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GreenBlue Sustainable Packaging Coalition Uncategorized

In the Loop – Sustainable Brands '15

In the loop SB15
 

Executive Director Nina Goodrich (front right) Digging in on Circular Economy at SB15sd. Nina says “It’s not well understood in US.” (Photo courtesy of ThinkStep)

This week, GreenBlue’s Executive Director Nina Goodrich headed across the U.S. to moderate at Sustainable Brands 2015. Sustainable Brands is one of the largest global conferences that answer the question: How can you successfully innovate your brand for sustainability?
Nina moderated the “How to Structure Effective Recycling and Reuse Initiatives: Case Studies of Innovative Partnerships” session within the Circular and Sharing Economies track. Nina regularly speaks about the Circular Economy at conferences and loves to educate industry and consumers about how the Circular Economy can boost sustainability in their lives.
Speakers in the session included:


Carrie Majeske Carrie Majeske Ford Motor Company

John Gardner John Gardner Novelis

Meagan Smith Meagan Smith PepsiCo

Geof Rochester Geof Rochester The Nature Conservancy

SBLiz Maw Liz Maw Net Impact

Darren Beck Darren Beck Sprint

Michael Meyer Michael Meyer Goodwill Industries …

Like what you hear? Email Nina at [email protected] to discuss the Circular Economy further or tweet @GreenBlueOrg to tell us what you think!
 

Categories
Eliminate Toxicity GreenBlue Member Spotlight Uncategorized

In The Loop — GreenBlue heads West

In the loop 5-18-15 This week, GreenBlue is heading across the U.S. to meet with sustainability leaders in Berkeley, California and Spokane, Washington.
Nina is an invited speaker at the Washington State Recycling Association (WSRA) 35th Annual Conference and Trade Show in Spokane.She will be speaking at this afternoon’s “Designing for Zero Waste, Starting the Conversation” breakout session with Dylan de Thomas of Resource Recycling and Matt Stern of Waste Management.  This session takes a close look at the dramatically changing types and volumes of packaging materials and products entering the waste stream and the financial implications of these materials on our recycling systems. Together, manufacturers, MRF operators, and municipalities will look upstream and discuss how products and packaging can be designed to be sorted at the MRF and recycled to improved value both for recyclers and producers.
WSRA_Conference15_logo_FINAL
James will be participating in The Collaborative Network’s Cancer Free Economy meeting in Berkeley, California. He will be speaking about how material health fits within a theoretical cancer-free economic system. GreenBlue has two projects that fit within the material health sector: Material IQ and CleanGredients. Both projects aim to make ingredients and materials more transparent within the supply chain, and ultimately promote safer chemicals and materials.
If you are in the Berkeley or Spokane area let us know! We love to meet members who live across the country!

Categories
GreenBlue Recover More Uncategorized

How2Recycle goes to high school

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“Can I have a Pop Tart?”
This is one of the many questions I received while representing the SPC and my company, HAVI Global Solutions, at Antioch High School’s Earth Day fair in northern Illinois. I prepared for the fair by purchasing high school-friendly products that use the SPC’s How2Recycle Label. (The Pop Tarts, McDonald’s, and Keebler Fudge Sticks were a hit, particularly since the fair was at lunch time). The packages in the photo below are just a sampling of the items that now contain the label.
I have been working with the SPC on the How2Recycle Label for a few years now, so I consider myself to be pretty educated on the program and on recycling generally. However, I was struck by how much I learned as I looked at the various labels. For instance, without the How2Recycle Label present, I wouldn’t have known to keep the cap on the glass Honest Tea bottle or to keep the sprayer on the Seventh Generation cleaning spray.
The high school students ambled by and many looked at us skeptically as we asked them what they would do with a cereal box when they were done with it. Thankfully, this question was too easy for most of them as they knew to recycle the box. Then we asked about the plastic bag that held the cereal inside the box. This time, they were caught off guard and looked uncertain. Two out of the 200+ students and teachers that came by our booth got the right answer. Once we showed them the How2Recycle label on the cereal boxes, they were able to see that they could bring the cereal bag back to a store to place in the plastic bag recycling bins. The American Chemistry Council graciously provided magnets and notepads that we gave to students to bring home and educate their families about film recycling.
We were happy to teach the students something new and we left with some insights of our own. Some thoughts:

  • People think they know a lot about recycling — and many of them do. The students were more educated about recycling than many of the older people we have talked to, which is great news. However, they don’t know everything. This is where the How2Recycle Label can be helpful.
  • When people think they already know about recycling, they don’t necessarily want to learn more and may not check the package for additional information. The more easily the consumer can see the label, the easier it will be for them to recycle properly, even if they don’t actively look for recycling instructions. Special shout out to Seventh Generation for doing a great job on large, high-visibility labels and not being afraid to use the ‘Not Yet Recycled’ label.
  • When high school students have to squint to read the How2Recycle Label, it’s probably too small. I think it’s great that it is on there at all, but if 16 year olds can barely read it, it’s probably not big enough for my 94-year-old grandmother.
  • Incentives help a lot. Thanks to McDonald’s, the ACC, and Seventh Generation, we were able to give out some freebies to students who took the survey. Although we may not be able to give a S’mores Pop Tart to everyone each time they recycle, it is a reality that people are more likely to do something if they get something from it. We know that “Pay as you throw” policies aren’t a panacea, but they do provide economic incentive to recycle and thus increase recovery rates. Check out AMERIPEN’s 2013 White Paper for more information on this.

On a non-recycling note, this experience reminded me the importance of thinking big, even if an opportunity may be a long shot. Brenda Herman is a student at Antioch High School who reached out to the SPC without having any contacts there, asking if they would come to her high school’s Earth Day fair. The SPC is based in Virginia, so a staff member was unable to attend, but we were still able to have a presence at the high school since I am a local Executive Committee member. Thanks to Brenda for reminding us to take risks and ask questions!
IMG_8673Thanks also to HAVI Global Solutions for the priority placed on employees getting into communities and helping people. We have a popular annual tradition called the Week of Giving, which encourages employees to take time out of their work day in order to give back to our community. Through this program, we were able to participate in the Earth Day fair. These kind of activities help strengthen social capital, fostering the often-ignored social pillar of sustainability.
So, Readers: go connect with your community and share your sustainability expertise! Take a step away from our bubble filled with acronyms and technical jargon. You have plenty to teach and you’ll learn a lot as well.
Amy Duquette, SPC Executive Committee Member & Sustainability Project Manager for HAVI Global Solutions

Categories
GreenBlue

In The Loop – Nina heads to Maryland

In the loop 5-11-15
 
After a trip to Washington, D.C.  for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s 2015 Sustainability Forum, Nina hit the road again to the University of Maryland for the first ever National Sustainable Materials Management Summit.
According to NRC’s website, The event is expected to become a pivotal juncture in moving recycling back to the forefront of national policy. There were 140 participants representing government, businesses, and organizations, engaged in the dialog of the Summit, held at the University of Maryland, College Park on May 12 and 13. This broad and diverse set of stakeholders represented many of the greatest minds in recycling, reuse, waste prevention, product stewardship and other diversion methods that make up aspects of sustainable materials management (SMM). Many exciting and creative concepts emerged, and these will become the basis for the National  SMM Action Plan.
Some initial consensus ideas included the need to:

  •  Make the business and job case for SMM
  •  Model policies, programs and laws for communities to further SMM
  • Matching programs with performance metrics
  • Connection of SMM strategies and professionals* with businesses and product designers and local and state policy makers for improved consideration of full life cycle impacts and opportunities
  • Incorporation of SMM into climate action plans
  • Training and certifications of SMM professionals, recognizing that there are multiple options
  • Evaluation and verification of product certifications to provide clear information for consumer choice and provide clear direction for businesses to comply with FTC Green Marketing Guidelines (e.g., strong support for the How2Recycle label)
  • Best practices information and resources, including model ordinances and contracts
  • Education on downstream impacts on end-user markets and opportunities for investment in markets in the U.S.

Nina presented during the “Business Roles and Market-based Solutions” facilitated dialogue session about the How2Recycle Label program.

 


Stay tuned for information on Nina’s trip to the West Coast next week!
 

Categories
GreenBlue Uncategorized

Happy Earth Day from GreenBlue

For us at GreenBlue, Earth Day isn’t just another silly holiday set on our pocket calendars. Earth Day is every day, and it’s our passion to make the world a cleaner, better place to live. Whether it’s our forest management certification program, our recycling label, our material health assessment, or our clean chemical formulation database, to say we care about the Earth would be an understatement. While we all care deeply for the Earth, we all have different perspectives on what this special day means to us.

