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How two companies are building systems to scale reuse, which is vital for a circular economy
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6.11.2020 |
Business Operations | GreenBiz.com |
| How two companies are building systems to scale reuse, which is vital for a circular economy Deonna Anderson Fri, 11/06/2020 - 01:15
In the past few years, as consumers looked to cut down on plastic waste at the grocery store, more mainstream supermarkets turned to bulk shopping bins as a solution. But scoop bins quickly have become a thing of the past this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For MOM's Organic Market, a chain of family-owned and operated grocers in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States that has the purpose of protecting and restoring the environment, it was only a small adjustment.
"[Our reuse] programs are all still in operation, and we're minimally impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic," said Alexandra DySard, environmental and partnership manager at MOM's Organic Market, during GreenBiz Group’s clean economy conference VERGE 20 last week.
The chain has taken an innovative tack: it's still encouraging its shoppers to use reusable containers for all areas of its stores, but it's ... |
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Also found in: [+]
[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
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Reusable Packaging: Scaling Past a Pandemic
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16.9.2020 |
Energy & Climate | Greenbiz.com |
| Reusable Packaging: Scaling Past a Pandemic
How can companies shift to reusable packaging models while dissuading concerns for safety and contamination?
Since the day of the milkman, companies have launched untold schemes to skip recycling for its less energy- and material-intensive cousin: reuse. While using packaging over and over again is no new concept, recent business model innovations have seen a resurgence of reuse-inspired services. But as health and safety concerns take center stage, the future of reuse has been called into question. This discussion introduces the multitude of ways retailers and brands are enacting reuse models, including systems for refill, returnable packaging or optimising the supply-chain with reusable transport packaging. The panel explores what opportunities reuse can afford, including brand loyalty, optimized operations, and reduced costs, while exploring how brands can address contamination concerns head on. Take a deep dive into the opportunities and obstacles to ... |
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Also found in: [+]
[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
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Reusable Packaging: Innovators Showcase
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15.9.2020 |
Small Business | GreenBiz.com |
| Reusable Packaging: Innovators Showcase
Who are the emerging leaders in reusable packaging? In less than a year, reuse models have become one of the hottest topics in the world of packaging. The growing interest comes from the recognition that reuse models offer the potential to unlock significant business benefits whilst allowing the delivery of products to users safely (with sanitation practices fit for a post-pandemic world) without a reliance on disposable packaging. Globally, replacing just 20 percent of single-use plastic packaging with reusable alternatives is conservatively estimated to be an opportunity worth at least $10 billion. This discussion introduces three different reuse business models that have made it beyond the pilot stage, and reveal some of their plans to bring such solutions to scale.
Speakers
Annette Lendal, Project Manager, New Plastics Economy, Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Ashley Etling, CEO & Co-Founder, Limeloop
José Manuel Moller Dominguez, CEO & Founder, Algramo
Safia ... |
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[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
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Is There a Role of Waste to Energy in the Circular Economy?
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11.9.2020 |
Business Operations | GreenBiz.com |
| Is There a Role of Waste to Energy in the Circular Economy?
Americans create a lot of solid waste – to the tune of 268 million tons in 2017 alone. While many localities and companies are championing zero-waste plans to divert materials that have a second life (think recycling, reusing and composting), the majority of U.S. garbage still ends up in the landfill. What's the best use of that garbage?
This discussion explores the polarizing world of waste-to-energy through incineration and gasification. Experts discuss if it ever makes sense to generate energy from trash, and break down the environmental and social pitfalls.
Speakers
Sarah Golden, Senior Energy Analyst & VERGE Energy Chair, GreenBiz Group
Will Thorburn, Director, Cleantech Strategy & Investments, Cox
Holly Secon Thu, 09/10/2020 - ... |
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[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
[flenvcenter :: Recycling and Composting]
[flenvcenter :: Recycling and Composting]
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Circular economy startups compete at Circularity 2020, taking on shoes to shelf-life
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31.8.2020 |
Design & Innovation | GreenBiz.com |
| Circular economy startups compete at Circularity 2020, taking on shoes to shelf-life Holly Secon Mon, 08/31/2020 - 01:00
A circular economy is urgently required for the shift to a more sustainable planet. But it will take new, innovative ideas to build a global system that uses and reuses all of the resources within it and moves us away from the deeply entrenched extractive system under which the modern world functions.
