Real recycling from H&M, flooring from fishing nets and Starbucks’ reusable coffee cup
H&M launches clothing take-back programme
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the average American generates roughly 725kg of rubbish a year, a large portion of which could have been repurposed.
In an effort to reduce the waste in the US and elsewhere, retailer H&M is launching the Global Clothes Collecting Initiative, the first such programme by a fashion company to collect used garments from any brand in H&M stores and recycle them into new items. It will operate the scheme in 48 markets.
H&M tested the initiative back in 2011 in its Swiss stores, working in partnership with I:Co, which collects the used clothing and upcyles it into practical industrial products such as cleaning cloth, paper, insulation and textile fibres.
Anna Eriksson at H&M says that because the pilot proved a success, the company decided to take it global, with plans to begin rolling it out shortly.
In exchange for their good deeds, customers will be rewarded with an H&M voucher for each shopping bag of used clothes brought in. In Sweden, customers could receive a 50 kronor discount on a purchase of 300 kronor, while UK shoppers may receive £5 off a £30 purchase. Smart move for the planet, and for business.
Medicine access improvements
The pharmaceutical industry is doing more to give the world’s poor better access to medicine, but there is still ample room for improvement, according to the 2012 Access to Medicine Index.
The index is published every two years by the international non-profit Access to Medicine Foundation, which evaluates pharma companies across 101 indicators in seven technical areas deemed vital to boosting access to medicine in developing regions: general access to medicine management; R&D; pricing; manufacturing and distribution; patents and licensing; capacity advancement in product development and distribution; and production donations and philanthropic activities.
GlaxoSmithKline held on to the top spot, while Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi moved up the rankings, coming in second and third respectively (compared with ninth and fifth positions in 2010).
Suzanne Wolf at the foundation highlights several notable improvements, starting with the fact that 17 out of the 20 companies reviewed are doing more overall than they were in 2010 to increase access to medicine – even with a “higher bar” set for the 2012 index. Leading companies devote 20% of their R&D pipeline to products that address the needs of the less fortunate. Wolf also highlights the “remarkable achievement” of Johnson & Johnson, which upgraded its performance across the board, moving up seven places in the rankings in two years.
There were, however, also clear deficiencies. While inter-country and intra-country tiered pricing models are being used more widely to help lower the cost of medicine (75% of those surveyed), pharma brands are still insufficiently monitoring medicine price hikes by third-party sales agents.
Additionally, the 2012 index revealed that only four companies have adequate measures in place to manage and enforce codes of conduct for contract research organisations, which are increasingly used by the pharma industry to run clinical trials in developing countries.
“Without adequate due diligence in selecting contractors, monitoring of their conduct, or enforced disciplinary action, patients are left vulnerable to clinical malpractice with little recourse to justice,” the report states.
New life for discarded fishing nets
Interface has long been known for its leadership in sustainability. The world's largest maker of carpet tiles is now expanding its use of discarded nets in a new programme called Net-Works.
Last summer, Interface launched a six-month pilot programme in the Philippine fishing town of Danajon Bank, partnering with conservation charity the Zoological Society of London and Project Seahorse Foundation for Marine Conservation to turn cast-off fishing nets into carpet tiles, and provide the communities that collect them with a new source of income.
Interface is now expanding the programme to 15 other Philippine villages. Local communities will take part in collecting, aggregating, washing and assuring the discarded fishing nets, which will be collected from the villages and brought to a central hub for packing and shipping to Interface’s supplier. Suppliers will pay for the nets by weight, and the revenue will go to local community groups to distribute among the villages.
“Our aim is to make the model self-financing, with as many of the proceeds as possible going back directly into the villages,” explains Nigel Stansfield, Interface’s chief innovations officer.
Stansfield says this year’s goal is to develop the best Net-Works model in the Philippines, so the company can soon replicate the programme in other regions.
Interface already uses 44% recycled or bio-based materials to produce its carpets, and has a Mission Zero goal that by 2020, all its products will be made from recycled or bio-based content.
Starbucks’ reusable cups
It’s hard to get people to change their habits, especially behaviour as ingrained as the morning coffee run.
Starbucks is hoping that its new $1 personal tumblers, recently introduced in the US and Canada, will help incentivise customers to break their paper cup addiction. Patrons will get 10 cents off their Starbucks drink every time they use their $1 personal tumbler, which is the same discount the company already offers those who bring in their own cups. But Starbucks is now betting on the convenience and cost effectiveness of offering the $1 tumbler in stores to boost customer adoption of reusable cups.
Before introducing it nationwide, Starbucks piloted the $1 tumbler in 600 stores in the US Pacific northwest in October 2012, and saw a jump in tumbler sales, as well as customers bringing them back to fill their morning cup o’ Joe, says Jim Hanna, Starbucks’ director of environmental affairs.
Given that 80% of Starbucks’ drinks are consumed outside its walls, the coffee retailer realised that its waste reduction targets should be centred on the take-out cup market, Hanna explains. As a result, Starbucks modified its 2008 goal to increase customer use of tumblers and ceramic mugs (used in store) by 25% by 2015, to focus exclusively on raising personal tumbler use by 5% by that date.
If you’re wondering about the $1 tumblers’ composition, they are made from “number five plastic” (aka polypropylene), and are recyclable in the US and Canada where mixed plastic is accepted.
Telecoms water use cuts
AT&T and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) have come together to launch a pilot scheme to cut the multinational telecommunications company’s water use.
According to Jen Anderson at AT&T, 125 of its facilities generate nearly half of its annual 13bn litre water footprint. AT&T has further analysed data from its water scorecard, which reveals that “cooling towers” – the mechanism used in heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems large buildings – are one of the greatest sources of water use, and thus “represented the most compelling business case to reduce our water usage”, says Anderson.
AT&T and EDF’s cooling efficiency pilots will therefore help them identify best practices in three key categories: better water treatment technologies, improved operational practices, and increased use of “free air” cooling, the latter of which refers to taking advantage of colder climates and pulling outside cool air inside to chill the facilities (cutting both water and energy use).
“The good news is that cooling towers aren’t just an opportunity for AT&T,” says Anderson. “They represent a significant portion of all commercial building water use, with the EPA estimating that cooling towers are responsible for 25% of a standard [US] office building’s water use.” Moreover, AT&T plans to package its lessons learned into a toolkit for other companies across industries to use to help reduce their water footprints.
BP banned in US
Two and a half years after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill wreaked havoc on the Gulf of Mexico and caused the largest environmental disaster in US history, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has temporarily suspended BP from establishing new contracts with the US federal government.
In November 2012, BP agreed to pay a record $4.5bn in criminal fines and penalties for the spill, and pleaded guilty to 14 criminal charges, including 11 counts of misconduct or neglect of ship officers, one count of obstruction of Congress, one misdemeanour count for violating the Clean Water Act, and one misdemeanour count for violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
The EPA says it instituted the suspension because of BP’s “lack of business integrity”, and in order to “protect the government from conducting business with non-responsible companies”. BP has since provided the EPA with a 100-page statement in an effort to demonstrate that it is, in fact, responsible enough to conduct business with the US government.
Following the spill BP has been awarded 50 additional federal contracts in the Gulf of Mexico, and the current suspension doesn’t affect the contracts BP already has in place with the US government. While EPA suspensions normally last up to 18 months, the ongoing legal proceedings of this mega case could extend it even longer. A mess, indeed.