Month: November 2014

Categories
Recover More

Water Use as a Result of Recycling: Is it Worth It?

As children we are all taught a few of the fundamental ways to act environmentally friendly, including turning off the lights when you leave a room, turning off the faucet immediately after use, shutting doors and windows when the air conditioner is running, and recycling as much as possible. But what do we do when one of these sustainable acts negates the other?
People recognize recycling as a simple way to protect the environment. Unfortunately, depending on the material being recycled, the act of recycling can expend a large amount of water. For example, appropriately recycling plastics often means using a lot of water to ensure the package is decontaminated before putting it in the bin. On the How2Recycle Label, we provide instructions such as “Rinse Before Recycling,” “Rinse Tray,” and “Rinse and Replace Cap” to remind consumers to remove contamination before recycling the package.
In regions such as the Western United States, people might opt to conserve water and throw away a package rather than waste a resource that is currently insufficient in the area. Recycling to conserve materials versus not recycling to conserve water… it’s quite the apples to oranges comparison. I’m hoping a few at-home experiments, will give us a better feel for how much water it takes to recycle different plastic packages.
I used a couple items from my lunch today for the experiment:
1) A spaghetti frozen meal packaged in a polypropylene tray. A meal that left quite a bit of food residue on the package after consumption. It took me about 3 cups (.7 liters) of water to clean this item enough to recycle it appropriately.
Spaghetti_recycling
2) Yogurt in a polypropylene tub (don’t worry, I didn’t eat the whole tub…). Due to the product’s soft texture the yogurt did not stick to the sides of the tub much, and I was able to clean the package out for recycling with about 1.5 cups (.35 liters) of water.
yogurt_recycling
Using the anecdotal evidence from my at-home lunch experiment, preparing truly recyclable packages to be recycled doesn’t have to be wasteful at all. In fact, you know all of the water you used to wash your big frying pan? Don’t let it immediately go down the drain. Instead, reuse the water to rinse out your packages. Remember, packages don’t need to be sparkling clean, they simply need to be clean enough to avoid contaminating the recycling stream.
 

Categories
GreenBlue Sustainable Packaging Coalition

Introducing GreenBlue’s Newest Intern: Erica Stratton

Erica joins the GreenBlue team as a project intern for the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, working with Anne Bedarf on recovery initiatives. Learn more about what brought Erica to GreenBlue below:
After graduating from the University of Virginia in May, I was on a job hunt to find a position that would allow me to continue growing my interest in sustainability while staying involved in the Charlottesville community. But, as I am sure most recent grads can attest to, the goal of finding the ideal position proved to be harder than expected. So when I heard about GreenBlue’s internship position last month, you can be sure I was quick to send in my resume. With only a general idea of what GreenBlue did, I went into my interview with Anne Bedarf and left knowing that GreenBlue would be a great fit for me.
During my time at UVa, I was a sustainability employee and worked as part of the recycling team. We focused on event planning and outreach/education to raise awareness among the student population about recycling initiatives on Grounds. This included disseminating information about what could and could not be recycled as well as encouraging students to recycle as much as possible. Although it operates on a much larger scale, GreenBlue’s How2Recycle program has a similar goal. Through the use of a comprehensive and clear labeling system, How2Recycle enables companies to be transparent and take the confusion out of recycling for their consumers. The label provides individual disposal instructions for each component of a product’s packaging. Below is an example of a How2Recycle label:
how2recycle_label_cookies
I wish UVa had used labels like these on their food and drink packaging while I was there. It would have made my job a lot easier!
My connection to How2Recycle’s mission is just one of the many reasons I was drawn to interning at GreenBlue. I have always been passionate about finding a job that would allow me to contribute to my local community. For this reason, my job search has revolved around the local government and nonprofit sectors.  As a successful sustainability nonprofit, I felt that interning with GreenBlue would give me an inside look at how an established ‘green’ nonprofit operates. While I have only been interning for a couple of weeks, I can tell that I will gain as much from my assignments as I will from just observing and being part of the day-to-day life here.
In addition to this, I was delighted by the open and bright layout of GreenBlue’s office space. With a plethora of windows, brightly painted walls, and a jungle of office plants, I always feel energized to work. It allows for a collaborative atmosphere where employees can mingle and aren’t confined to their desks. The office is also dog friendly–which is especially exciting since I just adopted a new puppy!–and just a 15-minute walk from my apartment. It’s pretty much the ideal workplace!
I could go on and on about how great interning at GreenBlue has been so far, but I think I will end it here by saying how excited and grateful I am for this opportunity. I can’t wait to see what experiences the next few months will bring!

