Plastic News
Jim Johnson

A coalition of organizations devoted to waste and recycling, plastic pollution and resource conservation today launched the Make It, Take It Campaign, a collaborative effort to pressure consumer goods companies to take responsibility for packaging waste. Coordinated by UPSTREAM and backed by organizations including 5 Gyres, Clean Water Action, Green America and the National Resources Defense Council, the campaign aims to elevate the issue of packaging waste, put public pressure on consumer goods companies and educate and mobilize citizens to push for sustainable packaging policies.

“Companies often design packaging without thinking about what will happen when we’re finished with it. Many types of packaging, often plastic or multi-layered, are impossible to recycle or compost.” said Matt Prindiville, associate director for UPSTREAM and co-founder and coordinator of the campaign. “Because of this, the majority of packaging ends up being wasted in incinerators and landfills, or as roadside litter that eventually becomes marine debris that fouls oceans and harms wildlife.”

The campaign — whose partners also include Eureka Recycling, the Plastic Pollution Coalition, Sierra Club Extended Producer Responsibility Team, Texas Campaign for the Environment and the Waterkeeper Alliance — has also announced its first target: the Capri Sun juice pouch, a highly visible example of consumer packaging that can’t be readily reused, recycled or composted.

According to UPSTREAM, an estimated 1.4 billion Capri Sun pouches are landfilled or littered each year in the United States — stacked end to end, that’s enough pouches to wrap around the Earth almost five times (121,527 miles). The Make It, Take It Campaign is urging Kraft Foods to change its packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable and take responsibility for post-consumer collection and recycling. UPSTREAM says there are plenty of viable alternatives to Capri Sun’s trademark pouch, such as recyclable plastic or glass bottles or cans, as used by Minute Maid, Juicy Juice, Tropicana and other competitor beverage brands.

“Every year 60,000 tons of packaging passes through our Zero-Waste Lab. We witness firsthand the enormous waste from these pouches. The socially responsible thing to do is to change the packaging design for the betterment of our communities,” said Tim Brownell, CEO of Eureka Recycling.

“The increasing amount of packaging is a problem that must be addressed jointly by consumers and manufacturers. We look forward to innovative solutions that take into account extended producer responsibility,” said Daniella Dimitrova Russo, Co-founder and executive director of the Plastic Pollution Coalition.

“In this day and age it is irresponsible to design your products for the dump. Capri Sun packages are wasteful, irresponsible and polluting,” said Robin Schneider, Executive Director of Texas Campaign for the Environment. “It’s time for Kraft to make a change and take responsibility for their badly designed products.” Background: Capri Sun Capri Sun pouches are made by bonding aluminum and several layers of plastic together making them difficult to impossible to recycle. According to Terracycle, only an estimated 1-3 percent is collected nationwide, which means that nearly every Capri Sun pouch has been wasted or littered since the product was introduced in the 1970s.

They’re also a huge problem for the oceans: Food and beverage containers, including Capri Sun pouches, are among the top 5 items found on beaches and coastlines. Plastic packaging breaks down into small particles mistaken for food by fish, which harms marine life and transports toxic chemicals in the oceans.

A recent study estimates that the state of California spends nearly $500 million annually preventing trash — much of it plastic packaging — from polluting beaches, rivers, lakes and the waterfront. According to shareholder advocacy group As You Sow — which in September filed a shareholder resolution asking General Mills to take responsibility for recycling its post-consumer packaging waste, and earlier this month announced that Colgate-Palmolive has committed to making 100 percent of its packaging for three of four product categories completely recyclable (and developing a recyclable toothpaste tube or package, for the fourth category) by 2020 — the total value of wasted recyclable consumer packaging that’s landfilled, littered or incinerated is around $11.4 billion each year.

Meanwhile, plastic pollution from packaging is clogging our beaches and oceans, killing wildlife, contaminating the marine food web and creating the massive garbage gyres around the world’s oceans. A number of enterprising companies have set about upcycling marine plastic into everything from new packaging, skateboards and carpet tiles to fabric for jeans, swimsuits, etc, but the onus is on manufacturers to help proactively reduce the proliferation of pollution at its source.

Waste and Recycling News

Twenty-seven environmental groups have joined forces for a publicity power play aimed at getting battery manufacturer Rayovac to begin taking back their batteries for recycling.

The non-profit group Texas Campaign for the Environmental (TCE) is leading the charge to press the Wisconsin-based company to adopt an extended producer responsibility (EPR) policy. Executive Director Robin Schneider says in May TCE privately requested Rayovac provide recycling for batteries in the United States as it does in Europe. However, in June the company refused to start a take-back program, according to the TCE. Since then, 26 other recycling and zero-waste advocacy groups across the country have joined the cry for action.

