New Film Recycling Directory, Validated Data, Breathe Life into Store Drop-Off

“I often say that recycling is like politics. It's local. It's difficult for national brands to communicate, on the product, a hyper-local piece of information. The directory provides them the information that they need, to empower them to feel confident that, if they recycle this material properly, that it will actually be recycled,” he said.  

Data and validation

To make all these disparate program components work together, a strong base of underpinning data and methodology is required. Some governing entity has to confirm that it’s reliable data. This is the sweet spot for Resource Recycling (RRS), who works with retailers themselves to audit and validate retail environments.

A larger retailer with hundreds of stores can declare that SDO is available in their chain, but how can they ensure every brick and mortar store in the chain is complaint? On the other hand, individual store locations may be gung-ho and vigilant about making SDO bins accessible to consumers, but how can that vigilance be realized across the larger, many-store, many-location chains?

Anne Johnson, principal and VP at RRS, learned through previous SDO for SPC in California that the right methodology that takes both a top-down and bottom-up approach.

“We looked at the top 100 stores by retailers, by sales, and defined, what was going to be the universe of potential store drop off that would be representative of the of the total market of store drop off. Then we selected an audit methodology where we would ask for photographs of the bins in place, of signage information from the stores, information on their typical maintenance routines, how often are bins present, and so on. That's the bottom-up part, and that's really difficult.”

The plan is to audit about somewhere between 900 and 1,000 stores out of the total universe of just more than 18,000. It's a big effort, but Johnson said it lifts [the SDO program’s] credibility.

“The piece moving forward is, ‘how do you systematize this process for access, so it's easier for everybody that's participating?’ We’re creating an easier and more transparent system for people to validate their information,” she said. “That's how we start taking steps to address some of the [consumer] skepticism about the system.”

Added Nowak, “For us to be able to give a label with any confidence we need to know that it's happening, or the label goes away. We comply to law; we don't make the law. So we need to have great data. RSS has been an amazing partner to do that.”

“To be clear, some of the studies that we're seeing about where waste is going, it’s not going to the places we think we should go. Full stop,” said Nowak. “We're not here to say that the system is perfect. What we are saying is more access is better than less. And when you start something new, you need to continue to grow it and evolve it so that it gets better.”Johnson (center) explains the nuances of working with retailers, who have their own distinct set of motivations and KPIs.

Retailer buy-in

Johnson and RRS have learned that it’s important to establish trust. That’s not only trust with consumers, as brands and How2Recycle strive to do, but also the with retailers. They participate in SDO voluntarily, and it grew out of the fact that retailers use a lot of bags. They wanted to provide a service for their customers to be able to do something other than throw them away. That has evolved over time, and it has become more important for retailers to offer SDO in the first place, but managing it is not easy, and it's not their first job.

“When you when you propose doing an audit, for instance, we learn things like, some retailers have entire embargoes on talking to their stores in the summer, because it's high season and they are really, busy stocking shelves. That’s true again in November as we enter the holiday season—you might as well just block it out. Working around the cadence of retail sales, working around their internal systems is key. Labor is very valuable, and they want employees directed at the most important things that a store needs. Figuring out how to navigate each retailer’s systems, and tailor the way you work with them to the way they work, there's a little bit of an art to that. It’s not one size fits all. We're learning a lot of lessons about how to do that, but they have been incredibly cooperative, very interested and supportive.”

Next steps will likely involve expanding the scope of inquiry for audits and validation to better understand how much is being collected and how much is being recycled, “so that we have that sort of full supply chain transparency,” Johnson said, “but it’s a process to get there.”

But to put things in context, films aren’t acceptable in curbside recycling systems at all. In a lot of ways, SDO is the only current consumer film recycling game in town. Meanwhile, films and flexible packaging are the largest category of packaging, and also the fastest growing categories of packaging.

“This is what we have in terms of infrastructure today to recover and do something other than landfill for films and flexibles,” Johnsons said. “It's important that we solve this particular piece of the chain as technology evolves to where we have more options. EPR is pushing us to that to figure out, but what is it going to look like? Are we going to be like Canada, where you start with store drop-off films, then expanded flexibles, that then move into curbside? I think we are very likely on very similar trajectory. But today, what we have, so this is what we need to do.”

Trajectory of film recycling and FFRASnapshot of which and how organizations are involved in the Flexible Film Recycling Alliance.

Some of the energy behind PLASTIC’s rebuilding of a film recycling directory, and its SDO component, has been the recent formation of the Flexible Film Recycling Alliance (FFRA), a collaboration between stakeholders like Flexible Packaging Association, Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), US Plastics Pact, American Chemistry Council, The Recycling Partnership, among others.

“Store drop off is really great to do, but we know that CPGs really want to get their films into curbside, and that's great. And we know that TRP and others are investing to really make that happen,” Krieger said.

"Film will be recyclable. We just need to do things to get there," Keenan added. "[Store drop-off] is one thing that we need to do, and it's kind of the first thing. We have a really long way to and to get the film recycling, it starts with store drop-off. We hear a lot of naysayers about the store drop-off program. But it's the only way films getting recycled, and if you [experts and stakeholders at SPC Advance] don't believe, how is the consumer going to believe it? I think we all need to step back [and say to ourselves], ‘well, if we want film to get recyclable, let's be all in on store drop off. What can we do to invest in store drop off?’ That's the only way we start to change consumer attitude, by actually demonstrating the increase in film recycling for household consumers. Business to business recycling is great, but we need to demonstrate for household consumers, who take their film home, that there's a way to recycle it. Right now, store drop-off is the only way to do it. But they don't do it, and the biggest gap for consumers with store drop-off is they don't they're not aware of it. They don't know it exists, and they don't know how to find it. Having a directory [will be] amazing, because we could tell our consumers where to recycle films.”"Film will be recyclable. We just need to do things to get there," Keenan said.

End markets will have a lot to do with this, and the eventual ‘holy grail’ of curbside film-to-film recycling.

“We often talk about this from the supply side, but recognizing that, if we collect this material, we process this material, we make things from it, but nobody buys it, then what are we doing here?” asks Krieger. “We need to also make sure that we are building in markets that are using this [recycled film] material. And we can't do that relying solely on things like plastic lumber, dunnage, or durable industrial products. We need to see recycled content in consumer product packaging.” PW