Categories
GreenBlue Sustainable Packaging Coalition Uncategorized

GreenBlue Receives an Innovation in Plastics Recycling Award

With America Recycles Day just behind us (this past Saturday, November 15th), here at GreenBlue we are thrilled to announce that we have received an Innovations in Plastics Recycling Award from the American Chemistry Council (ACC).
ACC’s Plastics Division hosts the Innovation in Plastics Recycling Awards annually to recognize organizations bringing new technologies, products, and initiatives to the industry to improve plastics recycling. GreenBlue’s Store Drop-off Label was chosen as one of three winning innovations of this year’s awards.
seventh_gen_store_drop_off
The Store Drop-off Label is intended to educate consumers about the recyclability of plastic bags, films, and wraps at nearby grocery and retail stores with drop-off bins. This label informs consumers about recyclability while they are physically handling the package, so there is no confusion.
The How2Recycle Label currently has 32 participating companies, over half of which are using the Store Drop-off Label. We are looking forward to the expansion of the How2Recycle Label in the coming years to help close the loop on the consumer side, and we are thankful to ACC for helping us spread the word!
If you are interested in learning more or joining the How2Recycle Label, email me at kelly.lahvic@greenblue.org or follow us on Twitter @how2recycle.

Categories
GreenBlue Sustainable Packaging Coalition Uncategorized

Sights and Sounds of Pack Expo

PACK EXPO International 2014 delivered on its promise to bring the leaders of processing and packaging technologies together for an event like no other. After all of the business cards were exchanged, stories of frustrations and successes were shared, and questions like “what’s next”, “do you know someone that makes…”, and “what is GreenBlue and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition” were answered, we can reflect on the 4-day blur.
A few trends that stood out at Pack Expo 2014:

  • Flexible packaging – I don’t think I was ever more than a stones throw away from a booth that offered some kind of flexible packaging solution. To this point, there were a handful of individuals that stopped by our booth specifically to discuss their technologies for recycling flexibles.
  • Recycling and sustainability – Many people stopped by our booth to ask about recyclability, or recyclable alternatives. GreenBlue’s How2Recycle Label (How2recycle.info) caught the eye of many exhibit wanderers, and combined with our leftover halloween candy, lead to fascinating conversations.
  • Show me the Green – Unlike the last time this event was in Chicago, many exhibitors were not actively advertising environmental attributes associated with their products or processes. Some of the exhibitors that I asked about sustainability gave half-hearted, stock responses, but I also got the impression that it isn’t something that their customers are asking for. The financial green is still the ultimate driver for many purchasing decisions. As one skeptical GreenBlue booth visitor said, “It will take a policy change for greater sustainability adoption.”
  • Evolution – Products and packaging evolve rapidly. To maintain relevance, it is essential to keep up with the changing times. For GreenBlue, being able to understand the evolution of packaging systems and materials will help advance our philosophy of Using Wisely, Eliminating Toxicity, and Recovering More.

For GreenBlue, Pack Expo was an opportunity for us to share our work with many people who were not familiar with our programs, and to hear sustainability challenges from people outside of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition’s membership. The questions and discussions with non-SPC members reiterates the importance of the work that we do. For some visitors, sustainability is just starting to enter their production streams, while for others (many of the smaller start-ups that stopped by), it’s already embedded in their products and company’s DNA.
While we value all of these new connections and topics to be discovered, Pack Expo also gave us an opportunity to meet with a lot of our current SPC members. With about 25% of our members having a booth at Pack Expo or Pharma Expo, it was a great opportunity to connect and learn more about the companies we work with. It was also nice to see many familiar faces walking around and stopping by the GreenBlue booth.
Photo Credit - Friend of SPC, Scott Ballantine
On behalf of the GreenBlue Team, we hope that everyone that stopped by our booth learned something and we want to thank everyone for sharing their unique stories. If you missed us in Chicago, but are interested in learning more about GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition, you can email Eric DesRoberts or join him on November 18, at 4:00 PM Eastern for an Introduction to the SPC Webinar.
 

