Challenger to Watch: Loop
Like every other person who’s, quite rightly, currently terrified about the imminent climate apocalypse, I have been taking tiny but important steps to live more sustainably – one of the first steps being cutting out single-use plastics as much as possible from my weekly shop.
But trekking down to the new unpackaged no-waste grocery shop with my jars and pots doesn’t quite fit in with my ‘Uber’s Children’ demands for extreme convenience to fit in with my busy executive lifestyle. So, I was delighted when I discovered a small local business in my area who sell essential groceries (and fancy sourdough bread and locally roasted coffee) in reusable packaging - delivered and collected for free to my door by electric vehicle.
Yes, I got a milkman.
So Chris, from Parker Dairies helps reduce our household plastic waste by at least 5 plastic pints a week – hurray! But what of the other stuff my big shop? What about the shampoo, bleach and ice cream? Why is the reuse part of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ mantra not the focus of more of our packaged goods innovation?
Enter Loop.
Loop is the brainchild of recycling wizards Terracycle, an 18-year-old company operating in over 20 countries, that has become leaders in the field through innovation in recycling traditionally hard-to-recycle waste (even cigarette butts). Through a multi-strand business model Terracyle partners with hundreds of brands and companies, and works with thousands of waste collecting volunteers, to recycle billions of items globally that would previously have been sent to landfill – and it makes a profit doing it.
But we know we can’t rely on recycling alone to solve our plastic problem – and, as Terracycle founder Tom Szaky explained to GreenBiz, new thinking is needed to shift consumer behaviours in favour of reuse.
“The challenge of many reuse models is that they put reuse on a pedestal, but sacrifice the three things consumers care about: convenience; affordability and "the shiny new object," or having the new cool thing. We need to accept consumers for what they are and try to create reuse models that play into those behaviors.”
With Loop, Szaky is attempting to solve that challenge through a circular, collaborative model to encourage consumer goods brands to sell products in refillable custom-designed reusable packaging. Through partnering with the brands and retailers, the brands design and maintain control of the packaging at the beginning of its life, then Loop takes care of the collection of used products, cleaning and refilling of the packaging - and when it reaches the end of its life, they recycle it.
Häagen-Dazs stainless steel packaging.
If Loop catches on, it could be a win-win for brands and consumers – having a specific tub for your Clorox wipes increases loyalty and frequency for the brand, and the customer gets more durable, nicer looking packaging that performs better – for example, the stainless steel Häagen-Dazs tub is designed to keep the product at the optimum temperature during transportation and melt at the perfect rate for easy spooning from the tub.
After an initial launch in France and subsequent rollout in the US in 2019 with big brand partners such as Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and Clorox, Szaky seems confident about Loop’s potential to make an impact, with both brand and consumers responding well to the pilot.
2020 sees the expansion of Loop to the UK, Canada, Japan and Australia. The critical factor in its success will be whether the involvement and support of the goliath packaged goods companies is enough to help Loop, and initiatives like it, achieve the critical mass of scale and shift in behaviour it (and the planet) needs.
