Switch to Reuse
Chart-Reuse by Upstream is the industry’s first foodware reuse analytics platform. A free-to-use data tool that helps organizations planning and implementing reuse systems project environmental and financial impact, track operational performance, and generate trusted reporting for stakeholders.
Make the case for reuse with real data.
Whether planning a reuse transition, managing an active program, or shaping policy, you need reliable data to justify investment and measure success.
Chart-Reuse provides institutions and companies the ability to create impact projections using customized templates and evidence-based data models, and to evaluate the impact of ongoing systems or pilots. These impacts are expressed through five primary metrics: GHG savings, water savings, waste reduction, single-use unit reduction, and cost savings.
Chart-Reuse is intentionally built as neutral infrastructure for the broader reuse ecosystem. It is not tied to any single product manufacturer, logistics company, or service provider. By standardizing how reuse performance is measured across sectors, geographies, and business models, the platform creates trusted, comparable data that can be used by operators, funders, policymakers, and industry leaders alike. Every new project strengthens a growing evidence base that helps the entire movement better understand what works, where challenges exist, and how reuse systems can scale more effectively.
Looking ahead, Upstream’s vision is for Chart-Reuse to become the shared intelligence layer for the reuse economy. As more organizations contribute real-world operational data through platform reporting and future API integrations, Chart-Reuse will evolve into the most trusted repository of reuse performance data in North America. That means helping cities design smarter policies, helping funders make better investments, helping operators improve performance, and ultimately transforming fragmented pilot programs into a coordinated, data-driven movement capable of scaling reuse at a systems level.
In the early days of the reuse movement, organizations were eager to launch reuse programs but lacked the tools to quantify their environmental and financial impact. Upstream built Chart-Reuse to solve that problem — giving advocates, institutions, and businesses a way to model what switching to reuse could look like before making major operational or financial commitments.
Chart-Reuse first launched as a projections platform that helped users estimate the economic and environmental outcomes of replacing disposable packaging with reusable systems. Organizations could model variables such as packaging volumes, costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste reduction to better understand whether reuse made sense for their specific use case. These tools helped schools, venues, businesses, advocates, and policymakers make stronger cases for investment by replacing assumptions with credible data. As reuse systems matured, so did the need for better operational intelligence.
Today, Chart-Reuse also provides reporting tools for active reuse programs that need to track real-world performance over time. Municipalities, reuse service providers, institutions, and operators can use the platform to monitor return rates, product loss, operational costs, and environmental impact while generating reports for funders, partners, leadership teams, and policymakers. Instead of simply predicting impact, organizations can now measure what is actually happening in the field and continuously improve their systems.
Success Stories
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Stadium
ALUMINUM vs. REUSABLE
A reuse service provider wanted to show stadiums the difference in carbon emissions between polypropylene reusable cups and aluminum cans. -
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High School
SWITCH to REUSE
With Chart-Reuse, we were able to show the impact of switching to a reusable bowl in a high school cafeteria. -
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City Government
SKIP THE STUFF Legislation
When city legislators required local data to consider Skip the Stuff legislation, a small community organization turned to Upstream for help. -
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Middle School
NATIONAL PILOT
The Conscious Cafeteria Report on reusable foodware for healthier, more sustainable schools—with projections calculated in part using Chart-Reuse. -
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Zero Waste Consultants
TRUE Certification
A circular economy consulting firm wanted to monitor the environmental impacts of their clients and help them reduce waste through reuse. -
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Cultural Attraction
Feasibility Study
Chart-Reuse helped a metropolitan cultural attraction figure out how much they would save by switching to reusable foodware for their concessions. The results are in: reusable foodware saves money, emissions, and water.
Chart Reuse is a game-changing tool for us. It’s an easy-to-use calculator that helps partners and municipalities quickly understand the value of a reuse system across a variety of metrics—something that would otherwise take us many hours to calculate manually.
Not only does it save time, but it also adds legitimacy to our calculations, giving our projections greater credibility when communicating with stakeholders. Recently, a group of research students used the tool to assess the potential impact of implementing a beverage to-go reuse system across an entire county, and we were able to share those results directly with the municipality.