“What does Earth Day mean to you?”

Adam Gendell – Project Manager, Sustainable Packaging Coalitionadam
“Every day can’t be Earth Day. We need a pointed reminder to celebrate the progress and raised awareness we’ve achieved and also the issues that need to be tackled. To me, Earth Day ought to serve as that special highlight of our work and set the stage for the other 364 days on the calendar.”
 
Shea Zwerver – Executive Assistantshea
“I learned from my glorious mother that Earth Day was in celebration of Mother Earth and all her bountiful resources and beauty she provides. Since it takes place in April, I always think of new life — baby animals being born, plants sprouting from the ground, trees and flowers blooming. As I have gotten older, almost every day is Earth Day to me where I appreciate what the Earth provides us with, and its beauty!”
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A baby house finches that lived on my back porch last year, and are back again this year building another nest.
Anne Elsea – Communications Associateannev
“We all owe so much to the Earth; it gives us white sand beaches, breathtaking Swiss Alps (see below), and my personal favorite, a beautiful backdrop to a Virginia winery (see featured image). Celebrating the Earth at the height of spring is such an amazing opportunity to look at how we can better serve Earth so that future generations will be able to enjoy the blooming flowers and sunny days.”

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My favorite photo taken on a trip to Switzerland

 
Anne Bedarf- Senior Manager, Sustainable Packaging Coalitionanneb1
“I always say Earth Day is Every Day!”
 
Tom Pollock – Senior Manager of Forest Projectstom_photo
“Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, former U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, starting an important movement in 1969 that is now recognized around the world and inspiring great work that continues to grow.”
 
Liz Shoch- Senior Manager, Sustainable Packaging Coalitionliz_photo
“Honestly? Earth Day itself doesn’t mean that much to me! That may sound like heresy, but I try to incorporate environmental practices into my life EVERY day, not just April 22. They might be small efforts, like trying a different detergent or starting to collect household plastic wraps for recycling at my local retail stores. But little by little, I and my family try to think about doing the right environmental thing all year long. My toddler now knows that we recycle certain items and she loves to put them in our recycling bin. Might as well start her early!
Calling attention to environmental issues on one day a year is important, but I worry that most people think it’s a one-day concern. We didn’t create our significant environmental problems (such as climate change, air pollution, deforestation, overfishing) overnight, and we won’t be able to solve them overnight either.
On Earth Day, I think the most important thing is for each of us to take a moment and go outside and appreciate our environment — listen to the birds, look for early spring flowers, even pull a few weeds or complain about tree pollen! Just this morning in my yard, I spotted my first catbird of the year, returning to nest in Virginia after a winter in Mexico.
Making that regular connection with our natural environment helps keep us mindful of the world outside our doors and reinforce our behaviors all year long.”
Happy 45th Anniversary Earth Day! And happy 4.54 billion (and counting) years of being amazing, planet Earth!
-The GreenBlue Staff

Categories
Eliminate Toxicity GreenBlue

Is there a need for a deeper understanding of material hazards?

