Today, much of institutional, fast food, and fast casual dining - and virtually all takeout and delivery - uses disposable food-serviceware. And all those takeout containers, bags, boxes, condiment packets, plastic utensils, cold and hot cups and lids, and napkins add up. Nearly ONE TRILLION disposable food service products are used each year in the United States.
Did you know? Prior to World War II, virtually all commercial beverages sold in the United States came in refillable bottles. But afterwards, extraction companies which had fueled the war effort furthered their partnerships with consumer goods, fast food and beverage companies, giving rise to our current throwaway model.
In our latest vlog, Upstream CEO & Chief Solutioneer, Matt Prindiville, shares some key learnings from his recent trip to Atlanta and GreenBiz group’s Circularity conference. It was a sold-out 3 day affair with more than a thousand sustainability professionals from virtually every consumer brand, plus representatives from the rest of their value chain -- a potent mix that fostered some exciting conversations and opportunities regarding the future of reuse.
Even though Extended Producer Responsibility (or EPR) has, in theory, been about creating a circular economy for packaging - in practice, the only goals that have been applied in legislation are recycling targets. While landfill diversion rates have gone up from 42 to 59% so has the generation of waste.
In this week's vlog, Upstream CEO & Chief Solutioneer, Matt Prindiville, walks us through the infrastructure that will be needed to scale the new reuse economy, and how this infrastructure will revolutionize the way we consume.
When it comes to changing something as entrenched as the throw-away culture, the real changemakers are local community members and their elected officials - people who are passionate about saving the planet and ready to innovate new approaches.
According to the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the window for limiting global warming to relatively safe levels is rapidly closing. Immediate and unprecedented action from every country will be necessary in order to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels.
In honor of Women's History Month, Indisposable Podcast host Brooking Gatewood presents a roundup of her favorite interviews with some of the many innovative, visionary, women-identified Solutioneers driving the Reuse Movement forward.
PepsiCo and Starbucks are the latest brands to announce goals for reuse. But what does this really mean for the reuse movement? Learn more: https://upstreamsolutions.org/blog/pepsico-and-starbucks-reuse In the last month, some BIG brands who have been major players in the throw-away economy made historic announcements about their goals to move to reuse.
With fans returning to sporting arenas and concert-goers celebrating the return of music festivals, sustainability issues at events and venues are coming back into focus - specifically, the ever-present disposable plastic cup.
On Wednesday, March 2, 2022, representatives from 175 nations agreed to draft a global treaty that would start to tackle the exponentially growing amount of plastic pollution that we're facing - essentially a "Paris Agreement for plastics".
How often do you go for a walk or a drive in your local community and encounter litter strewn about in the environment? For almost anyone, the answer to this question would be practically every day. It's clear by now that disposables don't make any sense - they literally don't make dollars, or cents!
Welcome to Upstream's vlog! You might have heard of extended producer responsibility (EPR). But what exactly is it? EPR is a policy tool that makes consumer brands responsible for the environmental impacts of their products and packaging.
