Smartcycle Offers a Better Alternative to Plastic Packaging
by Kara DiCamillo, Newport, Rhode Island on 07.27.07
We picked up a salad for lunch from our local market the other day and it came in a plastic container. When we turned it over to see what number it was (#1, thankfully) to recycle it we noticed a company name on the container called Smartcycle. Intrigued by what it was all about, we typed the name into our search engine and visited their website to find out more. The company’s concept came from frustration of not seeing enough recycling of plastic soda bottles.
According to their website, “Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.” Because of this they started Smartcycle, in hopes that if they made something useful out of the plastic bottles maybe more of them would be recycled.
Although the company is just starting out, they say that they have a ton of enthusiastic interest from retailers and do expect their business to continue to grow. And lo and behold they are located just five miles away from our home here in Newport, RI! We like how we can download their educational flyer and print it to hand out to our local retailers, suggesting Smartcycle is a better choice when it comes to plastic. P.S., we love your logo, Smartcycle. It’s derived from the petal-shaped base found on almost all PET bottles. ::Smartcycle
Remember that the studies of Industrial Metabolism by Robert Ayres shows that 94% of the resources used to make a product never make it into the final product. So that PET bottle only represents 6% of the resource, on average; not exactly a triumph of capturing waste. Finally, it is made into a product with even shorter life than a bottle, a salad box.
We must move beyond recycling to cradle-to-cradle manufacturing.
wow. I never realized Treehugger was a RI thing. That's awesome !
Something for the Smartcycle people: Sundance channel has a great map that's all about promoting eco business and I noticed there's not a single listing for RI ! It's time the world new good things are going on here in the biggest little.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/ecommunity/#/greenMap//
RI? isn't that off the coast of Maine? Anyway... smart cycle should start a program in Iraq. I've never seen so many plastic water bottles on the ground as I've seen there. Iraqis love to just throw stuff on the ground.
Typically, plastics cannot be recycled into food-contact applications because of FDA approval issues. I wonder what Smartcycle is doing differently?
SmartCycle is a good thing we ran a piece on the packaging for Microsoft's 2007 streets & trips also using Smartcycle PETE 150 and displaying the SmartCycle logo (http://www.sustainableisgood.com/blog/2007/06/microsoft.html) its a great informational/educational thing for consumers.
However if you are in Rhode Island like I am your salad container made from #1 (PETE, PET) isn't actually recyclable. Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation who handles the recycling for the towns and cities in RI will only recycle #1 (PETE, PET) and #2 (HDPE) bottles. "Tub" style containers made from #1 & #2 plastics (increasingly more common with salad greens etc) are injection molded and have a higher melting point than blow molded bottles made from the same plastics. So RI Resource Recovery, like many cities and towns nationwide made a choice to only deal with the #1 & #2 bottles. Its not like the "tub" style items aren't recyclable, they are. The issue is what will your town/city process? And in RI those "tub" style plastics are all landfilled.
In an attempt to answer some of he questions posted above we offer the following.
Many communities do take all #1 & #2 Plastic including clamshells. However there are about 1,800 communities participating in the All Plastic Bottles program which is designed to increase collection of #1 & #2 bottles because combined they represent over 8 billion lbs. of material with only about 2 billion lbs. being recycled. Ref: APR
In my last meeting with RIRRC the director of the recycling center stated that they were working on funding for optical sorting equipment to replace the current manual sorting technique so they could begin accepting all plastics #1 - #7. It is not currently feasible using this manual sorting process to distinguish one plastic type from another; so the people on the lines in RI literally pick just the recognizable soda, water and detergent bottles off the line, all the other plastics currently go to the ever shrinking landfill. This newer technology uses as system inferred scanners and air jets to sort recycled plastic.
While the use of recycled content considerably improves the environmental footprint of this type of packaging we are also committed to recapturing our packages for continuous recycling. We are willing to work closely with retailers and the local recycling agencies in the regions to educate consumers on where they can recycle our packaging. Further we are working on providing regional collection points for clean SmartCycle packaging where municipal collection does not exist. However we do not currently have any collection plans in Iraq!
To our knowledge SmartCycle is the only food grade packaging available today made with over 50% Post Consumer Recycled (PCR) content. The FDA states that “Manufacturers of food-contact articles made from recycled plastic must assure that recycled material, like virgin material, is of suitable purity for food-contact use, and will meet all existing specifications for the virgin material” and our process meets this requirement.