“Rayovac is falling behind their competitors when it comes to battery recycling, and it’s past time for them to join these efforts toward sustainability,” Schneider said in a statement. “We want them to take back their batteries for recycling, to set meaningful goals for these collections and to support legislation which would create a level playing field for battery recycling. These solutions have worked for electronics and a variety of other products nationwide, and now we want Rayovac to help make it a reality for batteries.”

Rayovac is one of the four largest manufacturers of single-use batteries. Its competitors — Duracell, Energizer and Panasonic — have all taken steps towards establishing battery take-back programs for consumers. The three companies belong to the Corporation for Battery Recycling. TCE says Rayovac belonged to the group but withdrew.

In an April 2012 Earth Day press release, Rayovac encourages consumers to buy rechargeable batteries because fewer batteries purchased “means less waste deposited in landfills.” The company also instructed customers to look for battery retailers that have drop-off programs or hold onto used batteries until a hazardous waste collection event is held.

However, single-use batteries are banned from disposal in California and Europe, and are considered “universal waste” by the U.S. EPA. The waste category is for widely produced, potentially hazardous products that should be kept out of normal disposal streams whenever possible.

TCE says Rayovac also produces rechargeable batteries which are toxic and even more widely banned from disposal. TCE says it also privately called upon lighting manufacturers Philips, GE and Sylvania to take their products back for recycling because most modern lighting is toxic. Philips and Sylvania also responded with a refusal in June, the group says.

Consumers need responsible solutions for disposal or recycling, according to TCE, which says it plans to bring more groups from around the country together in a widespread, creative campaign to change the companies’ policies.

“We are not afraid to take on big companies that are doing too little for the planet,” Schneider said in a statement. “We are also excited when we get to move from opposition to cooperation, and we expect that Rayovac and the lighting companies will make changes sooner rather than later. Until then, we intend to organize support to hold these irresponsible companies accountable.”

So far, TCE has been joined by organizations in 11 states.

Environmental Leader

Staples, Best Buy and Office Depot are the only three major electronics retailers making a serious effort to help consumers recycle their old electronic products, says a report card released yesterday by the Electronics TakeBack Coalition.

While the three companies earned high marks on the report card, more than half of the 16 retailers flunked, including retail giants such as Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Sam’s Club and Sears. The coalition say that these retailers are doing very little to help recycle the billions of dollars in electronics that they sell.

Some retailers offer trade-in programs for high-value items like tablets and cell phones, but not for larger low-value items like  TVs, printers, VCRs and DVD players. The coalition says it does not count the trade-in programs as being equivalents of recycling, since consumers have to take the trouble to ship the trade-in back — few offer in-store options — and the programs only work for select high-value items.

The report card evaluated the retailers’ programs against 20 criteria, including convenience, transparency, collection volumes and responsible recycling. Chief among the findings:

• Only three of the retailers (19 percent) have effective recycling programs, meaning they take back all or most of the 13 categories studied and offer physical collection sites.
• Nine of the 16 retailers got Fs (56 percent), because they either have no recycling program or they take back only one item.
• While all 16 retailers sell TVs, only two (12 percent) — Best Buy and Micro Center —  take them back for recycling at their stores. Yet TVs are the items for which consumers have the most difficulty finding recycling options and will never mail back.
• Nine retailers offer trade-in programs, but only two of them — Best Buy and Radio Shack — let you bring trade-in items back to their stores. The others require consumers to ship their old products back to the trade-in vendor for credit.
• Six of the 16 (37 percent) retailers are using certified e-Stewards for their recycling or trade-in. The e-Steward standard does not allow vendors to export toxic e-waste to developing countries.

The Texas Campaign for the Environment, a coalition member, has singled out Walmart for not doing enough in Texas to promote electronics recycling. With lawmakers in the state introducing bills that will require big box retailers to step up to the plate, Robin Schneider, executive director of the Texas Campaign, says Walmart should increase its recycling efforts before the law forces it to do so.

Making it a legal requirement does boost recycling, as demonstrated by New York State. A report by the Product Stewardship Institute for the Natural Resources Defense Council says that easier consumer access to scrap electronics collection sites, spurred by manufacturer funding, has contributed to an increase in e-waste recycling and a decrease in government spending in the state.

The evaluation of the New York State Electronics Producer Responsibility Law, published earlier this week, found in the first partial year of the law’s implementation, which began April 1, 2011 and ended Dec. 31, 2011, the number of electronics take-back sites had increased by 77 percent across the state, and more than 44 million pounds of scrap electronics were collected. The report says the law saved local governments millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars, by shifting the financial burden of post-consumer product management away from municipalities and toward producers.