Pendant deux jours, les 26 et 27 novembre 2019, les participants du premier congrès LSA Live, dédié aux mutations du retail et de l’industrie de la grande consommation, ont présenté leurs retours d’expérience et les actions mises en place pour réussir la transformation de leurs entreprises, qu’elle soit structurelle, digitale ou organisationnelle.

The packaging field advances as fast as it does partly because people openly share ideas, pain points and best practices. Throughout 2019, we interviewed several subject matter experts on key concerns, including sustainability challenges and solutions (specifically around plastics), benefits of working with Gen Z, ecommerce packaging improvements, using robots to improve packaging machinery operation and the impact of social media on packaging design.   Here are select thought-provoking quotes from packaging executives—from major brand owners such as Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay and Coca-Cola—in articles exclusive to Packaging Digest. Click the “View Gallery” button to the bottom right of the photo above to scroll quickly through the quotes.   To give these remarks context, here are links to the articles these quotes have come from:   1. Tom Szaky, founder/CEO, TerraCycle and Loop Loop and big brands boldly reinvent waste-free packaging 2. Captain James (Jim) Lovell, astronaut Packaging in space! 3. Survey respondent, 2019 Packaging Digest Consumer Survey on Plastic Packaging Sustainability Consumers want non-plastic packaging options 4. Ivan Keener, student, Michigan State University, School of Packaging Gen Z on technology, packaging jobs and the environment 5. John R. Henry, owner, Changeover.com The right way to use robots in packaging machines 6. Nestlé USA packaging sustainability manager Walt Peterson Nestlé clarifies its sustainable packaging vision 7. Jason Foster, Replenish founder and chief reuser Amazon chooses refillable packaging for Clean Revolution 8. Anitra Marsh, global sustainability task leader for P&G’s Global Skin and Personal Care brands Olay is latest household brand to embrace refillable packaging 9. Bruno Van Gompel, technical and supply chain director, Coca-Cola Western Europe Coca-Cola trials recycled marine plastic for beverage packaging 10. Katie Ceclan, senior director of marketing, Frito-Lay North America Social media-friendly food packaging ‘reignites’ Lay’s brand 11. Trina Matta, senior manager, Sustainable Packaging Coalition Non-plastic packaging isn’t the only sustainable solution 12. Kim Marotta, global senior director of corporate responsibility, Molson Coors Molson Coors shrinks plastic packaging’s Beer Print 13. Maximiliano Sassone, research and innovation director at Danone Argentina Danone’s new yogurt jar conveys ‘natural’ and premium 14. Martijn Huijbreghs, IT application manager with BBio Biopharmaceutical company uses label system to enhance ops    

