Our society has a longstanding relationship with and dependency on single-use products. Businesses and consumers alike are accustomed to its virtues of cost and convenience, making everyday items accessible to more people than ever before. But because of this reliance and focus on a system that takes, makes and wastes products after one use, few guidelines or blueprints for viable, sustainable alternatives — including reuse — exist in a usable format. Reuse models are growing across the modern economy, but they are fragmented such that they cannot achieve impact of scale. Without foundational guidelines to drive collaboration, standardization and defining of best practices, it would be near-impossible for new and emerging reuse models to effectively implement or accelerate for impact. But there’s a case for doing so. Reuse systems can reduce plastic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions; and they are estimated to present a $10 billion business opportunity if only 20 percent of single-use packaging today were converted to reuse. So, how do we ensure everyone gets what they need out of their products — without the waste? Many would argue that ending packaging waste begins with design. Modern packages are lightweight, inexpensive and high-function (the world is used to the spouts, resealable closures, and easy-open tops of single-use containers), and literally designed to go in the trash. Defining the specifications of a package that can be physically and systematically reused is one of the first things to do. Then, determining exactly how many times said package can be cycled around (including collection, cleaning and refilling for the next person to enjoy) before it comes out superior to single-use demonstrates the value. The fewer times, the better; but a recommendation from an industry expert or experienced practitioner in the space can help businesses at different stages in their journey consider how and when reuse will work for them. There are a lot of ideas and concepts out there; but with so much work to do in solving single-use plastic waste, clear and consistent guardrails for reuse will steer the way for scaled, widespread adoption and impact. This is the purpose of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Consumers Beyond Waste (CBW) initiative’s community papers, released in conjunction with the WEF’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit during UN General Assembly week earlier this year. Featuring Design Guidelines, Safety Guidelines and The City Playbook, the documents are authored by a variety of contributors with a stake in the race to a less wasteful world; I am one of them — along with city officials, quality-assurance experts, retailers and many more leaders from the public and private sector. The papers offer a holistic view for reuse in different environments, as well as the different entry points for stakeholders along the supply chain. Offering recommendations based on experience, Loop has our own design guidelines for brands and manufacturers entering the platform — we recommend a product be able to withstand a minimum of 10 reuse cycles to qualify, and be recyclable into itself at the end of its life. Through this approach we have seen tremendous innovation, not just in sustainability but also in packaging design. Through reverse logistics, it’s possible to recover durable packaging forms in combinations of materials that improve functionality above and beyond the convenience of many single-use packages, such as a resealable food container or spring-loaded soap pump. Designing for reuse also includes the architecture of the systems packages flow through. Where Loop is a coalition of major consumer product companies and leading retailers working with trusted vendors to transport, clean, store and refill containers, it's a matter of front and backend design to enable a manufacturer to produce reusables that can be sold at any retailer for a consumer to buy and return anywhere, safely and conveniently. Where today’s largest scaled reuse model is pre-fill, which allows the consumer to buy filled products on a store shelf and return the empties into a bin (think beverages in Germany or propane tanks in the US), the challenge is that the models are incompatible: Empty propane tanks cannot be returned to the same location as an empty beer keg, and vice versa. Creating a “buy anywhere, return anywhere” ecosystem for reusables will make it easy for consumers to access, and businesses to sell. This, too, is a feat of design. Residents in Loop markets can now enter their favorite retailers and find a part of the store dedicated to reuse. With purchase, a deposit is paid, which is refunded in full upon return to any Loop retailer, putting this “waste” into a designated reuse bin versus a trash can or recycling bin. Just before the community papers I mentioned earlier, CBW released the Future of Reusable Consumption Models report, which outlined aspects of a “successful, large-scale, system-wide reuse paradigm.” One of these is consumer experience, where people have access to a variety of reusables that can compete with disposables on a number of scales, including convenience. People purchase consumables in a variety of settings, so it's important they have access to a variety of experiences. For grocery, we have Tesco in the UK; Carrefour in France; Aeon in Japan; and Walgreens and Kroger’s Fred Meyer banner coming soon in the US; and the biggest names in QSR (quick service restaurant): McDonald’s was the first to pilot the model in select stores in the UK, with Tim Horton’s in Canada and Burger King in several countries to follow. Which brings us to the matter of public health and safety, which have a great deal to do with packaging and systems design. Consumers need to know a system