At Circularity 20, GreenBiz’s online circular economy event, five startups presented their potentially world-altering ideas during the Accelerate competition. This GreenBiz tradition began in 2012 at its VERGE events, offering a venue where startups make a 2.5-minute pitch of their technology to the audience.
During last week's event, the online audience voted on its favorite, and an expert panel of Taj Eldridge, senior director of investments at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), and Monique Mills, with the Startup Catalyst at the Advanced Technology Development Center at ... |
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[flenvcenter :: Environment]
[flenvcenter :: Impacts]
[flenvcenter :: Local Food Systems]
[flenvcenter :: Sustainable Agriculture]
[flenvcenter :: Green Purchasing]
[flenvcenter :: Green Purchasing]
[flenvcenter :: Community]
[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
[flenvcenter :: Impacts]
[flenvcenter :: Community]
[flenvcenter :: Local Food Systems]
[flenvcenter :: Environment]
[flenvcenter :: Sustainable Agriculture]
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Reusable packaging provides untapped payoffs for business
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13.8.2020 |
Business Operations | GreenBiz.com |
| Reusable packaging provides untapped payoffs for business Joana Kleine Jäger Thu, 08/13/2020 - 01:45
Remember the time when milk was delivered to your door in reusable glass bottles? If not, you were probably born during the plastics-era, which began about 50 years ago. Until the 1980s, glass or cotton bags were the go-to packaging materials for many products, such as milk and flour. Today, plastic has taken over.
In 2018, 40 percent of the 360 million tonnes of plastics produced globally were converted to packaging. Prized for its durability and ultimate convenience, the plastic addiction from business to consumer is proving hard to shift. But the increasing presence of post-consumer plastic littering the natural environment is a sobering reminder of the extent of damage our love affair with plastic has delivered. Ultimately, we cannot fix this with recycling alone. Alternative materials and models such as bio-based packaging and reuse offer a prime opportunity to extend the lifetime of valuable ... |
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Also found in: [+]
[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
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How Perdue, Smithfield and Silver Fern Farms are reducing packaging waste
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17.6.2020 |
Resource Efficiency | GreenBiz.com |
| Perdue Farms
Close Authorship
Generally speaking, zero waste strategies for animal protein companies don’t cover the meat, organs or bones of the slaughtered animals. Finding partners that can use those items is embedded into the core business strategy. Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor, for example, created the Smithfield BioScience division in 2017 to come up with solutions for using meat production by-products such as mucosa, glands and skin for medical applications.
From a corporate perspective, Smithfield’s commitment is to reduce overall solid waste sent to landfills by 75 percent by 2025. In the U.S., it plans to certify at least three-quarters of its facilities as zero waste by that time frame. (It has 35 of them.)
The designation calls for it to recycle or reuse at least 50 percent of the waste at a given facility. So far, Smithfield has certified 30 percent of its U.S. sites including its largest facility in Vernon, California, according to the company's 2019 sustainability ... |
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Also found in: [+]
[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
[flenvcenter :: Recycling and Composting]
[flenvcenter :: Disposal]
[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
[flenvcenter :: Recycling and Composting]
[flenvcenter :: Disposal]
[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
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How we can fight the pandemic by embracing circularity
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12.6.2020 |
Resource Efficiency | GreenBiz.com |
| How we can fight the pandemic by embracing circularity Garry Cooper Fri, 06/12/2020 - 01:30
Throughout the pandemic response, a key issue has been a lack of communication and coordination to get personal protective equipment (PPE) and other medical supplies to where they are most needed, with many areas of the country suffering from severe resource shortages as a result. The only truly successful solution has been, and will continue to be, to strategically adopt two core elements of a circular economy model: reuse and resource sharing.
