaky says the in-store experience should be running by the end of the year or early next. Then, consumers can bring back empty containers and drop them off at a bin in the front of the store or at any other of Loop's retail partners whenever they come back to shop. Spreading out to more retailers also lessens the transportation load, leading to fewer carbon emissions. "The way we're solving that is trying to again make Loop for absolutely everything so that you can get high density of products in one geography," Szaky said. "So instead, if we only did it for shampoo, you would have a very spread out network. But if we're doing it for everything from hamburgers and french fries, all the way to soda to shampoo to personal care products, then you get much bigger density and have more cleaning facilities and less transportation distance." Szaky's other company, TerraCycle, which focuses on recycling, is also expanding its presence through partnerships with the likes of sandal brand Teva and department store Nordstrom. The company's partnership with Nordstrom is also focused on beauty; it allows customers to recycle beauty packaging at Nordstrom stores.

3. Cocokind's debut of 'Sustainability Facts' on beauty products

Carbon emissions will be displayed directly on the packaging of Cocokind's products Permission granted by Cocokind   Beauty brand Cocokind announced in March that it would start putting "Sustainability Facts" on the packaging of its products to make the carbon impact of products clearer. The company already uses materials like sugarcane tubes and ocean waste plastic in its packaging, and includes detailed recycling instructions with products, according to Cocokind founder Priscilla Tsai. To produce the sustainability facts, the company uses a third-party research firm that evaluates the carbon footprint of every product, from pre-production to end-of-life. The life cycle assessment takes into account pre-manufacturing, including the production of raw materials and transportation of materials to the manufacturer; production, including any waste; distribution, including freight and materials used to transport products; and end-of-life, which includes the energy to recycle, reuse or dispose of a product. The total carbon emissions are listed on the packaging, though Tsai says the company does not expect consumers to exactly know the difference between different amounts of emissions. "We set out to educate our customers and beauty consumers in general on this topic," Tsai said via email. "It should not be on the consumer to figure all of this out because it can be so confusing and daunting. When it comes to carbon emissions we are even learning more ourselves and hope that our work will make a difference in how the consumer understands carbon emissions." Cocokind is also trying to educate customers on what its sustainability efforts mean Permission granted by Cocokind Cocokind is simultaneously attempting to educate its consumers on what these changes mean via blog and social media posts on the initiative and plans to share more learnings as the company continues to learn itself. Tsai added that this packaging shift is part of just the first phase of Cocokind's approach to carbon emissions, which is focused on researching and measuring the company's current impact. In the future, the company will move to offset emissions and create tangible action steps annually to reduce emissions. "While the beauty industry has made so many improvements over the past few years, we noticed that there also seems to be an increasing confusion on what is real progress and what is just an empty claim," Tsai said. "Every beauty brand, including cocokind, has been guilty of using buzz words like 'clean' and 'sustainable' without doing the work."

4. Beyond the Bag's efforts to replace single-use plastic

In July 2020, The Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag was formed, with CVS, Target and Walmart making up the founding partners. The retailers' goal is to reinvent the plastic bag through a three-year program, dubbed Beyond the Bag, that identifies alternatives through a contest, and works to scale them. The three founding companies put $15 million into the initiative collectively and have since been joined by a host of other big names in retail, including Dick's Sporting Goods, Dollar General, TJX and Walgreens. In February, the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners announced nine winners of the challenge, out of 450 ideas submitted: ChicoBag, Domtar, Eon, Fill it Forward, Goatote, PlasticFri, Returnity, SmartC and Sway. The companies span a variety of solutions to single-use plastic bags, including reusable shipping bags and boxes, a kiosk system that allows customers to access clean reusable bags on-site, a borrowing service for reusable bags, and various material innovations, including making plastic bag alternatives out of seaweed. Each of the nine companies will receive "a portion of $1 million," including possible additional financing as they work to pilot and scale their solutions. The retailers in the consortium will spend 2021 helping the winners with prototyping, mentoring and moving toward in-store pilots. "There is no one-size-fits-all solution to tackle a problem as complex as our reliance on single-use plastic bags," Kate Daly, managing director of the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, said in a statement. "The diversity of our winners underscores how businesses and consumers alike need to employ a range of solutions to fit different geographic, social and economic contexts."