that circulates containers is safe and sanitary. Different product categories have different health and safety requirements — the food and beverage industry tends to have stricter standards than body care and cosmetics, for example. Packaging durability is a huge factor in designing for safety, as it impacts cleaning processes, degradation, and consumer safety and ease of use. If a package is cleaned 10 times at a certain temperature, materials must not prematurely degrade aesthetically or functionally; and if the type of material is one that might break with the consumer or along the route, design or logistics must allow it to do so safely; communications can support proper handling and education. Government plays a role in overseeing regulations for public health. As the Governor of the City of Tokyo stated in Loop and the World Economic Forum’s recent United Nations week press conference, “Large cities in developed countries, such as Tokyo, can make a significant impact on the global economy by playing a leading role,” noting reuse was standard in the region for glass bottles for beer, sake and more just 30 years ago. Cities are complex ecosystems that both exacerbate and suffer from the scale of the waste crisis. In the City Playbook, CBW notes some of the greatest challenges cities face are funding, infrastructure and institutional barriers; so, the consensus to pushing initiatives through includes seeking ways to answer big questions about viability and benefit. This is key to developing a roadmap for cities that is socially equitable, environmentally positive and safe. Examples of actions cities might take for the short term include aligning reuse with existing objectives (i.e. job creation and economic development) or testing reusables for city government administration (i.e. food service and cafeteria for public buildings), so as to engage policymakers, NGOs, local businesses, media, residents and the many other internal and external stakeholders towards the vision for a circular city. Points of consensus are milestones in the journey out of the waste crisis. Agreement on key areas of design, safety and city programming minimizes risk, drives collaboration and provides changemakers trustworthy information for stewarding reuse strategies and program development within organizations. There’s so much room for innovation; but to bring them to scale, actors must come together over a shared vision, with the resources to back it up.

Eric Rosenbaum   KEY POINTS

• Terracycle and Loop founder and CEO Tom Szaky says the economics of the recycling business are broken in key ways, but consumer and corporate interest in building a circular economy continues to grow.
• Low oil prices, bans on imported recyclables in countries like China, and the latest trends in packaging design make it harder to recycle.
• Still, the recycling CEO says getting to a low-waste or even zero-waste economy is the way the world once was and can be again.

  Recycling may make you feel better in a very small way about your role in helping to avert a global apocalypse, but even in “friendly” places, from John Oliver to NPR podcasts, recycling, especially of plastics, is being given a hard look. More people are wondering: Does it work? The debate is not new. For years the economics of plastic recycling have been questioned. But the problem is not going away. The globe is already producing two trillion tons of solid waste a year and is on pace to add more than a trillion more on an annual basis in the coming decades, according to World Bank data. A recent study found that the 20 top petrochemical companies in the world, among the group Exxon Mobil and Dow, are responsible for 55% of the world’s single-use plastic waste, and in the U.S., specifically, we are generating about 50 kilograms of throwaway plastic a year, per person. The Covid pandemic has heightened attention to the issue, as use of disposable goods went up anywhere from 30% to 50%, according to Tom Szaky, CEO of recycling companies Terracycle and Loop, who joined CNBC’s Leslie Picker on a recent CNBC Evolve Livestream about sustainability and business. He says concerns about the macroeconomics of waste management systems suffering economically are real, and there are ways to solve it that don’t just rely on government. We all need to take a deeper look at how we recycle beyond the feel-good blue bin, and what we can do to get past the problems. 1. The economics of recycling are broken. Szaky says recent reporting on the economic issues for plastics recycling and restrictions around the world on imported recyclables, which are both weighing on the sector, are not an anti-environmental attack but “absolutely rooted in facts.” He says it is important for consumers to understand that just because you recycle an item does not mean it will be recycled in the end. “What makes something be recycled in a country doesn’t have to do with what we normally think: Can it be recycled? Most of the things we put in blue bins that are not recycled are put in the garbage because they are things waste companies can’t make money off, and that is the true bottleneck,” he said. The right question is “Can a garbage company, the actual company in charge of the recycling in the geography, recycle it at a profit?” According to Szaky, what’s happened is a profitability model that is decreasing as oil prices have gone down, which started in 2015, and even after a commodities market recovery post-Covid, have stayed down relative to recent history. The petrochemicals companies that make plastics rely less on recyclables when the price of their core commodity, oil, is lower. Second, China stopped importing recyclable waste, a move followed by other countries in 2018. Both issues are critically important to the business model of recycling and