The key goals of the circular economy are " designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems ." Unlike in our current linear economic model, which generally discards materials once used, the circular economy enables more value to be extracted from an item by eschewing the "take-make-waste" pattern. In a situation where supply is limited, the circular model gets far more use out of the same supply.
While the need for ... |
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How Dell and Levi's envision the future of repair
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27.5.2020 |
Design & Innovation | GreenBiz.com |
| How Dell and Levi's envision the future of repair Elsa Wenzel Wed, 05/27/2020 - 02:00
Doing away with a culture of disposability is one of the big dreams of the circular economy. A jolt in this direction came overnight as COVID-19 drove people indoors, forcing many to rethink how they reduce, reuse or recycle items they took for granted only weeks earlier.
As U.S. unemployment claims soared to 30 million, buying non-essentials became an act of either audacity or foolishness. Even window shopping has been confined to a web browser. People have been making every can of beans and square of toilet paper last.
"Like it or not, the coronavirus is changing the rules of consumption," said GreenBiz Editorial Director Heather Clancy during the Circularity Digital virtual event last week. "Millions of consumers are putting off retail purchases and looking at the stuff in their closets and cabinets and desktops in a very different way. Why should this item be thrown away when it could be repaired or refreshed and ... |
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[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
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How TerraCycle's safety and cleaning practices can be adopted across industries
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22.5.2020 |
Design & Innovation | GreenBiz.com |
| How TerraCycle's safety and cleaning practices can be adopted across industries Deonna Anderson Fri, 05/22/2020 - 00:05
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the safety of reuse into question. But Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle, thinks when the crisis is over there will be even more opportunity for reusable packaging and containers to become more commonplace, if done right.
"Recycling is going to take a real punch to the face, to be quite fair," Szaky said during GreenBiz Group’s Circularity 20 Digital event this week, pointing to the continued decrease in oil prices and the pressure that's putting on the economics of using recycled plastics. "That’s disastrous for the recycling industry, which creates its revenue by selling recycled plastics, which are hedged against, in many ways, the price of oil."
Many recycling activities have been paused as the pandemic has raised health and safety concerns, which could lead to a waste crisis post-pandemic, he said. Recycling centers have closed temporarily or ... |
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Bush Brothers counts on water reuse to reduce local impact of bean production
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20.5.2020 |
Resource Efficiency | GreenBiz.com |
| Bush Brothers counts on water reuse to reduce local impact of bean production Jesse Klein Wed, 05/20/2020 - 03:20
"There was nothing except a pipe going out the back of the plant."
This was how Rodney Aulick, president of integrated solutions and services at Evoqua Water Technologies, described the wastewater system at Bush Brothers and Company’s Tennessee plant, when it first engaged with the food company.
Bush Brothers is the largest manufacturer of prepared beans in the United States, and its work with water treatment titan Evoqua resulted in massive improvements, Aulick said. The plant is now able to reuse much of its water, lowering the strain on the community system and environment as a whole. The company is also better equipped to tightly control its water usage, according to Evoqua.
Bush Brothers, a family-owned business, has been operating in the small community of Chestnut Hill, Tennessee, for over 110 years. The company keeps the community in mind when pushing for new production goals and ... |
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[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
[flenvcenter :: Socially-Responsible Investing]
[flenvcenter :: Socially-Responsible Investing]
[flenvcenter :: Irrigation]
[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
[flenvcenter :: Water Treatment]
[flenvcenter :: Irrigation]
[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
[flenvcenter :: Water Treatment]
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Reusable packaging in the time of COVID-19
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18.5.2020 |
GreenBiz.com |
| Reusable packaging in the time of COVID-19 Tom Szaky Mon, 05/18/2020 - 01:00
The novel coronavirus had cases on every continent except Antarctica when it was declared a global pandemic March 11. The crisis was brewing long before, and the United States federal emergency and stay-at-home orders would come after, but it was in that official moment of alarm that consumer behavior, and business’s response to it, changed across the country.
Almost immediately, reusables and durable items took a spotlight as potentially undesirable . The socially sanctioned practice of bring-your-own shopping bags and coffee mugs came to a halt and was enforced at retail locations , as did the use of glass and durable tableware in bars and restaurants before dine-in service stopped.