5. Schick's fully recyclable razorSchick in March announced the Schick Xtreme 3 Eco Glide, which it says is the first and only razor on the mass market to be fully recyclable, including the razor and the packaging. Natalya Utesheva, senior brand manager at Schick, said the process for creating the Eco Glide razor started about a year and a half ago.

Reaching the 100% recycled plastic mark was a challenge for Schick Permission granted by Schick "Disposable razors are made from plastic, which by definition means that a lot of plastic ends up getting thrown away," Utesheva said, "so we were just so excited to innovate and to bring something to the consumer that is still an amazing shave from a quality perspective — it has flexible blades, it's got really amazing glide — but without the guilt for the environment because it's made from 100% recycled plastic." To realize the dream, Schick had to work with suppliers to find recycled plastic durable enough to mold into the right shape for a handle, according to Utesheva. It's "extremely challenging" to reach the 100% post-consumer recycled plastic mark, Utesheva said. "It's much easier, from what I understand from our supply chain partners, to have a mixture. So like, 60% to 80% of the plastic is made from recycled materials and then the rest is virgin plastic because the virgin, of course, is stronger. But the 100% is no small feat to achieve, which is why we're so proud of it." In addition to the fully recyclable Eco Glide, every Schick Xtreme razor now has a handle made at least in part with post-consumer recycled plastic, Utesheva said, with the company planning to increase the percentage of post-consumer recycled plastic over the years. The fully recyclable Eco Glide costs a little more than its regular razors, but about half of Schick's customers are what Utesheva calls "eco-considerers," which means they are willing to compromise a little bit or pay a little more to have sustainability baked into the product. The other half, however, are "eco-dismissers," who aren't willing to sacrifice convenience in any way, no matter the environmental impact. Parent company Edgewell is looking for other ways to solve for packaging as well, including launching an Edgewell Recycling program earlier this year, which gives customers a shipping label and allows them to recycle products for free.