the health of the infrastructure because they circle back around to how much demand there is to collect those material types. “And it all hurt the business construct for recycling companies and that means our recycling capabilities are deteriorating,” Szaky said. “Recycling is not out there trying to do the best it can but maximize profit and we need to think about that as we aim for a more circular economy,” he said. 2. A packaging industry mega trend is working against recycling The biggest global trend in packaging is not helping. Efforts to reduce costs in products and packaging are “objectively reducing value” Szaky said, “which also makes them less recyclable.” The “lightweighting” of packages, making them have less physical material and more complexity as a result of that design challenge, makes them less profitable to recycle. All of these economic issues lead to a situation in which what people would like to see is not what they would actually see if they went behind the scenes in the recycling industry. But Szaky says at the same time, consumers want to recycle more, and more companies are leaning into their own recycling. What companies decide to do about recycling on their own initiative — and pay for — can be done in spite of the challenging economics and can still pay off for the companies in the future. That’s the Terracycle business model, working with companies to fund their own voluntary recycling efforts. And that is more important at a time when the economics of consumer recycling are a mess. 3. Why companies don’t recycle enough, but should more Szaky says what’s really important right now is companies deciding to lean in and create their own recycling programs. But he says it is still not easy for the corporate mindset to embrace. “As a retailer or brand, if you just frame it as ‘the right thing to do’ the funding will be small and sporadic because there is no P&L logic to do it. But if you can use it to drive foot traffic like Walmart with car seats or Staples with pens, it can be monetizable,” he said. Brands that run their own recycling programs should be doing it as part of a plan to drive more market share and brand preference. And he says it becomes “monetizable in a recognizable way” the bigger they become and the faster they can grow. “That is true for any sustainability measure a company is looking to implement in the short term.” Some products won’t be recycled unless companies are the recycler. A dirty diaper or toothbrush or cigarette is not recyclable because it costs too much. It is another economic problem, not a physics or chemistry one. Terracycle recently launched a diaper recycling program in Holland and now it is expanding to many countries. “Diaper recycling doesn’t make sense from an economic perspective. It is expensive to collect and process,” Szaky said. But for the company that leads, “it can drive core value maybe better than TV ads,” he added. Consumers want to do the right thing, and companies may want to do the right thing as well in acknowledging an environmental crisis — and fund a feel-good marketing campaign — but Szaky stressed that they need to see “not just the right thing, but that it will pay back.” Szaky’s other business, Loop, which works with companies on circular economy production, recently teamed with a luxury watchmaker on the world’s tallest landfill: Mt. Everest. The mountain is littered with oxygen tanks from previous climbs and the watchmaker was able to both clean up the mess, an expensive undertaking, and source metal for its watches, which may add to the story it sells consumers in a way competitors can’t match. 4. The real solution is obvious: Consuming less The white elephant, the fundamental answer to the challenge, is modulating consumption downward, but Szaky says that is a hard one for the business world to champion. “It is fundamentally de-growth.” Loop, even working with companies to create products from recyclables and where the recycling is part of the product story and selling point, “is not the answer to the garbage problem,” he says. It may be among the best ways to manage waste in a circular economy, but Szaky says we will need to aim to go back to a world where garbage doesn’t exist. “Before the 1950s, we received milk from the milkman and mended clothes and cobbled shoes,” he says. Reuse does still exist at scale today in certain markets, such as beer kegs and propane tanks, but not nearly enough, and without the convenience of an infrastructure which makes return easy and widespread. That is one of the keys he sees for the future. 5. Reusable versus recyclable While the goal of zero waste is ambitious, it is realistic to imagine a world in which more consumer products become reusable, if they can be easily returned in the circular economy. Reusable versions of products from Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Kroger, Walgreens, and hundreds of other retailers are being, or will in the future, be made available to consumers. We can switch a consumer who maybe doesn’t even care about sustainability and that’s frankly the most important. We need to bring everyone along, not just people who view this as a high-passion project. Szaky envisions the buy-and-return-anywhere model as a key one for the future. “Buy your favorite shampoo bottle in a reusable form at a Walgreens in New York and drop it off at Burger King and buy an Impossible Whopper in reusable packaging too, and drop that off somewhere else.” This model can help solve a big problem: consumer behavior. Szaky says while there is a significant consumer market motivated by environmental concerns and consumption, for the recycling industry to really work it needs to avoid relying on the most-motivated consumers. Even plastic recycling that is economic today, such as soda bottles, only results in 1 in 4 bottles being recycled. The No. 1 goal for most consumers will remain convenience and value. A reusable package is an upgrade over a disposable package in an objective way, and with the convenience of drop-off locations it can lead to an easier shift in behavior, but it has to be offered at the right value to consumers. “With all three things coming together we can switch a consumer who maybe doesn’t even care about sustainability and that’s frankly the most important,” Szaky said. “We need to bring everyone along, not just people who view this as a high-passion project.” 