Creating a Circular Economy: A tactical guide from Good Goods
(Part 1 of 6)
Good Goods is thrilled to announce our first blog post series, Creating a Circular Economy, encouraging readers to think strategically and realistically about reuse. We have focused our efforts on wine bottles, the wine industry’s largest source of waste, but the framework is applicable to all consumer packaging.
Our company takes a modern, technical-forward approach to the “milkman” model. With Good Goods, consumers can prolong the life of wine bottles by simply returning them to the store and scanning a QR code with their phones. Our successful reuse model shows that suppliers, customers, service providers, and producers can work together to reduce carbon emissions all while boosting sales.
In this series, I hope to guide other businesses and environmental activists through our framework for scalable circular economies (CEs), a method for “creating restorative economic systems that keep materials in a constant loop of production.” CEs strive to make better use of resources to support environmental, economic, and social goals. Good Goods’ tactical approach to CEs can encourage other companies to think realistically and strategically, not idealistically, about the possibilities and challenges posed by reuse.
The hardest part is solving for the wide range of variables that reuse introduces. This series of blog posts is about how to approach these items from a comprehensive viewpoint. It is about how to position reuse as a positive product feature. I call it tactical reuse. Tactical reuse is about implementing reuse programs that consumers love and that generates sustainable business value. It’s about building a reuse experience that beats single use!
The Critical Need for Circular Economies
Although the recorded history of recycling dates back to ancient times, modern recycling and Gary Anderson’s reduce, reuse, recycle icon wasn’t introduced until the 1970s. The icon and America’s public recycling programs were developed in response to the public’s growing concerns about the environmental impact of the industrial revolution and mass production.
As production and consumption continue to change in line with technological innovations, so does our society’s approach to reduction, reuse, and recycling. Implementing eco-friendly practices into our daily lives requires new technologies, new frameworks of thought, and significant education.
Most consumers agree that our current linear supply chains pose a devastating environmental and societal threat. The global population continues to grow rapidly, increasing demand for dwindling raw materials. This unchecked linear consumption is destroying the environment and negatively impacting our health.
My team and I have spent the last three years building in this space and thinking through these new systems. When we launched Fresh Bowl in 2018 to provide grab-n-go meals in reusable containers, we quickly realized the glaring absence of a playbook for establishing a system of reuse within product-based businesses.
Limitations of Recycling and Composting
The transition to a circular supply chain is not just inevitable, it is essential to the advancement of our global economies and the health of the planet. In a circular supply chain, products will transition to one of three categories: reusable/refillable, recyclable, or compostable.
Reusable/refillable items present the most environmentally sound solution for most materials and applications. However, the majority of corporate and government initiatives focus on recyclables and compostable items as the least disruptive solutions to the current supply chain. Dig into almost all corporate (and most legislative) approaches to environmental responsibility and it will become apparent that the real question being asked is, “How do I convey sustainability without changing anything?”
Despite all of the recycling initiatives, Americans, like most countries in the world, have a long way to go to achieve functional and profitable programs. Recycling’s greatest downfall is that the cost to collect, process and recycle most materials exceed the cost of producing the virgin material.
Consumers remain largely unaware of these issues (primarily by design of the lobbying interests), and corporations view recycling as a way to remove the burden/guilt they associate with throwing away items. The efforts to retain this image will be addressed in another blog post, but it is fair to say recycling is broken.
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Check out this episode from Netflix’s Broken for a deeper dive into recycling’s downfall
Similarly, compostables do not represent a real, large-scale solution. The growing public perception as an environmentally friendly option has helped composting gain traction in recent years. However, bioplastics and other forms of compostable materials require specialized facilities not available to most of the US.
In addition, the total environmental impact of these products often outweighs their single-use counterparts.. The Oregon DEQ reviewed 18-years of life-cycle assessments, including over 1,200 comparisons involving compostable packaging. In most of these comparisons, the production, use, and processing of compostable materials resulted in greater environmental consequences than that of either non-compostable materials or compostable materials treated via recycling, landfilling, or incineration.
Recycling and composting push the product end-of-life responsibility away from the businesses creating the waste and onto the municipalities and consumers. They require large-scale infrastructure, regulation, and mass education, which the U.S. has continually failed in all aspects.
The Benefits of Reuse
Unlike recycling and composting, reuse of materials can be achieved by businesses of all sizes and appropriately places the responsibility of reducing downstream waste on corporations rather than consumers.
Reusable packaging can often be a powerful way to improve operations, sales, and environmental health. To implement a successful reuse system, the complexity of the process should be hidden from the user, the program should be straightforward to producers to execute, and the value should be easy to quantify.
In the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, 100 of the world’s largest consumer goods companies have committed to transitioning to reusables from recyclables by 2025. The commitment requires nearly 20% of plastic packaging to convert to reusable formats. Experts assume that other material types like glass and metal will see similar, if not higher, rates of reusable adoption.
Given that only 2% of consumer packing is reusable at the moment, we should see a sizable adoption of the format over the next decade. However, implementing circular economies based on reuse continues to pose several challenges, such as push back from current supply chains, the lack of return centers, and the minimal specialized technology.
As consumer awareness grows along with legislation and corporate initiatives, the rebirth of reusables is becoming inevitable. The challenges that reuse introduces will create opportunities for those that can adapt.Therefore, it’s time that we start thinking tactically about it.
Join the Movement
Follow this six-part blog series to learn more about the reuse system developed by Good Goods. Future posts will focus on
- the return equation,
- incentive structure ,
- consumer goodwill,
- consumer experience,
- and convenience.
I’ll conclude the series with a post about how to build a business model that leverages Good Good’s reuse framework to send you on your way to designing a circular economy.
What is the most important factor when building a circular economy? Incentivizing returns.
Regardless of the level of innovation or efficiency of logistics, a circular economy depends on materials being returned by consumers. Let our team at Good Goods help you overcome this potential crippling pitfall by subscribing to our blog or contacting me directly. Together, we can create a more sustainable world built by united companies and customers invested in the success of reuse.
Cheers and many happy returns!
