When my favorite cereals packaging was about to change my life

Marie CHAULOUX
Aug 9, 2017 · 5 min read
TV comercial Eco-Emballages starring “Monsieur Papillon” with a cereal box

It all started in a small country-side village in western France when having my daily honey oats cereal over breakfast. I had no idea this would lead me 26 years later to open a startup expansion in Santiago, Chile before spending 2 years and half in Brazil. You think big corporations can’t have a positive impact? Talk to empowered consumers, behavioral change is possible. With the help of all, it starts now and we are taking action to change the world :)

Good Morning World

When I was a kid, I used to have honey oat cereals with a hot chocolate for breakfast. By the age of 6 years old, I could finally read the colorful inscriptions that were written on the box while drinking my favorite morning beverage. At first, it was just games and different exotic giraffes or elephants painted on it. But a few years later, another colorful drawing appeared: it’d explain me how to discard my favorite cereal box:

At that same age, I was doing my first school trip to a recycling plant close to my hometown, the biggest in the region. We had a tour of the plant to show us all the process and raise awareness among the students. Doesn’t seems like a big deal, but back at home,I would do my homework: ‘teach your parents how to separate trash’. We had 2 bags back then: the dry and the “non recyclable”. Lessons learnt, I was doing it right and teaching it to the whole family.

Growing up, I decided to volunteer for a local NGO to raise awareness about recycling among adults in cultural / sports events in the city. This is when I really realized how much work still needed to be done among citizens even in a city that had previously been elected “European Green Capital.

Back to the roots

A year later, my growing eager to explore the world became strong enough to pack my backpack for Brazil. I left Paris and the comfortable tourism industry to spend a few weeks in an agro-ecological farm in the south, live in harmony with nature, travel and go back to France. In the end, I stayed a month and half in that farm, learnt Portuguese, how to cook vegetarian food and be aware of what could be recycled or not, in a Latin-American country like Brazil. We were composting, cleaning and recycling the packagings (ALL OF THEM). Everyone was collaborating. No labels on the packagings or trash bag were provided by the municipality though, we were using big white resistant bags.

WWOOFing in SItio Capororoca, Porto Alegre, Brazil

Creating a career of meaning and impact

After another month traveling, I came back to France, with a certainty that I was going to change to a career of purpose and impact. Beautiful coincidence, I joined the Amani Institute to complete a social innovation management certificate in … Sao Paulo Brazil! Together with 3 other fellows, I co-created an NGO called Brasil Tomorrow to map and connect the Brazilian eco-system of initiatives aligned with the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). We organized many events in Sao Paulo to give more visibility to local players and to areas such as waste management with the Zero Waste Week.

Brasil Tomorrow’s team (2 Brazilian, 2 Europeans)

Consumer awareness and recycling

With the same idea to keep working on sustainability, I then started to read more about recycling in Latin-America and was horrified by figures, something had to be done:

less than 15% of materials are recycled in Latin America, and 3% in Brazil (formal businesses sources). In fact between 50–90% of what is being recycled in Latin America is done by waste-pickers.

My wish was to work with social and environmental impact while using technology to solve the recycling challenge. This is when I met Luciana and Thiago, they immediately trusted me to be on board of New Hope Ecotech. A technology based platform that connects recyclers like waste-pickers cooperatives with consumer goods companies that need to pay for the recycling of their packaging.

2 years and half later, I’m in Santiago, Chile, won a grant to participate to Start-Up Chile acceleration program to expand New Hope here. We are now a proud B-Corp company, with 10 employees and have more than 60 brands who trust us and are financially incentivizing the recycling chain to help thousands of waste-pickers in Brazil. We want to give people access to the right information to recycle in a fun a easy way for everyone to win: consumers, recyclers, companies and of course the environment! With the help of many partners, we are reaching hundred of thousands of people all over the country and with more engagement of consumers everyday!

Example of one of the post on social media about using organic sponge instead of synthetic’s

From Consumer To “Consum’actor”

This willingness to change consumer behavior towards sustainable habits is a goal that I’m carrying with me in my everyday life. Through my work by improving the communication to consumers and enable companies to make a real difference with easy tools and strong technology. In my personal life with my consumption decisions that I see as an activist tool to raise awareness and reward people and companies that are creating value and a positive impact in this world. Today, more and more initiatives are including consumers to make companies react and take action for our planet.

Let’s B (and do) the change!

I am very looking forward to participating to the UNLEASH Lab in Denmark and working together with SDG talents on consumer behavior, waste management and circular economy for a better world! I believe that together we can find smart and reachable solutions to the SDG, especially on the #12 objective on Sustainable Consumption that I’ll be working on!

With such a wide diversity of people and background, I am sure we can find solutions for a better future and the answer might be just in front of us. We only need to take action!

If you want to connect and follow my experience at UNLEASH LAB on any of the following topics: Consumer behavior, Waste Management, Circular Economy, Urban Sustainability, please contact me via LinkedIn.

UNLEASH Lab

Global innovation lab creating disruptive solutions for the UN's SDGs

Marie CHAULOUX

Written by

UNLEASH Lab

Global innovation lab creating disruptive solutions for the UN's SDGs

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