6. Economics are busted but the recycling mindset matters For all the debate over recycling and the hard facts about its economics, Szaky says there is a reason we talk about it so much. The individual journey with sustainability always begins with recycling. And that remains key and a reason to figure out how to fix its short-term and long-term challenges. When people start recycling, it does open the pathways to a broader change in mindset. “It may lead to a plant-based diet instead of animal protein, or a smaller life, or biking ... creating even more important outcomes,” he says. “But first we have to solve the business problem.”

Eric Rosenbaum   KEY POINTS

• Terracycle and Loop founder and CEO Tom Szaky says the economics of the recycling business are broken in key ways, but consumer and corporate interest in building a circular economy continues to grow.
• Low oil prices, bans on imported recyclables in countries like China, and the latest trends in packaging design make it harder to recycle.
• Still, the recycling CEO says getting to a low-waste or even zero-waste economy is the way the world once was and can be again.

  Recycling may make you feel better in a very small way about your role in helping to avert a global apocalypse, but even in “friendly” places, from John Oliver to NPR podcasts, recycling, especially of plastics, is being given a hard look. More people are wondering: Does it work? The debate is not new. For years the economics of plastic recycling have been questioned. But the problem is not going away. The globe is already producing two trillion tons of solid waste a year and is on pace to add more than a trillion more on an annual basis in the coming decades, according to World Bank data. A recent study found that the 20 top petrochemical companies in the world, among the group Exxon Mobil and Dow, are responsible for 55% of the world’s single-use plastic waste, and in the U.S., specifically, we are generating about 50 kilograms of throwaway plastic a year, per person. The Covid pandemic has heightened attention to the issue, as use of disposable goods went up anywhere from 30% to 50%, according to Tom Szaky, CEO of recycling companies Terracycle and Loop, who joined CNBC’s Leslie Picker on a recent CNBC Evolve Livestream about sustainability and business. He says concerns about the macroeconomics of waste management systems suffering economically are real, and there are ways to solve it that don’t just rely on government. We all need to take a deeper look at how we recycle beyond the feel-good blue bin, and what we can do to get past the problems. 1. The economics of recycling are broken. Szaky says recent reporting on the economic issues for plastics recycling and restrictions around the world on imported recyclables, which are both weighing on the sector, are not an anti-environmental attack but “absolutely rooted in facts.” He says it is important for consumers to understand that just because you recycle an item does not mean it will be recycled in the end. “What makes something be recycled in a country doesn’t have to do with what we normally think: Can it be recycled? Most of the things we put in blue bins that are not recycled are put in the garbage because they are things waste companies can’t make money off, and that is the true bottleneck,” he said. The right question is “Can a garbage company, the actual company in charge of the recycling in the geography, recycle it at a profit?” According to Szaky, what’s happened is a profitability model that is decreasing as oil prices have gone down, which started in 2015, and even after a commodities market recovery post-Covid, have stayed down relative to recent history. The petrochemicals companies that make plastics rely less on recyclables when the price of their core commodity, oil, is lower. Second, China stopped importing recyclable waste, a move followed by other countries in 2018. Both issues are critically important to the business model of recycling and the health of the infrastructure because they circle back around to how much demand there is to collect those material types. “And it all hurt the business construct for recycling companies and that means our recycling capabilities are deteriorating,” Szaky said. “Recycling is not out there trying to do the best it can but maximize profit and we need to think about that as we aim for a more circular economy,” he said. 2. A packaging industry mega trend is working against recycling The biggest global trend in packaging is not helping. Efforts to reduce costs in products and packaging are “objectively reducing value” Szaky said, “which also makes them less recyclable.” The “lightweighting” of packages, making them have less physical material and more complexity as a result of that design challenge, makes them less profitable to recycle. All of these economic issues lead to a situation in which what people would like to see is not what they would actually see if they went behind the scenes in the recycling industry. But Szaky says at the same time, consumers want to recycle more, and more companies are leaning into their own recycling. What companies decide to do about recycling on their own initiative — and pay for — can