Even in states that previously had instituted bans on single-use items such as plastic bags ( temporarily lifted with new bans on their reusable counterparts ), there has been a swap to disposables, thought to be more sanitary than durable ... |
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How cosmetics retailer Lush is making purposeful profit through circularity
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12.5.2020 |
GreenBiz.com |
| How cosmetics retailer Lush is making purposeful profit through circularity Katrina Shum Tue, 05/12/2020 - 01:30
This article is part of our Paradigm Shift series, produced by nonprofit PYXERA Global, on the diverse solutions driving the transition to a circular economy. See the full collection of stories and upcoming webinars with the authors here .
Commerce as we know it is going through a rapid evolution. The convergence of new technology, emerging social platforms, constrained natural resources and the evolving values of each new generation is changing the way we do business — whether it’s the sharing economy, the rise of products as a service or the retail shopping experience itself.
But the accelerated growth of the retail industry has come at a cost.
There’s no doubt about it — we are in the midst of a plastic pollution crisis. We’ve all seen the viral images of turtles with straws stuck up their noses, or whales washed up with bellies full of plastic bags. And one of the biggest contributors to ... |
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[flenvcenter :: Embodied Energy]
[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
[flenvcenter :: Recycling and Composting]
[flenvcenter :: Embodied Energy]
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[flenvcenter :: Recycling and Composting]
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Circular economy principles are alleviating COVID-19 shortages
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10.4.2020 |
Resource Efficiency | GreenBiz.com |
With medical supplies and personal protection in short supply, hospitals and companies are embracing refurbishment and reuse. |
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[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
[flenvcenter :: Wells]
[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
[flenvcenter :: Wells]
[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
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Sloppy scavengers; dashing javelina; moose trappings
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1.4.2020 |
High Country News Most Recent |
Mishaps and mayhem from around the region. |
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[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
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Andy Tomkins brings Canon's new circular focus into view
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13.3.2020 |
Design & Innovation | GreenBiz.com |
The sustainability engagement manager explains the goals of working for the common good with a circular business model that makes sense economically. |
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[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
[flenvcenter :: Recycling and Composting]
[flenvcenter :: Green Purchasing]
[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
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[flenvcenter :: Recycling and Composting]
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GreenBiz 20 Day 3 welcome
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10.3.2020 |
Resource Efficiency | GreenBiz.com |
Day 3 welcome with GreenBiz's Eric Faurot, Shana Rappaport, Lauren Phipps and Ellie Buechner. Waste Management's Eric Gray gives a zero waste update. |
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A conversation with Ford's sustainability leader
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3.3.2020 |
Energy & Climate | Greenbiz.com |
How will the No. 2 American automaker focus on sustainability amidst restructuring and major transformation? |
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[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
[flenvcenter :: Disposal]
[flenvcenter :: Embodied Energy]
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[flenvcenter :: General]
[flenvcenter :: General]
[flenvcenter :: Embodied Energy]
[flenvcenter :: Green Purchasing]
[flenvcenter :: Wells]
[flenvcenter :: Environment]
[flenvcenter :: Alternative Vehicles]
[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
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[flenvcenter :: Alternative Vehicles]
[flenvcenter :: Wells]
[flenvcenter :: Environment]
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What’s driving the industry shift to circularity?
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29.2.2020 |
Small Business | GreenBiz.com |
For some industries, rising consumer demand and expectations are a clear driver. In others, there's regulatory pressure. |
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[flenvcenter :: Policy]
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Rethinking the 'P' word
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14.2.2020 |
Small Business | GreenBiz.com |
It's time for blue-sky thinking plus practical measures in the battle to reduce plastic waste. |
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[flenvcenter :: Education]
[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
[flenvcenter :: Policy]
[flenvcenter :: Education]
[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
[flenvcenter :: Recycling and Composting]
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[flenvcenter :: Conservation]
[flenvcenter :: Policy]
[flenvcenter :: Impacts]
[flenvcenter :: Reduce]
[flenvcenter :: Re-use]
[flenvcenter :: Recycling and Composting]
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