Being
Sustainably-Packaged German Snacks
Posted - July 30, 2008
Herr Foods Furthers Sustainably with Pump Retrofit
Germany
Organic Cosmetics Standards
Posted - July 15, 2008
Varied Requirements, Little Regulation Bring US Lawsuit
Organic-branded cosmetics and personal care products are coming under legal question in the US. A lawsuit was recently launched by soap and cosmetics firm Dr. Bronner
Garbage
Posted - May 1, 2008
Still Too Much Garbage!
By Sofi
TerraCycle
Posted - May 1, 2008
From Worms to Wealth
By Adrian Larose - as printed in O.W.N. Summer 2008
Making money from millions of empty juice pouches and drained-out pop bottles might sound like a difficult prospect, but that’s what TerraCycle is doing. TerraCycle works with mainstream companies like Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Kraft Foods. Working with these companies, says CEO and co-founder Tom Skazy, is exactly what is needed to move consumers towards environmentally-friendly products.
Skazy insists that discovering new ways to work with the mainstream in an eco-capitalist fashion is the only sustainable approach. Starting during Skazy’s university studies with an organic worm-poop compost product, his firm TerraCycle has grown from US $70,000 turnover in 2004 to $3.5 million in 2006, with $7 million likely in 2008.
Hungarian-born but raised in Canada, Skazy discovered that worm poop is a very effective fertilizer. He also realized that the main ingredient, garbage, is readily available - it’s “simply a commodity that people are willing to pay to get rid of,” he says. “Waste doesn’t exist in nature,” he adds: it’s a human-made problem.
With this ready supply of ingredients, Skazy obtained funding through business plan contests. Selling a product made from waste was not enough for the firm, though: soon, it also began to package its product in containers usually seen as waste.
“Since we make a product from garbage, why don’t we package it in garbage?” Skazy says of the group’s thinking. Visiting area recycling centers, TerraCycle learned that plastic pop bottles are standardized enough to be cheap, practical non-food packaging. The “world’s first and still only products made and packaged entirely out of garbage” were born, Skazy says. Remove the old labels from the bottles, wash them out and re-fill: you’re ready to roll. (TerraCycle is not packaging food, which would have different requirements.)
The company is built on three brand criteria for all products, such as the cleaners it now also makes. First, TerraCycle’s product must work better than the typical one it replaces. Second, the product must be made with the greenest ingredients - often items previously viewed as waste. Third, the product must cost less or not much more than typical offerings.
“It’s the price that’s the big issue,” Skazy says of environmentally-friendly goods. “Usually, eco-friendly products are more expensive and they don’t work as well. That’s what people think.” The solution: find ways to work within the system that let your firm save money while it helps the environment, so you can provide the consumer an affordable product. Working from waste is one option.
To get enough empty pop bottles for its fertilizer, TerraCycle began paying collection locations - schools and churches, for instance. These locations send in empties under a program called the “bottle brigade” that now has about 4,000 participating US locations. By returning empties, the groups earn money for charitable causes and save TerraCycle laborious collection work.
TerraCycle has partnered with firms like Clif Bar, Stonyfield Farm and Honest Tea to collect their empty, non-recyclable packages, and has a US $1 million deal to collect Capri Sun juice pouches for Kraft. As of writing, the firm was in the final planning stages of a $1 million deal with Oreo.
The basic business model for such deals sees the sponsor company cover all costs to get empty packages to TerraCycle’s factory, Skazy says, such as collection and publicity costs. Locations that offer to collect empty packages receive two to six cents a package towards a charitable cause. Meanwhile, TerraCycle receives free raw ingredients - the empty packaging. It can then manufacture pencil cases, bags and other goods out of the waste, selling the end products for as little as $2 retail for pencil cases. Each year, the brigade programs collects millions of Capri Sun juice pouches from 850 schools.
Good media coverage, and lots of it, is the main benefit for the sponsor, Skazy says. More and more firms are likely to sign up for such programs. “All these big companies are looking to embrace this right now, so we’re in a very fortunate position,” he says.
“Really where it has to happen is Wal-Mart,” he says of the shift towards environmental products. “I’m not an environmentalist. I think I’m very much the average person. I don’t drive a hybrid car. I don’t go out of my way to eat organic food,” Skazy adds. To get such people to choose environmentally-friendly products, those products must be better in every way than others.
The most important ingredient for environmentally-friendly products to succeed, what Skazy calls “the holy grail” , is not to try and make the customer care about your product’s values, but “to make them choose your product without having to care.” Choosing sustainable options must not feel like a sacrifice, but simply be the obvious, best, ordinary choice. Terracycle products have succeeded here.
Even many of the green-oriented people attending the Green Jobs Conference held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this March admitted to Skazy that they sometimes choose price over environment. During his speech at the conference, Skazy asked audience members whether they bought organic bananas at the current premium cost, and only one third of the supposedly forward-thinking audience members raised their hands.
But if the price of organic vs conventional bananas was similar? Who would buy organic then? Everyone raised their hands.
US Campaign Against GMOs Targets Consumers
Posted - April 11, 2008
New Initiatives to Control GMO Products in the United States
GMOs will soon be off everyone’s table, if Jeffrey Smith has his way. His Institute for Responsible Technology is launching a major initiative that will have food companies racing to replace GM ingredients. The Campaign for Healthy Eating in America, Smith says, is designed to reach the tipping point of consumer rejection of GMOs before the end of 2009.
Ten years ago, virtually all major food companies committed to remove GMOs from their European brands within a single week. In the US, a response to Monsanto’s rbGH (GM bovine growth hormone) began two years ago, when Starbucks, Krogers, and 40 out of 100 top dairies removed these products. Wal-Mart declared their milk rbGH free this March. “The common link to these tipping points,” says Smith, “is that consumers became aware of the health dangers and were given choice. Since GMOs offer no consumer advantages, even a small percentage of consumers making brand choices based their non-GMO status will cause food companies to respond.”
Smith has traveled to 30 countries speaking on the health dangers of genetically modified foods. “Convincing consumers to shun GMOs has become easy,” says Smith, “since the evidence of problems is now overwhelming and irrefutable.” These dangers are compiled in Smith’s new book, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods. With input from more than 30 scientists over two years, Genetic Roulette presents 65 health risks of GM foods and why current safety assessments are not competent to protect us from most of them. Former UK environment minister Michael Meacher says the revelations in Genetic Roulette may “change the global course of events this century.” It’s presented in the same clear, accessible style that made Jeffrey’s first book, Seeds of Deception, the world’s best-selling and number 1 rated book on genetically engineered foods.
The Campaign for Healthier Eating is providing the compelling evidence on GMO dangers for health conscious shoppers. Natural food stores will feature Non-GMO Education Centers containing books, brochures, CDs, DVDs, and Non-GMO Shopping Guides to make it easy for shoppers to identify non-GMO products on store shelves.
The Institute and its coalition partners are helping to inspire the entire North American natural food industry to remove all remaining GM ingredients, providing ample choice for thoroughly educated non-GMO shoppers.
The first Non-GMO Shopping Guides should be available this Summer, with electronic and print circulation expected in the tens of millions. The Institute will also print the Guide in magazines and circulate copies to healthcare professionals, schools and parents and religious groups.
“Consumers are on the top of the food chain,” says Smith, “and together, we can move the marketplace.”
For more: http://www.responsibletechnology.org