Tom is the founder of the world's leading recycling initiative, with the promise to remove waste from our supply chains, working with major brands such as Nestlé and Unilever - hailed as one of Forbes’ Impact 30.   We met Tom earlier this year during Sustainable Brands Paris and were struck by not only his promising business initiative, but his bold ideas and views. A challenging voice driving forward environmental change, we made sure to pin him down for an interview.     Tom shared with us his personal story: born into communism in Hungary, after the Chernobyl disaster, he and his family escaped as refugees, first to Belgium then to Germany, Rotterdam and Canada. Finally, he settled in the US. He reflects:   “I went from one extreme to another extreme and fell in love with business as a tool for change along the way.”   Tom worked his way to Princeton where, in Economics 101, he was taught that the purpose of business is to profit shareholders. However this immediately didn’t sit right with him. He said: “Is that really the reason people go to work? I don’t think so. Yes, profit is an indicator of health, but it’s not the reason for being.”   This got Tom seeking a business idea with more of a purpose than profit. “I landed on garbage. It’s fascinating - we’re built to be repulsed by it. It’s not sexy, so there’s not a lot of innovation within it. It’s ridiculously unexciting to be involved in, but the scale is universally big. Every object you see right now will 100% one day belong to the garbage industry.”   With waste as his focus, Tom started TerraCycle from his dorm room in 2001 - first turning worm poop into organic fertiliser. While the fertiliser itself was popular (it was soon sold in Home Depot and Walmart) its packaging was where TerraCycle’s potential and purpose would unfold.   Tom used old plastic drinking bottles - initially out of ease and affordability - with schools and local organizations collecting bottles in exchange for proceeds. 18 years on and this is the core of TerraCycle today, with manufacturers now sponsoring national collection and recycling programs for waste streams they create.     TerraCycle’s scope is wide. In the last few months alone, they’ve announced recycling schemes for baby food containers, beauty products, laboratory waste - and they just won an award for the development of the first national cannabis recycling program in Canada.   “Everything we do is to move from linear to circle,” says Tom. While this move does dramatically reduce the waste that ends up in landfills and being burnt, Tom sees recycling as only a temporary solution. Instead, he looks to nature to see if we can remove the concept of waste altogether. Tom says:   “If you asked a tree what is waste, I don’t think a tree could define it. Because in nature, there is no such thing. The root cause of consumer waste is not plastic - it’s single-use.”   With this in mind, Tom’s entrepreneurial efforts have shifted to refill and reuse. His new initiative, Loop, delivers products in reusable packaging straight to your door. Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Nestlé and PepsiCo are among the household names already on board, with one new brand a day joining the platform since it launched.       In short, Loop’s aim is to make reusing packaging easier than ever - and the norm - so we move away from the reliance on single-use, disposable packaging. However, Tom also acknowledges that innovation alone won’t solve the world’s problems. “The cause of every environmental problem is consumer culture. So the clear answer is to buy less, but also to consume differently.”   While as Tom put it himself, there’s nothing sexy about rubbish and waste, we are big fans of solutions that will green our planet.   With widespread awareness of the climate emergency now mounting, the scramble of big brands to find new, regenerative solutions has begun; and with Loop and TerraCycle leading the way, we think there’s nothing more exciting than that.   Enjoyed reading Tom’s story? Sign up to our newsletter to have bold and brave voices land in your inbox every month! Plus the latest from our clients and community - and a few humblebrags.

