The latest developments in safe and sustainable chemicals, new materials, fuels, and more.
Cross-Posted from Marketing and Comms. New platform from Break Free from Plastic explores the hardest-hit frontline communities in the world, from India to Ohio. After hearing each story, viewers can choose to view another location, or take actions designed to make local and global impact.
Cross-Posted from From Purpose to Action: Building a Sustainable Future Together. Disasters such as the aftermath of the February 2021 ice storm that left millions of Texans without running water lay bare the urgent need for updated utility infrastructure across the US. This would involve repairing and replacing hundreds of thousands of miles of water piping — but what should be used in their place?
Driscoll’s leads the produce industry in increasing the circularity of packaging and landfill diversion of agricultural plastics. It’s the first berry company to make public commitments and inject serious funding into innovation — with a goal to create economies of scale.
The US Pact’s brands, retailers and materials manufacturers are seek to develop immediate solutions to the 11 ubiquitous and unrecyclable materials — but the plastics industry is up in arms.
Cross-Posted from From Purpose to Action: Building a Sustainable Future Together. Solving the ongoing packaging conundrum demands a significant shift in how businesses think — moving from a linear to a circular model of operation to improve the amount of packaging that can be reused, recycled and returned to the value chain.
Cross-Posted from Product, Service & Design Innovation. The team at Vestolit — part of polymers, materials and infrastructure leader Orbia — worked closely with the corporate sustainability team to find modifications to plant operations that promise significant reductions in the entire enterprise’s sulphur dioxide emissions.
New cellulosic bio-coating for fresh produce greatly reduces both packaging and food waste by coating the produce with, well, produce.
Big Plastic (and Big Oil) have a five-decade lead and massive economies of scale that will take a little longer to match in terms of costs and simplicity. But working with the right partners and openness to shaking up the status quo is paying off for brands willing to put their principles and profits on equal footing.
Cross-Posted from Finance & Investment. In the textile industry, one area ripe for investment is making wet processing more sustainable. As with most pots of gold, it’s not without its challenges — but data indicate that the returns are well worth the effort. Investors keen to seize this nascent opportunity should consider three primary steps.
Cross-Posted from Organizational Change. “Sustainability is best played together. It's validating to see what we started and see it grow first across the other teams in our plant, and eventually across Lubrizol.” — Kalli Stull
Cross-Posted from From Purpose to Action: Building a Sustainable Future Together. Today, Dow considers its sustainability strategy and business strategy to be one and the same; employees understand that the two can no longer be separate. But, as Global Sustainability Director Haley Lowry explains, this didn’t happen overnight.
Cross-Posted from Waste Not. AZEK’s FULL-CIRCLE PVC Recycling program helped it collect approximately 400M pounds of recycled product for reuse in 2020 — with the hope that this entire value-chain approach can disrupt the plastic waste paradigm meaningfully, as AZEK continues to scale up collection and processing.
Cross-Posted from Product, Service & Design Innovation. The newly launched B2B marketplace helps connect companies with vetted, sustainable, plastic-free packaging options, as well as education on materials and the evolving regulatory landscape.
Cross-Posted from From Purpose to Action: Building a Sustainable Future Together. We believe that the solution to stopping plastic waste is understanding that the material is too valuable to be lost in landfills. We can change what is traditionally considered waste and transform it into a valuable, sustainable resource through advanced recycling.
The new Consortium — which includes Closed Loop Partners, PepsiCo, the NextGen Consortium, the US Plastics Pact and other value chain players — aims to pilot industry-wide solutions and map tech and infrastructure investment to advance the circularity of compostable packaging in the US.
Cross-Posted from From Purpose to Action: Building a Sustainable Future Together. With specific investments, partnerships and innovations all directed at the various steps of the plastics system, Dow’s approach provides a blueprint for how industry can build a foundation for a circular economy and the reduction of emissions.
Brightworks’ materials scoring methodology distills existing product sustainability standards and attributes into holistic, comparable, numerical scores — making it easier for manufacturers, the design industry and design clients to create and select more sustainable materials.
The NextGen Consortium and its partner brands are expanding their work to advance reusable packaging systems, strengthen recycling and composting infrastructure, and scale foodservice packaging innovation.
Aveda and L’Occitane Group continue to raise the bar for beauty industry sustainability ambitions with new packaging innovations and a ‘nature-positive’ biodiversity strategy.
From manufacturing to end of life, Tetra Pak is committed to engaging its entire value chain to drive low-carbon circularity. But as VP of Sustainability Jason Pelz explains, just looking at recyclability and recycled content won’t get you there.