be done in spite of the challenging economics and can still pay off for the companies in the future. That’s the Terracycle business model, working with companies to fund their own voluntary recycling efforts. And that is more important at a time when the economics of consumer recycling are a mess. 3. Why companies don’t recycle enough, but should more Szaky says what’s really important right now is companies deciding to lean in and create their own recycling programs. But he says it is still not easy for the corporate mindset to embrace. “As a retailer or brand, if you just frame it as ‘the right thing to do’ the funding will be small and sporadic because there is no P&L logic to do it. But if you can use it to drive foot traffic like Walmart with car seats or Staples with pens, it can be monetizable,” he said. Brands that run their own recycling programs should be doing it as part of a plan to drive more market share and brand preference. And he says it becomes “monetizable in a recognizable way” the bigger they become and the faster they can grow. “That is true for any sustainability measure a company is looking to implement in the short term.” Some products won’t be recycled unless companies are the recycler. A dirty diaper or toothbrush or cigarette is not recyclable because it costs too much. It is another economic problem, not a physics or chemistry one. Terracycle recently launched a diaper recycling program in Holland and now it is expanding to many countries. “Diaper recycling doesn’t make sense from an economic perspective. It is expensive to collect and process,” Szaky said. But for the company that leads, “it can drive core value maybe better than TV ads,” he added. Consumers want to do the right thing, and companies may want to do the right thing as well in acknowledging an environmental crisis — and fund a feel-good marketing campaign — but Szaky stressed that they need to see “not just the right thing, but that it will pay back.” Szaky’s other business, Loop, which works with companies on circular economy production, recently teamed with a luxury watchmaker on the world’s tallest landfill: Mt. Everest. The mountain is littered with oxygen tanks from previous climbs and the watchmaker was able to both clean up the mess, an expensive undertaking, and source metal for its watches, which may add to the story it sells consumers in a way competitors can’t match. 4. The real solution is obvious: Consuming less The white elephant, the fundamental answer to the challenge, is modulating consumption downward, but Szaky says that is a hard one for the business world to champion. “It is fundamentally de-growth.” Loop, even working with companies to create products from recyclables and where the recycling is part of the product story and selling point, “is not the answer to the garbage problem,” he says. It may be among the best ways to manage waste in a circular economy, but Szaky says we will need to aim to go back to a world where garbage doesn’t exist. “Before the 1950s, we received milk from the milkman and mended clothes and cobbled shoes,” he says. Reuse does still exist at scale today in certain markets, such as beer kegs and propane tanks, but not nearly enough, and without the convenience of an infrastructure which makes return easy and widespread. That is one of the keys he sees for the future. 5. Reusable versus recyclable While the goal of zero waste is ambitious, it is realistic to imagine a world in which more consumer products become reusable, if they can be easily returned in the circular economy. Reusable versions of products from Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Kroger, Walgreens, and hundreds of other retailers are being, or will in the future, be made available to consumers. We can switch a consumer who maybe doesn’t even care about sustainability and that’s frankly the most important. We need to bring everyone along, not just people who view this as a high-passion project. Szaky envisions the buy-and-return-anywhere model as a key one for the future. “Buy your favorite shampoo bottle in a reusable form at a Walgreens in New York and drop it off at Burger King and buy an Impossible Whopper in reusable packaging too, and drop that off somewhere else.” This model can help solve a big problem: consumer behavior. Szaky says while there is a significant consumer market motivated by environmental concerns and consumption, for the recycling industry to really work it needs to avoid relying on the most-motivated consumers. Even plastic recycling that is economic today, such as soda bottles, only results in 1 in 4 bottles being recycled. The No. 1 goal for most consumers will remain convenience and value. A reusable package is an upgrade over a disposable package in an objective way, and with the convenience of drop-off locations it can lead to an easier shift in behavior, but it has to be offered at the right value to consumers. “With all three things coming together we can switch a consumer who maybe doesn’t even care about sustainability and that’s frankly the most important,” Szaky said. “We need to bring everyone along, not just people who view this as a high-passion project.” 6. Economics are busted but the recycling mindset matters For all the debate over recycling and the hard facts about its economics, Szaky says there is a reason we talk about it so much. The individual journey with sustainability always begins with recycling. And that remains key and a reason to figure out how to fix its short-term and long-term challenges. When people start recycling, it does open the pathways to a broader change in mindset. “It may lead to a plant-based diet instead of animal protein, or a smaller life, or biking ... creating even more important outcomes,” he says. “But first we have to solve the business problem.”