At this time of year, many beauty retailers are focused on enticing consumers with festive gift sets: sumptuous samplers with a selection of bottles, jars and tubes, packed in cases that are often glittery, golden or shiny.   This holiday season, however, stores and brands have an additional and growing concern: the vast environmental footprint that these indulgent kits inevitably occupy.   Some companies have improved their packaging’s ecological stamp by, for example, opting for ink made from soy instead of petroleum.   But creating appeal that also is environmentally responsible can be a challenge, and there is little room for error in this vital season, which last year generated almost $6 billion in sales of prestige beauty products in the United States alone, according to the NPD Group, a market research organization. The fourth quarter is especially crucial for prestige fragrances, constituting almost 45 percent of annual sales. “The biggest tension is the tension between what drives sales in this industry and what is good for the environment,” said Tom Szaky, chief executive of TerraCycle, a recycling company that says it works with hundreds of brands in 21 countries. “Many times, those are not copacetic.”         Some brands have designed Holiday 2019 packaging that is comparatively earth-friendly but that still looks and feels indulgent.   L’Occitane en Provence, for example, quietly made most of its seasonal sets with corrugated cardboard, a move that saved 22 tons of paper in comparison with the more solid version sold last year, according to Corinne Fugier-Garrel, the brand’s director of packaging conception development.   The external size of some sets is smaller than last year’s versions, although they still hold a similar selection of similarly sized products — which saved nine more tons of paper, she said. And gold detailing, which can make recycling impossible, was laminated with a thin layer of aluminum to allow recycling.   Like many brands, L’Occitane has had success over the last few years with its beauty Advent calendar, the traditional German countdown to Christmas adapted to hide small products behind dated doors.   The complex structure of most beauty brands’ calendars and the packaging of their contents typically are not very environmentally sound. This year L’Occitane made the interior compartments of one of its two Advents ($64) from recycled PET — or polyethylene terephthalate; the sections of the more lavish version ($99) are made of recycled paper. Both materials are recyclable.   ASOS, the British online retailer, has changed the environmental footprint of its men’s and women’s Advent calendars, which are stocked with items from multiple beauty brands. This year the products come in compostable paper boxes, printed with soy ink in spunky patterns like animal prints and polka dots, and arranged in a sturdy, sustainably sourced cork box. That box is recyclable, but it has a nonholiday feel well suited for storing things year-round.       Kiehl’s, the American heritage line now owned by L’Oréal, also produced an Advent calendar exclusively for Selfridges that seems destined for reuse: a heavy, long piece of organic cotton with 12 pocket-like compartments that might in the future hold socks rather than minis of the company’s Ultra Facial Cream and Amino Acid Shampoo. (The large bag it comes in, however, is intended for disposal: It is made of a mix of recycled paper and wild flower seeds that can be planted in soil.) Priced at 125 pounds ($161), the store’s initial stock briskly sold out. The brand is also offering a conventional Advent ($90) with wider distribution; its paper can be recycled.   Liberty London’s multibrand Advent calendar looks more traditional, printed with a version of the brand’s William Morris Strawberry Thief pattern.   This year’s iteration of the popular item — 15 percent of the stock, each one priced at £215, was sold in the first five minutes it became available — is fully recyclable, with internal drawers made of recycled cardboard, except for a magnet closure that can be snipped off.   Still, exterior packaging is only one element of gift sets. In multibrand samplers, only some of the lotions, creams and makeup items use environmentally minded ingredients.   And then there are the sample-size bottles and tubes that are a mainstay of holiday beauty sets. Although many brands claim that even their smallest containers are recyclable — and, strictly speaking, some are — Mr. Szaky says containers smaller than the average stick of deodorant are typically passed over by recyclers as less profitable to process.       “Many times, companies are communicating technical recyclability versus practical recyclability,” Mr. Szaky said.   “I don’t think it’s mal intent,” he added. “People aren’t trying to lie to you — they just don’t know the facts, and that could create false statements without the malice.”   Additionally, commonplace components in beauty packaging — like black plastic and colored glass — generally cannot be recycled, Mr. Szaky said.   Even well-intentioned retailers can find it a challenge to compile environmentally responsible brands for holiday beauty kits.   “Where we can, we always will try to be as sustainable as possible,” said Emily Bell, who oversees beauty buying at Liberty London. “However, some of the brands that are in there aren’t quite there yet in terms of being able to say that they’re 100 percent recyclable.”   Some of this season’s sets have a less flashy look than might be expected for the holidays. Three multibrand gift sets from Credo Beauty, which calls itself “the largest clean beauty store on the planet,” are packaged in a muted pastel box that is more restrained than jolly. And Floral Street, a London-based fragrance line, is offering 10-milliliter bottles of its scents in a gem-shaped paper package that resembles a tree ornament; it is colorful, but without the shine and brightness of conventional coated paper and petroleum-based ink.     “People will get used to that,” said Michelle Feeney, Floral Street’s founder. “The new generation now, for them trendy is thrift shopping and mixing it with something else. I’m feeling like there’s a whole generation that doesn’t want the shininess. I think brands will be forced to change by the consumer if they don’t try to lead the way themselves.”   Shoppers’ tendencies, are, of course, in part driving these shifts. “There’s definitely interest in the ingredients, in the products themselves being green, and along with that comes the concept of sustainability,” said Lauren Goodsitt, global beauty analyst at Mintel, a London-based marketing research company.   Ms. Goodsitt predicted that, although sustainable goods can cost more to make, more brands will offer them over the next five to 10 years.   “It’s a real commitment,” she said. “When you’re going to make that move for recyclable materials, if you’re switching out the types of plastics that you’re using, it’s definitely an investment for the brands. As consumers start to demand that this change is made, I think that we’ll see more and more brands making that shift.”

