FOr so a patron of a Seattle coffee shop called a few months last year. tailwind cafe We had the option to order Americanos and lattes in returnable metal to-go cups. They borrowed it from his Tailwind and set off, and at some point – maybe a few hours later, maybe another day that week – they returned it to the store, and the store cleaned it for the next person. was able to replenish. If the cup is not returned within his 14 days, the customer will be charged a $15 deposit, which will also be eventually refunded if the cup is returned within his 45 days. That will be the case.
However, the system soon ran into trouble. Kayla Tekautz, head chef at Tailwind, said it was “a challenge” to explain the return system to all of her interested customers. Many were hesitant to participate after learning they could only return their cups to Tailwind or another drop-off location six miles away. Additionally, his QR code reader in Tailwind kept breaking down, requiring repeated visits by a mechanic. Late last summer, Tailwind quietly ended its plans. “It didn’t work out,” Tekauts said.
In an effort to reduce single-use plastic consumption, the City of Seattle has over the past few years encourage local businesses Provide reusable cups, plates, utensils, and packaging. For example, concertgoers at the Paramount Theater and participants at the Northwest Folklife Festival can now order drinks in reusable polypropylene cups. Since 2022, University of Washington students have been able to check out bright green reusable food containers from a company called Ozzi.
These plans will help Seattle avoid single-use plastics andA lean future” According to the city’s reuse website. This is a goal that many American cities are pursuing, and on a global level as well. Disposable plastic food utensils and packaging almost 40% All plastic production can only be phased out if robust and efficient reuse systems exist to replace them.
However, some companies like Tailwind have struggled to get reusable containers off the ground due to the often small scale and disconnected nature of reuse schemes. Instead of pooling resources and hiring only one or two large-scale cleaning and logistics services, companies must choose between multiple competing efforts and, in some cases, create their own programs. It may also be executed. The result is a large number of incompatible containers.
Creating their own designs and logistics can be expensive for many companies, and they can miss out on the economies of scale that make reuse more affordable and easier to implement. She should be able to “buy a coffee at a local cafe and have it delivered to the lobby of an office building,” said Ashima Sukhdev, a policy advisor for the city of Seattle. Or drop it off at a library or bus stop. ”
But what Sukhdev is describing represents a highly unusual level of alignment across corporate sectors, which have been trained for 70 years to expect disposables in almost every aspect of daily life. This will require major changes from consumers.
according to recent reports According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF), a nonprofit organization that advocates for a circular economy that conserves resources, even companies that have vowed to drastically reduce their use of plastic are only replacing less than 2% of single-use containers. It is said that there is. with something reusable. “A fundamentally new approach is needed to realize the full benefits of return systems,” the authors conclude.
EMF identified Four broad categories of reuse systems: Consumers bring their own reusable containers to grocery stores and coffee shops and refill them on the go. Refill at home. Consumers own their own reusable containers and order refills by mail. Return on the go, where businesses own the container and consumers can rent it. And when you get back from home, a company owns your reusable container and takes it and cleans it (like an old-fashioned milkman).
The EMF report focuses on the “on-the-go returns” category and argues that three things need to happen for reuse to become mainstream. Companies need to achieve high return rates. Sharing cleaning, collection, sorting and distribution infrastructure to achieve economies of scale. Utilize standardized, reusable containers. The third pillar makes the other two pillars much easier to achieve.
Pat Kaufman, manager of Composting, Recycling and Reuse Programs for Seattle Public Works, is currently working with a nonprofit group called PR3, which aims to develop these standards. Some of the questions they face include: What would a standardized reusable packaging system look like and what would it take to get businesses and consumers to adopt it? there is.
They have spent the past four years drafting a standard for reuse systems, with a particular focus on container design, with the aim of eventually certifying the world’s first reuse standard. International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This would lend legitimacy to his PR3 proposal, as ISO maintains one of the world’s most widely accepted catalogs of standards. Other products in the portfolio cover everything from food safety to medical device manufacturing and have been adopted voluntarily by many large companies. company and Government agency. PR3 released a draft standard last year and has been updating the standard ever since.
So what makes a good reusable container system? It’s complicated. Containers must withstand the stress of logistics and transportation. Must be relatively inexpensive.Perhaps the most invisible thing, but they have to Seem It’s reusable, so customers won’t accidentally throw it away with the garbage.
When designing draft standards, PR3 often had to make educated predictions about which standards consumers would respond to. And those predictions can have far-reaching implications. For example, if you expect customers to frequently lose containers or forget to return them, it probably doesn’t make sense to design thick containers that can withstand hundreds of uses.
“In the real world, return rates vary widely,” said Claudette Juska, technical director and co-founder of PR3. “There is no need to design a container that can be used 400 times if it is only going to be used 4 times.” The latest version of the PR3 standard requires that containers can withstand at least 20 uses and actually be reused at least 10 times. It is specified that it must be designed.
On the other hand, designing containers with the assumption that they will not be returned can be counterproductive. Stuart Chidley, co-founder of a reusable packaging company called Reposit, says containers that look and feel cheap can actually be dangerous. cause Return rates are lower because people can be more careless. His philosophy is to use characteristics such as color, weight, and shape to convey a container’s reusability, making it less likely that people will confuse it with a disposable item.
Rather than requiring a specific container shape or size, PR3 makes some broad requirements that containers be designed to “optimize durability” and follow “best practices for recyclability.” I have drafted it. Existing food safety regulations must be complied with. If desired, companies can label their products with a universal symbol, similar to the ubiquitous “tracking arrow” used to indicate recyclability. No such symbol for reuse exists yet, but PR3 suggests a black, white, or orange rose-like emoji and the word “reuse.”
More specific design elements are included as recommendations only. For example, the draft PR3 requires reusable containers to have internal angles of at least 90 degrees to facilitate cleaning, and also require “feet” to maximize airflow during drying. It states that there is. It also says containers should be “nested” to save storage space and facilitate transportation.
This approach is intended to appease large enterprises by allowing them to continue using containers that look and feel very different, as long as they comply with a broad set of requirements. “Product companies want that kind of autonomy,” Juska says.
For example, Coca-Cola is known for its iconic characteristics and Patented An hourglass-shaped cola bottle. And beauty companies are notorious for things like: differentiated packaging: In the perfume aisle, you might find bottles in the shape of just about anything. high heel shoes To the kitten.
Some reuse advocates want to do away with these unique container designs altogether to allow for sharing among different companies. This is a situation in which packages are considered to be “pooled” within the market. So instead of having a luxuriously diverse perfume bottle, all your fragrances could come in interchangeable cylindrical bottles.
A small number of companies are already doing this, especially in Europe. For example, through the German program, mach meerweg pool ((create reuse pool), brand Share the same collection of glass bottles You can fill it with a variety of foods. When the consumer returns the empty container to the supermarket, a logistics company picks up the empty container and takes it back to the food producer for cleaning.another organization called German Wells Cooperative is running a similar plan for reusable soda and water bottles and counts more than 150 beverage manufacturers as members.
There is already evidence that most companies choose not to pool containers and are wasting funds.
At least some intervention, perhaps regulation or financial incentives, will be needed. Conditions favorable to reusability. A hands-off, market-driven approach has led to today’s proliferation of single-use plastics.
EMF modeling suggests that only reusable systems that are “co-built from the ground up” can achieve cost parity with single-use systems. However, it is unclear what exactly that cooperation will look like. That’s because the types of government regulations that help facilitate it may be at odds with America’s free market ethos and antitrust laws. Internationally, some cities and countries No country is doing more to promote reuse than the United States, but no country is doing as much as the EMF suggests.
