2024 Impact Report

Hello to our supporters, partners, Friends Network, Reuse Solutions Network members, and everyone joining us in accelerating the shift to a reuse economy. I am happy to share our 2024 Impact Report illustrating what Upstream and the reuse movement accomplished over the year.

Perhaps most notably, Upstream successfully secured a seed grant from the National Park Foundation to create the largest open loop reuse system in the U.S. at Grand Canyon National Park. This is not a pilot but a full implementation project, overhauling food service operations at the Grand Canyon, and will serve as a model to replicate at other National Parks. We look forward to sharing updates throughout 2025.

Also in 2024, we demonstrated a reuse model at scale in K-12 school systems, a gateway sector with wide demographic reach, to increase exposure to the general population and make reuse part of mainstream culture.

Upstream contributed heavily to the publication of Earth Action’s Outcomes-Based Financial Mechanisms paper, outlining a financing model that could be adopted to help overcome the barrier of upfront infrastructure costs in transitioning to a reuse economy. We also built or strengthened relationships with reuse service providers across the US & Canada, and are continually working with them to help overcome funding and other barriers to scale.  

The Reuse Solutions Network, Upstream’s primary mode of engagement with the reuse movement, grew to over 1,300 members strong (a 30% YOY increase). Through regular, high-quality meetings and an interactive digital platform, we have been able to provide a space for resource-sharing and insights to support local advocacy. 

At the end of 2024, there were 107 reuse laws (+34% year over year) in the US and Canada, impacting 26% of the population (+30%). We have been able to track this policy growth thanks to the creation of a paid policy internship position; the fact that our policy tracker was accessed approximately 40,000 times throughout the year is testament to the value of this position and the resources we provide to the movement. 

Filling a catalytic role for reuse policy across North America, our involvement in these policies varies jurisdiction to jurisdiction. We were, and continue to be, highly engaged in ongoing rulemaking processes for EPR and DRS legislation in ME (EPR and DRS), OR (EPR), CA (EPR), and CO (EPR). In fact, on average 95% of our comments were accepted into draft state legislation and 60% of our comments were accepted into rule making. 

The Department of Energy Re-X Prize allowed us to partner with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to vet our methodologies and assumptions for our Chart-Reuse software analytics platform. Our goal is for Chart-Reuse to be a trusted, third-party source of data to power the reuse economy.

2024 was also my first full year on board with Upstream. We published a new strategic vision at the beginning of the summer, and we finalized an organization-wide logical model and decision tree to guide our work toward the impact we want to see. We also added a new Strategic Initiatives Team, which has expanded our expertise and allowed us the capacity to take on transformational projects like the Grand Canyon.

We want to thank all of our generous funders who often are not only supporting us but also working to scale reuse in their own communities. We would also like to thank our incredible partner organizations and Reuse Solutions Network. Together, we are accelerating the shift to a reuse economy. Together, we are accelerating a shift to clean, resilient communities, clean jobs, a clean economy and clean waterways and landscapes.

All the very best,

Crystal Dreisbach, Upstream CEO