Have you ever felt guilty about tossing your old Teva sandals, or Colgate toothbrush, or Etch A Sketch into the trash, where they will clog up a landfill for hundreds of years? I have good news for you. All of those items—and many more—are now recyclable thanks to TerraCycle, a company that can recycle just about anything, especially items that can’t be processed by municipal facilities.   When the company launched in 2001, eliminating waste wasn’t something the average consumer cared about, but two decades later, environmentalism has gone mainstream, and that’s been good for TerraCycle’s business. Over the past five years, TerraCycle has grown explosively thanks to partnerships with brands that pay the company to collect and recycle customers’ old products. Today, more than 500 brands have signed up, a tenfold increase from 2016. In 2020, TerraCycle generated upward of $50 million in revenue across 20 countries and grew its staff by 33% to 380 employees globally.   TerraCycle’s remarkable growth tells a larger story about the progress the world is making toward a circular economy–a more sustainable system in which companies stop extracting raw materials from the earth and instead recycle products that already exist. While brands and consumers are eager to keep things out of landfill, there are still big challenges ahead in the war on waste. Who should bear the cost of recycling? And what will it really take to recycle a complex object, like a shoe or an Etch a Sketch, back into its original form? [Photo: TerraCycle]   A WORLD WITH NO WASTE   Tom Szaky launched TerraCycle as a 19-year-old Princeton student. The company began as a humble side hustle: transforming food waste into high-quality fertilizer with the help of worms. In college, he emptied his bank account to build a “worm poop conversion unit” and spent his free time shoveling decomposing food from Princeton’s cafeterias. Two years later, he dropped out to pursue the business full-time, selling the fertilizer he created to Home Depot and Walmart.   Spending every waking hour of his twenties thinking about waste helped Szaky grasp the full extent of the global problem—long before many Americans had woken up to the crisis. He realized that food is just the tip of the iceberg: The real—and trickier—issue is plastic, a cheap, versatile material that companies use in everything from food wrappers to furniture. Since plastic does not biodegrade, it ends up in landfills and oceans, where it breaks into tiny fragments and enters the food chain.   Curbside recycling programs launched in the 1970s, but they have always been limited in the plastic products they accept; most only collect simple objects made from a single form of plastic, like takeout containers. Everything else ends up in the landfill because it’s made from multiple materials that are complex and labor-intensive to separate. A high chair, for instance, uses metal bolts and screws to connect different plastic pieces together.   As Szaky looked into the problem, he discovered that it is technically possible to recycle any of these objects. The problem is that recycling infrastructure is not set up to tackle this. Cities pay waste management companies to pick up and recycle materials, which they then sell on the commodities market. If a product is too expensive to break down, recyclers won’t make a profit on it. “We perceive that recycling companies are out there recycling whatever they can recycle out of a moral obligation,” he says. “The reality is that recycling companies are for-profit enterprises and they are only going to process what they can recycle at a profit. If an object costs more to collect and recycle than the ensuing materials are worth, they won’t do it.”   So Szaky decided he needed to create a new business model for recycling. He would build the infrastructure to recycle all kinds of objects and ask companies making these products to bear the cost of recycling them. “We asked ourselves, ‘Is there a stakeholder, like a manufacturer or a retailer or a consumer or someone who is willing to cover what it really costs to collect it and process it?'” he says. “With this business philosophy, we can unlock the ability to recycle just about everything.” [Photo: TerraCycle]   WHO SHOULD PAY FOR RECYCLING?   The idea of asking companies or individuals to pay to recycle their own waste seemed crazy two decades ago. But Szaky has observed how people around the world have begun to realize that waste has real costs.   This awareness reached a tipping point in 2018, when a video of a turtle with a straw up its nose went viral, prompting consumers to call for cities to ban straws and other single-use plastics. The following year, National Geographic devoted an issue of the magazine to the problem of plastic waste which circulated widely; brands like Everlane and Adidas began swapping out new plastic for recycled plastic in their products; and new research emerged about how microscopic pieces of plastic end up in our food and water, damaging our bodies.   [Image: courtesy Teva]Szaky first asked brands to sponsor recycling efforts in 2007, when Honest Tea, Stonyfield Farm, and Clif Bar paid Terracycle to set up collection centers for consumers to drop off used food packaging from their brands, which it would recycle. It wasn’t until 2015 that big brands created ongoing programs, like Bausch + Lomb with contact lenses and Target with baby car seats. Some turned their recycling efforts into marketing: In 2017, Right Guard and L’Oreal launched playgrounds and gyms made from recycled products with great fanfare.   