We have all been told to “reduce, reuse, and recycle” at least once in our lives. Those three magic words have always made it seem easy to help keep the planet clean. However, rising recycling issues mean the U.S. has to change its strategies toward waste, according to a new State of Recycling Survey conducted by U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund.   The report brings an honest interpretation of the current state of the recycling industry and just how many levels in which it is faltering. Especially since countries in Eastern Asia have started to refuse accepting recyclables from the United States, according to media reports. In a press release from the Public Interest Network, which operates more than 15 organizations including the U.S. PIRG, several states have been “failing to both reduce unnecessary waste and to adjust to a changing recycling landscape.”   According to Alex Truelove, U.S. PIRG Education Fund Zero Waste Program Director and report co-author, the main thing he wants people to take away from this report is that it is going to take multiple facets to fix the waste problem.   “We can't rely on recycling alone to fix our waste problems. Our systems were not designed to process many of the items we dispose of — single-use plastics in particular,” Truelove said. “To truly achieve a zero waste society, or anything close to it, reducing our waste and transitioning toward more reusable materials have to be the priorities moving forward. Recycling plays a role, but it should be a last resort, after reduction and reuse.”   At the 2019 Planet Forward Summit, Tom Szaky, the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, addressed how recycling is not enough in solving the waste problem. It is also going to take clean-up efforts and rethinking single-use items in its entirety.   “Recycling is the solution to the symptom of waste but not the cause of it,” Szaky said at the Summit. “It's not plastic that's the problem it is using all this stuff once.”   Truelove offers what he thinks needs to be done in order to solve the waste problem.   “A mix of good public policy and corporate action. From bottle bills to single-use plastic foam bans, we know better policies can reduce waste and drive corporations toward better practices,” Truelove said.   “We also know that meaningful corporate actions can influence the market and lay the groundwork for better policy. We need more of both," he said. "Consumers cannot be expected to move the market alone, we need to enable them to make better choices."   Policy change is another area that needs work to help correct the problem, according to Truelove.   “There are also opportunities to work with other countries to establish international laws and better practices, like ‘prior informed consent.’ In other words, agreeing to divulge what materials we're sending to other countries,” Truelove said.   Even though there are still plenty of materials that are being exchanged on the global market, Truelove said, plastic continues to be an issue.   “Plastic is the outlier, and I don't envision that market recovering because plastic — especially disposable plastic — remains low-value and hard-to-recycle. That's why we need to reduce our use of single-use plastic, first and foremost,” Truelove said.  

Most of us are familiar with recycling as a way to prevent litter and save resources. We look for the blue bin in public, many of us have curbside recycling pickup, and some have access to drop-off points provided by a municipality or local retailer. But as the world is waking up to the fact that most of our public recycling is not recycled, confusion abounds.

The focus on recycling has largely been on items generated in the kitchen or related to food and beverage (think aluminum cans, glass bottles), but the bathroom in particular is filled with products and packaging that are not municipally recyclable. All that plastic can be recycled, right? Not always, and infrequently.

Plastic personal care containers host a range of resin identification codes (not “recycling numbers,” as many believe) that indicate what type of plastic a container is made of. Because local programs accept different types of plastic, what’s recyclable in one town may not be in the next. This can be very confusing to consumers who want to do the right thing.

These are resin identification numbers (not “recycling numbers,” as many believe), and not all containers with these numbers can be recycled.

But the fact is very few items generated in the bathroom, many entirely made up of plastic, fall into the curbside recyclable category. The small sizes of the caps, pots, wands, trays of makeup and tubes of skin care fall through the cracks at recycling facilities. In addition, multi-compositional packages (i.e. metal spring in a plastic pump top, tube made of layers of plastic and foil) require separating and processing that your municipal recycler does not have the capability to handle.

Plus, nearly every color of plastic that isn’t clear or white (most beauty packages) is considered non-recyclable, because colors cannot be turned into any other color, which makes them undesirable in the market for raw material. With the high collection and processing costs for most personal care and cosmetics, landfilling and incineration are considered the easiest, least costly options.

Of course, this is at the expense of the environment, and the demand for accessible recycling options for cosmetic and beauty care products is recognized around the globe. Paula’s Choice, a premium beauty brand, is one of the latest companies to team up with TerraCycle to create a national recycling program to fill the gaps in the current system.

We’ve partnered on a free recycling program for all Paula’s Choice Skincare packaging. Image via TerraCycle.