Every day, we are exposed to hundreds of chemicals–in the clothing we wear; the detergents that wash them; the food we eat; the cosmetics we apply to soften our skin; the drinking water from our taps… the list goes on and on. Just in the last 50 years, chemists have developed more than 50 million synthetic chemicals, and about 2,000 new chemicals are introduced each year.
Exposure to chemicals begins long before babies are born, and continues  throughout their lives. Yet, of the thousands of chemicals in use today, only a small fraction have been tested for their potential hazards as cancer causing agents, as bioaccumulative compounds, as environmental toxicants etc. Currently, hazard information for chemicals used in industry remains poorly regulated, and as a result,  major information gaps exist when trying to make informed product design decisions. Without a better understanding of chemical hazards, effectively assessing the potential risks to human and environmental health is difficult.
Regulatory Compliance-Based Hazard Evaluation
Do you know the hazardous chemicals associated with the products you use? Do you know if the company who makes those products is aware of them?  Do you care? Our answers may vary, but for the product makers, such questions are essential to putting products in the market that are deemed safe. To assess  chemical safety, we need to to understand both the hazards of substances and the estimated level of typical exposure to those hazards. This is the basic formula for figuring out the risk associated with a given substance. Yet, the number of chemicals that have known hazard profiles is quite small in a universe of chemicals used to manufacture all kinds of products.
Using a List of Lists
Much of current chemical hazard compliance is based on if the substance is found on a restricted substances list (RSL). RSLs of known substances of concern exist in many forms and are typically adjusted for a specific industry sector or product category. Examples of authoritative lists are those published by the European Union’s REACH – Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) program, California Proposition 65, US EPA Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory, and more. In all, there are over forty such lists from national and international regulatory sources, influential NGOs, and scientific bodies.
So, with all these lists, surely we know the relative hazards involved in product production. Well, that depends on the comprehensiveness of the lists to capture all the chemicals of concern for each of the specific hazard endpoints (e.g., carcinogenicity, reproductive toxicity, etc.). This  assumes that RSLs are sufficient to capture all hazardous substances used in industry. Unfortunately, this is not the case for commonly used chemicals, not to mention the hundreds of new chemicals that are introduced into commerce every year.
Screening  a bill of substances (BOS) or a bill of materials (BOM) for  a product against the known lists must be able to identify substances of concern that aren’t on the lists–a conundrum when relying on a relatively static set of lists to identify potential hazards in a world of rapid product innovation. For instance, if a substance has cancer causing potential, but it doesn’t yet exist on any lists, how are we supposed to identify the hazard and evaluate the potential risk of using the substance? The illustration below shows how relying on the list of lists can leave significant gaps for complex products. Notice the extensive data gaps represented by the question marks:
Product bill of materials (BOM) screened using list of lists method such as GreenScreen®  List Translator
Casting a Wider Net
The compliance-based model relies on lists of known substances of concern, which doesn’t tell the full material hazard story as chemical and material innovation outpaces material health legislation. Keeping pace with material and product innovation requires a system that  goes beyond compliance to characterize material constituents; is  able to select materials and components that meet long-term sustainability of the brand.
More in depth screening techniques are needed to complete the picture in the above scenario. And, additional tools are needed to provide material manufacturers  a forum to share their formulation data, while maintaining confidentiality, and providing third-party verification to material users – the finished product makers – to confidently make decisions that limit exposure and lower risk.
Screening techniques that go beyond compliance-based lists exist, and are used by leading brands to gain knowledge about the material composition of their products. Utilizing more comprehensive screening methods such as SciVera Lens – GHSplus or GreenScreen® for Safer Chemicals can provide a fuller picture of  chemicals involved and feed the innovation process, allowing for more intelligent design outcomes. The image below illustrates a more rigorous screening of the BOM that captures a greater portion of the chemicals in use, thus reducing data gaps and enhancing design decision making.
Product bill of materials (BOM) screened using broader scoped methods such as SciVera LensTM or GreenScreen®
Data Transparency and Clarity
Significant efforts are underway across various industry sectors including outdoor products, apparel and footwear, building products, food packaging , electronics, and others to quantify the life cycle impacts of materials used in consumer products. Material health concerns are, increasingly, becoming part of many of these initiatives, with varying degrees of emphasis.
In response, GreenBlue’s Material IQ provides a platform for sharing material intelligence between material suppliers and their downstream customers. Material IQ™ offers human and environmental health data, standards/eco-certifications, and key sustainability indicators, all in one place. Material IQ can level the playing field for material health data by:

  • Significantly reducing data acquisition costs
  • Providing valuable information via a consistent evaluation methodology
  • Acting as a marketplace for material alternatives
  • Incentivizing suppliers to be more transparent

The platform allows material suppliers and intermediate component makers to feed third-party screened data to Material IQ where finished product manufacturers can view the profile in relation to relevant eco-label verification. Material IQ Profiles can also  serve as chain of custody tracking, providing a consistent way to communicate design improvements, strengthen supply chain partners’ and key customers’ sustainability positions, and enable brands to step beyond compliance-based material assessment and into design optimization strategies.
Material IQ is currently in pilot stage. We are happy to speak with you about assessing your product’s material profile. For more information, explore the GreenBlue and Material IQ websites, or contact us.
Learn More About Material Hazards:
UNSAFE: The Truth Behind Everyday Chemicals
The Toxic Baby 

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!

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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 [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @how2recycle.

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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.