Three thoughts on circularity

As I noted in my last post, the Federal Trade Commission is looking long and hard at recycling and recycled content claims in their Green Guides update. That makes sense — it IS the message that most companies are putting out about sustainability. And … thanks to challenges throughout America with recycling anything beyond plastics with resin ID codes 3-7, the recycling symbols on many packages in every retail outlet in America can be considered greenwashing without substantiating information (such as how and where to recycle the item). 

So, what if we lifted our heads above the fray and looked beyond recycling to Circularity? What might we all do and say differently? A few thoughts: 

1. I once heard Keefe Harrison, CEO of The Recycling Partnership, say: “We can’t get to circularity without recycling.” That’s right. We need the material in those packages on retail shelves back so we can create materials circularity. But since 32% of Americans are not confident that what they throw in the recycling bin is actually getting recycled — up from only 14% four years ago — we have to increase confidence in recycling. And that requires making all those claims on all those packages true. That means we have to make the system fully work — and then we need to amplify that story in a big way. 
2. But we also need to go back in time to when we regularly talked about all 3 R’s. Over the last two decades, we’ve really stopped talking about Reducing and Reusing. But in our annual Eco Pulse study when we ask Americans who rate themselves as being very concerned about plastics in the ocean — which is 76% of us — “how much would it relieve your concern if plastics were easier to re-use,” 63% say “somewhat” and 29% say “entirely.” So, we need to get to work on full-scale deployment of refilling stations at retail, incentivizing consumers to bring their own collection devices and even take out containers, cups and cutlery. And we need to amplify this in a big way, too. Remember, 46% of people in America want to be seen as someone who’s buying eco-friendly products. So, if we’re virtue-signaling through our purchases, it stands to reason that many of us would like to tell our friends about our latest efforts to reuse and refill. 
3. Lastly, we need to make curbside composting as ubiquitous as curbside recycling … and we need to design the paper in our packages to be compostable. Green Blue published a study a while back estimating that only 11% of the U.S. population truly have access to a composting facility that accepts packaging, and only about 3% have curbside pick-up for compostable packaging. Americans love the idea of packages returning to the earth and becoming soil. 

If we can increase confidence in recycling and the collection of recyclable materials, make refillables and reuse of items easy and cool, and make curbside composting for packaging a reality for most of us, we’ll get a lot closer to circularity. Just don’t forget the messaging piece of this — we’re asking for folks to change perceptions and habits, and change is hard. So, we need the doing and the saying to create the real impact we all want.