Those familiar with TerraCycle know we believe everything is technically recyclable, having proven items such as cigarettes, chewing gum, and even dirty diapers can be repurposed into material for new products. The technology is there. But by sponsoring a national solution, beauty brands working with us also support an end-market for the material, ensuring the beauty and cosmetics empties are cycled around and turned into something new.

Not all plastics are considered recyclable, but personal care and cosmetics products are updating their offerings to address our desires to recycle more and reduce our impacts. By choosing brands committed to this ethos, you support companies and manufacturers stepping up to change, drive a shift away from the “business as usual” of non-recyclability, and create a more beautiful beauty industry overall.

The Second Annual Zero Waste Summit will convene March 24 to 26, 2020 at N.J.I.T in Newark, N.J. The Summit will continue the collaboration of strategy and Zero Waste goals to enable sustainability, profitability and resource optimization across the supply chain. This meeting will deep dive into linking regulations, policies, design, and permitting with reusable and reclaimed materials, link emerging waste technologies and consider the impacts for the digital economy on sustainability and waste. Its mission is to move towards Zero Waste goals and increased sustainability without sacrificing profitability. Key topics will include:

• Emerging Technologies for Waste Mitigation
• Recycling Technologies
• Trends in E Waste and Organics Disposal
• Zero Waste Supply Chain Optimization
• Sustainable Packaging and reuse
• Using water multiple times and mitigating wastewater
• Manufacturing in a shared services and circular economy
• Developing & Enabling Fed/State/Local  waste mitigation policies
• Monetizing waste and excess material across the value chain

Speakers include:

• Tom Szaky, CEO, TerraCycle
• Franklin L. Mink, Ph.D.,  President, MAI LLC , Former Director USEPA Health & Criteria
• Gary Oppenheimer, Founder/Executive Director, AmpleHarvest.org
• Tony Schifano, Founder, Antos Environmental
• Clare Miflin AIA, LEED AP BD+C, Certified Biomimicry Professional
• Sarah Currie-Halpern, Co-Founder, Think Zero LLC
• Dave Gajadhar, Chairperson, Companies for Zero Waste
• Dave Levine, President, American Sustainable Business Council
• Keefe Harrison, CEO, The Recycling Partnership- invited
• Richard Riman, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Rutgers University
• Stephanie Joy Benedetto, CEO, Queen of Raw
• Lisa Morales-Hellebo, Co-Founder, The World Supply Chain Federation

VANCOUVER – Thought leaders, innovators and global brands will converge on Vancouver over the next two days for the ninth annual Zero Waste Conference, hosted by Metro Vancouver.   The 2019 Zero Waste Conference brings change-makers and innovators from different sectors and around the globe to share their insights and winning strategies.   The two-day forum will highlight successes, pitfalls and opportunities as businesses and communities shift to zero waste principals, through in-depth sessions on business model transformation, plastics, design innovation and circular cities.   TIME AND LOCATION Wednesday, October 30: 8:45 a.m. – 4:45 p.m. Thursday, October 31: 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.   Vancouver Convention Centre East, 999 Canada Place Vancouver, BC V6C 3C1   SPEAKERS INCLUDE:  

• Opening Keynote Skylar Tibbits – Founder of the Self-Assembly Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Skylar will provoke audiences to radically reimagine how we use materials and interact with products in our daily lives – his vision is a world where buildings, products and machines are capable of self-assembly, repair and replication, without robotic parts.
• Closing Keynote Valerie Craig – Deputy to the Chief Scientist and Vice President of Operating Programs, National Geographic Society, Valerie will amplify the great challenges presented by plastics waste, questioning how we got here and discovering potential solutions that will require global thinking and human ingenuity.
• Harald Friedl, CEO, Circle Economy – Harald will share insights on how to accelerate the global transition to a circular economy: can it be the key to tackle the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and diminishing resources?
• Arthur Huang – With a vision where everything from consumer goods to buildings is made from recycled materials, Arthur is singlehandedly accelerating the shift to the circular economy. Through his company Miniwiz, he has created TRASHPRESSO, a portable, solar-powered recycling platform that turns plastic into new products in only ten minutes.
• Tom Szaky – The founder of TerraCycle and Loop, Tom presents a new way of shopping that eliminates single-use packaging. In Loop, products are delivered directly to customers in durable containers that are then collected and refilled at least a hundred times before being recycled.
• The conference also welcomes as speakers executives from Subaru, Unilever, Nature’s Path Foods, Canadian Tire, Ellen MacArther Foundation, The Finnish Innovation Fund: SITRA, Ocean Wise, City of Helsinki, Smart Prosperity Institute, Arup Canada, Cascades Recovery+, The Natural Step Canada, Recyc-Quebec, Metabolic, Recycling Council of Alberta, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