This paved the way for the current moment, when many brands feel pressure to take responsibility for some of their waste—or risk alienating consumers who are highly conscious about sustainability. This is why Teva, maker of iconic outdoor sandals, proactively reached out to Terracycle to collect used shoes and transform them into new products. “There is a cost for generating waste without regard for the environment,” says Anders Bergstrom, Teva’s global GM. “It’s a stiff financial penalty that is coming on the backs of young consumers who are seeking out sustainable brands. This is a new reality that I believe many enterprises are going to face in the future. ” [Illustration: Teva] As of last week, customers can go to Teva’s website to download a free, prepaid shipping label to send their old sandals to TerraCycle. To keep the carbon footprint of this shipping low, TerraCycle uses a network of its own recycling center as well as third-party recycling plants, and sends products to the nearest facility. Bergstrom says that Teva will pay for the entire cost of shipping, sorting, and processing, but declined to say exactly how much it will come to, partly because it depends on how many customers send their shoes in. Financial documents reveal that the lion’s share of TerraCycle’s revenues come from these brand partnerships.   Szaky says that each new partnership involves developing new systems for collecting, cleaning, and separating products into their core components. Then, the materials go through the company’s existing machinery: Metals are melted, and plastics are shredded, melted, and extruded into pellets. TerraCycle then sells these recycled materials. The plastic from Teva sandals will be used to make playgrounds, athletic fields, and track ground cover. [Photo: Century]   In early April, a brand called Century became the first baby gear company to partner with TerraCycle to recycle car seats, strollers, high chairs, and play pens. Betsy Holman, manager at Newell Brands which owns Century, says the brand is specifically targeted at millennial and Gen Z parents, and initial focus groups with this demographic revealed the sustainability was a crucial factor in their buying decisions.   Holman’s team had to price the cost of recycling into the bottom line. Given how bulky and heavy the products are, paying to ship products to TerraCycle is expensive. “The cost of recycling is hitting us just like any other cost,” she says. “TerraCycle was definitely a hit to our profit and our margin is definitely not as attractive, but we felt that this was the right call for the brand. Our goal is to be the sustainable baby brand.” [Photo: TerraCycle]   THE DREAM OF CIRCULARITY   TerraCycle is growing quickly thanks to new partnerships. Nordstrom announced that starting October 1, consumers can bring in any beauty product packaging into stores to be recycled. Startups—from sneaker brand Thousand Fell to reusable silicone baggie brand Stasher—invite customers to download prepaid labels to send in their old products. Heritage conglomerate, Spin Master, which makes Etch A Sketch, Rubik’s Cube, and Hatchimals just announced customers can send in any toys it manufactures. [Photo: TerraCycle]   While Szaky is thrilled that business is picking up, he believes there’s a lot of work to do. TerraCycle has still not created a fully circular system, in which a product can be infinitely recycled into that same product. For instance, Teva sandals can’t be turned back into sandals, which means the brand will continue to rely on new materials to make their products. “The most exciting thing we’re working on is how to get the material back to where it began,” Szaky says. “This is the highest and very best use of the materials.”   This is a complicated process, as Thousand Fell is discovering. Cofounder Stuart Ahlum worked closely with Szaky to design sneakers made from just a few materials that would be easy to recycle. Over the past year, the company has begun receiving used sneakers from customers, which TerraCycle processes. But to be fully circular, Thousand Fell must collect the recycled rubber and plastic, and send them to its various suppliers. “Like most brands, we have a global supply chain, which means we have to send these recycled materials around the world,” Ahlum says. “In some cases, we have to think about whether the emissions created from shipping outweigh the benefits of creating a fully circular system.”   At just shy of 40, Szaky has come a long way from shoveling Princeton cafeteria food into a worm poop conversion unit. He’s hopeful about what he has seen over the past two decades. When he started TerraCycle, few people understood his mission. Today, values have shifted and his business is booming.   “We’re in the middle of a mass extinction and it’s entirely because we’re not paying the bill for the waste we’re creating,” he says. “We’re essentially using all of these resources on credit, expecting our children, animals, and the planet to pay for it in the future. But consumers are crying out for change, which is prompting lawmakers and companies to rethink the way we’re doing things. The future they want is circular, and they’re going to vote for it with what they buy.”   ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elizabeth Segran, Ph.D., is a senior staff writer at Fast Company. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts

n 2020, Teva transitioned every one of its sandal straps to 100% traceable REPREVE recycled plastic yarn. Building on that vision of keeping its sandals sustainable, Teva has announced its TevaForever Recycling Program, a partnership with international recycling guru TerraCycle.   “Teva’s long-term vision is to work towards solutions to one day fully close the loop by recycling old Teva sandals into new ones,” Teva wrote. The program is dedicated to giving Teva sandals a second life — as something other than sandals.   Customers will be able to mail in their retired sandals to TerraCycle (at no cost). TerraCycle will then clean them, break them down, and process the recycled materials for many new purposes (like playground surfaces, athletic fields, and track grounds).    

1. Visit Teva.com to request a prepaid shipping label.
2. Ship in your Teva sandals or flip-flops.
3. That’s it. TerraCycle and Teva will take care of the rest.

  One note: Teva doesn’t yet accept shoe or boot models for recycling but hopes to do so in the future.   “Teva sandal owners can now take comfort in knowing that when their favorite pair of sandals finally wears out, they won’t experience any of the guilt that comes with throwing them away,” TerraCycle founder Tom Szaky said.