CONSUMER BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
The Mill system offers a practical, circular solution for reducing home food waste and the resulting, climate-changing greenhouse gases — with minimal effort on the part of users.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
New reports by Zero Waste Europe and Planet Tracker slam the industry for piecemeal attempts at sustainability and circularity; where it fails to adopt more holistic approaches and take greater responsibility for environmental and social issues, investors must help move the needle.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
A circular economy for plastics is achievable in our lifetime, though it will require consumers and manufacturers to work together. Whether companies decide to keep it in-house or partner with like-minded third parties, an investment in our future now will lead to more profitable operations and create relentless forward progress.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
The new H&M Loooptopia Experience on Roblox allows users to experiment with their digital identity and learn about fashion and circularity in a fun, creative and playful environment.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
The electronics giants announced a series of innovations including personal-care device recycling, smart home energy-efficiency improvements, and a new laundry cycle and filter designed to eliminate microplastic pollution from synthetic materials.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
While recycling and lightweighting packaging strategies are helpful, they still align more with a linear rather than circular economy. Here, Upstream CEO Matt Prindiville lays out his organization’s vision for a truly plastic waste-free future.
MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Protein Evolution’s technology can turn unused polyester and nylon fabrics from Stella McCartney’s previous collections into good-as-new, infinitely recyclable fibers — and could present a new circular solution for the fashion industry.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
As always, the goal of our gift guide is to encourage a more conscious approach to gift-giving by highlighting products, services and experiences that create value and benefits beyond short-term gratification for the recipient. Here’s this year’s list of some of the many companies, platforms and products that we’d be happy to support anytime.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
80M tons of plastic waste will end up in the environment just in the next 10 years. Without voluntary, global producer responsibility programs to unlock capital towards infrastructure and bridge the policy vacuum, how else do polluters suggest for us to tackle this massive financing gap in the meantime?
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
The new startup offers a regenerative ‘tree burial’ service that reimagines cemeteries as forests — enabling the dearly departed to truly give back to the land and encouraging younger generations to think about death in new ways.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Tesco Exchange, aka ‘Tesco Tinder,’ matches suppliers who have too much of a product — for example, crops, byproducts, ingredients or packaging — with other Tesco suppliers that can put it to use.
MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Orange Fiber and Keel Labs are platforms for exploration and innovation that can reverberate across the fashion industry and prove that sustainable feedstocks and production processes can create both financial and planetary prosperity.
MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Developing and optimizing a fully circular plastics value chain is a complex challenge that can’t be achieved with any single solution. We challenge our peers and other key stakeholders to be courageous and take risks, to explore new possibilities and partnerships, and persist until we have solutions.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
Whether making a widget or a culinary treat, prioritizing a circular life cycle for products helps keep them out of waste streams until they are negligible — or better yet, they never land there.
FROM PURPOSE TO ACTION: BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE TOGETHER -
While flexible packaging plays an important role in keeping food fresher longer, it has long been difficult to recycle. Designing more recyclable flexible packaging from the start and determining a better end-of-life process for current materials is a vital step in reducing food waste.
COLLABORATION & CO-CREATION -
The joint effort from WM and Dow aims to provide a solution to make it easier for households to recycle the film while the companies explore new options to
reuse it. When fully implemented, the program is expected to prevent 120,000 tons of plastic film from reaching landfills each year.
MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
As seen in ongoing incidents of greenwashing and a new Greenpeace report, the onus is on consumer product manufacturers to take more comprehensive approaches to stemming their flow of plastic into the world — and turning the tide of public opinion.