Baby food brand Ella's Kitchen has unveiled plans to roll out its recycling scheme for packaging which isn't collected at kerbsides nationally, after a successful trial with Asda and TerraCycle. Launched in April, the six-month trial saw Asda provide Freepost envelopes for baby food pouches at 37 of its UK stores.   Consumers were encouraged to place up to 15 food pouches from any brand in the envelopes for posting to TerraCycle, which recycles them into products such as outdoor furniture, playground equipment and fence posts.   Ella’s Kitchen and TerraCycle additionally continued to operate their flagship network of drop-off points for the pouches, of which there were 400 at the start of the trial, throughout the pilot project.   The baby food company this week announced that, during the trial, its pouch collections increased by 87% on a year-on-year basis. Moreover, the network of collection points – commonly hosted in locations such as schools, offices and community spaces – grew to reach more than 600 hubs.   As such, Ella’s Kitchen and Asda will be rolling out the Freepost envelope service nationally and offering it in 110 of its stores.   In order to incentivise consumers to use the collection points and Freepost service, TerraCycle rewards users with a donation to a charity, NGO or school of their choice.   “At Ella’s Kitchen, we continue to be really proud of our partnership with TerraCycle, having been one of their first partners in the UK,” Ella’s Kitchen’s head of ‘The Good Stuff We Do’, Chris Jenkins, said.   “Since 2010, our EllaCycle programme has been providing parents and carers with a solution for all their baby food pouches and snack wrappers.   “As part of our commitment to The UK Plastics Pact, we know more needs to be done and that if we are to build a circular economy for plastics then greater collaboration is still required between industry as well as waste handlers, packaging manufacturers, local authorities and Government. The partnership with ASDA is a really important one as it demonstrates that collaboration and a commitment to working together for a sustainable solution.”   A world without waste   TerraCycle has diverted more than 7.7 billion pieces from landfill or incineration through its recycling service to date. The offering has attracted the support of an array of brands in recent months, including the likes of Gillette, Hovis, Johnson & Johnson, Colgate Palmolive and  PepsiCo subsidiary Walkers – the latter of which is operating the UK’s first national recycling scheme for crisp packets.   But, going forward, the recycling firm is also hedging its bets on reuse. In a recent exclusive interview with edie, TerraCycle chief executive Tom Szaky revealed that an average of one brand per day has joined its ‘Loop’ platform since it was unveiled in January. Under the platform, businesses provide product refills to consumers while retaining ownership of their reusable packaging. Loop this week received a £1.56m fund from media giant Sky's Ocean Ventures investment arm, to support its UK launch next February.  

TerraCycle at edie’s Sustainability Leaders Forum 2020

  TerraCycle's chief executive Tom Szaky will be appearing at day two of edie's Sustainability Leaders Forum 2020, to deliver a keynote speech on resource efficiency. During the two-day event at London's Business Design Centre on 4 & 5 February, some of the biggest companies, individuals and organisations championing sustainability will gather to discuss the emergency response in transitioning to a net-zero economy.   The flagship, multi-award-winning event features keynotes speakers including former President of Ireland Mary Robinson; Rebecca Marmot, Unilever CSO; Gilbert Ghostine, Firmenich CEO, plus directors and senior managers from Pret-A-Manger, Interface, Vattenfall, John Lewis, Taylor Wimpey, Aviva, Pernod Ricard, LEGO Group, M&S, Diageo, Tesco, WSP, BASF, Mondelēz and more. For details and to register, visit: https://event.edie.net/forum/