Categories
Eliminate Toxicity GreenBlue Recover More

Sustainable Materials Management – A Precursor to a Circular Economy

Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, production has followed a linear path of take, make, use, and discard in a system that wastes a majority of resource and energy inputs. While this model is continuously improved for efficiencies, many of the improvements only serve to accelerate the flow of materials and products to the landfill. This is because the linear economic model is fundamentally, if unintentionally, designed to create waste. A wholesale redesign of our materials-based economy is needed and is thankfully emerging.
The circular economy (CE) is a relatively new business model that is intentionally and deliberately designed as an interactive system of value-creating and regenerative loops as diagrammed below by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF).
circular economy
The most exciting aspect of a circular economy business model is that it is not a doom and gloom scenario of doing less with less. It is economic model that allows for increasing prosperity and access to goods and services, while keeping valuable resources in productive cycles and out of landfills. Collaborative studies commissioned by EMF and led by the management consulting firm McKinsey estimate an annual net material cost savings of up to $630 billion, based on only a subset of the durable goods manufacturing sectors. The studies further estimate as much as $700 billion in savings is available in the global consumer goods market for food, beverages, textiles, and packaging via a shift to a circular business model.
Taking a deep dive into circular economy literature shows that it is a powerful synthesis of several strategies, among them:

  • Design for environment (DfE) to include a variety of nontraditional or less common attributes such as modularity, upgrade-ability, refurbishment, disassembly, re-manufacturing, etc.,
  • Industrial ecology or symbiosis, which is based on the premise that the waste from one industrial system or process becomes a resource or material input for another,
  • Products of service, whereby a producer retains ownership of a product and leases its utility, taking back the asset at end of useful life or when the lessee no longer wants or needs it; then upgrading, refurbishing or re-manufacturing it into a next generation service-product,
  • Reverse logistics, the process by which products and materials are effectively collected and maintained in a closed loop supply chain.

While not explicitly called out in the CE literature, sustainable materials management (SMM) offers another possible pathway to a closed loop business model. Since materials of all types are the basis of our global consumptive economy, SMM provides the critical building blocks that can enable a company to prepare and position itself to become a CE business.
At GreenBlue we promote the adoption of SMM practices to help companies become more sustainable enterprises based on three core principles: Use Wisely, Eliminate Toxicity and Recover More. All three are tied to design, which is the most critical element in a circular economy. Use Wisely governs the selection, sourcing, and optimization of resources and sets the stage for re-utilization. Eliminate Toxicity, removes potential barriers to product recovery, component separation and material revalorization, ensuring those molecules can stay in play in either a technical or biological cycle as depicted in the EMF diagram, above. Recover More requires development of the technologies and infrastructure, to track product assets, collect and efficiently transport them to a revalorization facility. As companies become adept at these three core principles they can develop design strategies, industrial synergies, logistics, information, financial accounting systems, and performance metrics that will allow them to make the ultimate paradigm shift to a fully circular business model.
Watch this blog for further discussion of the three core principles and building blocks as GreenBlue proceeds to develop a detailed roadmap and rigorous step-by-step implementation framework for best sustainable materials management practices.

Categories
Uncategorized

USGS reports U.S. Water Use Down

The US Geological Survey has just released the latest data on water use across the US, and the good news is that it is down dramatically – 13 percent lower than in 2005. Even though our population is growing, water conservation tools and practices by farmers, factories, and households are becoming widespread and are having a noticeable effect.
Despite the overall reduction in water usage across the country (and that’s a great achievement, don’t get me wrong), we need to do a lot more to use our water resources wisely. This is important everywhere across the country, but of critical importance in the western third of the US, where according to the US Drought Monitor, more than 50 million people are currently living in drought conditions. According to the Monitor, the entire state – yes, 100% – of California is experiencing at least a minimum level of “moderate drought,” with 58.4% of California’s area suffering the maximum level of “exceptional drought” conditions.
Of interest to all who live in California should be the fact that Californians continue to use the most water of any other state (11% of total withdrawals of all water categories and 10% of total freshwater withdrawals).
Total water withdrawals by State
The top use of water in California, by a wide margin, is for agricultural irrigation (60.7%). Next comes thermoelectric power generation (17.4%), followed closely by public use (16.6%). Yes, it’s important to continue installing more efficient cooling systems in thermoelectric power plants and encouraging residents to conserve water at home. But we need to acknowledge the elephant in the room: unless we address the delivery and use of water in agriculture, the big picture won’t change much. We need to support the agriculture industry, but we also must insist on finding and implementing technology and irrigation practices that use our water wisely, leaving more for the natural environment while still growing the food we need to feed our population.