As shopping from home grows, packaging waste is piling up. Loop offers an alternative: a delivery service for food and home goods that picks up used product packaging, then cleans and reuses it to eliminate trash. Earth911 talks with Heather Crawford, global vice president of marketing and e-commerce at Loop, about the company’s expansion into Canada. Loop now offers service in the U.S., U.K., and France. Its Loop Tote bag is dropped off and picked up by FedEx, and it will soon offer in-store Tote exchanges at Kroger, Walgreens, and Canada’s Loblaws locations. Crawford shares how Loop, which was launched by specialty recycling company TerraCycle, designs reusable packaging that can be repeatedly cleaned and refilled with products in order to reduce post-consumer waste. We also discuss the sustainability of online shopping and how, at scale, it can be more efficient than traditional bricks-and-mortar retail shopping. Loop is partnering with several grocery and drugstore chains to introduce in-store Tote pick-up and drop-off services. Both at-home and retail services are essential to reaching consumers who want to remove single-use packaging from their shopping list. Loop currently offers hundreds of product options and is expanding its partnerships with food and personal care brands to introduce more reusable product packaging. Take a few minutes to learn more at the U.S. Loop store, Canadian store, U.K. store, or the French store.

Tom Szaky says, “Wow! " Maybe he plugs his nose like we all do, but in front of a full Pampers - just like in front of a cigarette butt, glasses of glasses thrown in the trash or fabrics with enigmatic names of fibers doomed to the dumps. - he sees the opportunity to find a solution. Born in Hungary, arrived in Toronto at the age of 5, now living in New Jersey - he studied at Princeton -, Tom Szaky is truly one of the entrepreneurs who stand out in the world by greedily embracing the challenges of the circular economy. You may know one of his babies, Loop, a company already present in the United States, France and the United Kingdom, which has just arrived in Canada and which allows brands sold in supermarkets to use containers. recorded. It's being tested in Toronto now, in partnership with Loblaw and other well-known brands, such as Heinz or Häagen-Dazs. "It's been just over a week and we've exceeded our one-month goals," Szaky said in a telephone interview. Basically: we order online, it is delivered by Loop, the customer consumes the contents - soup, ketchup, juice, etc. -, and the container is then taken back by a delivery system which will carry everything for cleaning. Then the containers will return to the brands, who will refill them, resell them. You get the picture. And it will be in Montreal at the beginning of 2022, the garbage recycling giant told me. Because there isn't just Loop in the life of the 39-year-old entrepreneur. There is also TerraCycle, his first company, dedicated to the transformation of waste. His first product, at the very beginning, in 2001, was kitchen waste, which he vermicomposted, sold in recycled plastic bottles. But today, it has gone much further in the recovery and transformation of waste long considered irrecoverable, such as dirty disposable diapers - which its teams make into plastics in particular - and cigarette butts, from which they also extract plastics from the filter, while composting the rest of the tobacco. TerraCycle also works to collect and process plastic bottles around the world. Because the company is everywhere, from Tokyo to Trenton, in Ontario, present in twenty countries. With laboratories all over the place, but mainly in New Jersey - in a landfill - TerraCycle is constantly doing research. Its business model: wait for a major player to ask for its help. The company does not seek to sell its green solutions. She finds solutions for those who want them. In large scale. Its partners are called Walgreens, Home Hardware, Procter & Gamble… The list goes on. One of the next projects: promoting waste as an information medium. The contents of diapers say a lot about the health of babies, as does used oil on the condition of engines, says Tom Szaky. You might as well take advantage of everything that can be revealed.   Another avenue explored: the Loop system of material reuse in a loop, but applied to cloth diapers and children's clothing. It's coming fast in the United States and the United Kingdom. In both cases, in partnership with very large companies. So, we forget the small community cloth diaper cleaning service. We think big brands sold in supermarkets. With cleaning, transport and reuse systems in the case of diapers. And simply a cash deposit system, such as a deposit, in the case of baby clothes. Deposit that we recover, of course, by bringing back clothes that have become too small. *** TerraCycle is not a newcomer to the world of waste recovery and recycling. It was founded in 2001 when young Szaky was a student at Princeton. It was during a trip with friends from university to Montreal, at this time, that he saw for the first time worms transforming organic waste into compost and that he had the idea of make the first product of his waste recovery business. Today, about a third of the company's work is industrial waste, and the rest is our everyday consumer waste. The next challenge right now is, you guessed it, on the side of masks, gloves and all the disposable equipment used in the fight against COVID-19. “There's a whole new stream of waste here,” says Szaky. TerraCycle takes care of it.   But the real challenge, 20 years after the discovery of vermicomposting, is no longer concentrated at all towards the quest for new waste streams, new gold in the bins. The new frontier is logistics on a large scale, the search for solutions that work on a large scale and, above all, very, very large. Loop, for example, now operates on a large scale in the United Kingdom with the giant Tesco, in France with Carrefour, and in the United States with notably Walgreens and Burger King! Major players.   Currently, explains Mr. Szaky, there is a remarkable awakening of individuals to the need to produce less waste as well as to recover and reuse objects. Consumers' support is therefore less difficult to obtain than before. Loop's home in Toronto is one example, as is the proliferation of grocery stores offering unpackaged products. But the world of recovery and reuse is also becoming more complex, and the financial challenges are not trivial. The price of oil is low, so there is less reason to want to recover its derivatives otherwise. Also, the raw material is not what it was 20 years ago. There is less waste than before, they are lighter, packaging is often made with more complex materials, more difficult to work with and to break down. (Besides, Szaky thinks that packaging should be simplified, not become more and more multi-layered and multi-material.) Countries that bought waste from others became more demanding. We saw it, in Quebec, when China started to refuse our waste.   When I ask him if the company also intends to take new paths to integrate its work into larger, more global pollution reduction systems, Tom Szaky answers no. “You want to focus on one problem and be good,” he says. So Loop does not come with a guarantee of green transport, for example. It is up to the partners to then be consistent. In France, Carrefour is looking for a solution for “green” delivery. And can consumers do more to recycle better?   Should we buy everything second-hand? At TerraCycle, offices all over the planet are fitted out and furnished with recycled materials, used objects. “Actually, no,” Mr. Szaky replies. “What is needed more than anything is buying less. "

TerraCycle’s reuse platform Loop is now available online in every ZIP code in the 48 contiguous states, a major milestone after the program first launched in 2019. Kroger and Loblaw are partners of the platform, among other retailers, and a TerraCylce representative recently told Store Brands that it would be developing a reusable container for select private brands to buy at those physical stores in 2021. The Loop program began in the Northeastern United States and Paris, France, and entered the United Kingdom in July, working with more than 80 brands and 400 products globally. More than 100,000 people have signed up for the service. Loop enables shoppers to buy brands in a durable, reusable package. It’s a circular system, designed to end single-use packaging. For example, a shopper can buy a silver tin for Haagen-Dazs ice cream that was developed with Loop from a retailer like Kroger or Walgreens, which gets shipped by Loop (or picked up at the store) and then shopper returns the container when done through Loop’s shipping system to get it refilled. The company likens it to the days of the milkman.

It’s a bit of an understatement to say that health concerns are currently driving consumer behaviors and purchases in today’s marketplace. Research conducted by Paris-based Ipsos in July showed that 85% of consumers are concerned about the COVID-19 outbreak. According to the Washington, D.C.-based International Food Information Council, that same percentage of consumers (85%) reported that they’ve changed the way they eat or prepare food in the wake of the pandemic. While the novel coronavirus is a major, and arguably overriding, worry, that doesn’t mean that people aren’t making decisions based on other timely situations, from social issues to environmental concerns.