[lorax]

I'd like to know what the breakeven point is. How many times does the package have to be used before it becomes less resource intensive than single-use packaging, and how long will it take. I use honey (an example on the terracycle website) but I probably go through a bottle a year. If the breakeven is 10 uses, that would be 10 years worth of honey consumption. Even for shampoo, toothpaste, and laundry detergent I don't go through very many containers a year (but I buy big containers).

It seems like it will take years of re-use to make it less resource intensive, what's the chance a bottle will get lost, broken, or forgotten about during that time (or loop will go out of business).

[metric10]

The idea (I'm sure) is to avoid waste as much as conserve energy use. In fact I from an energy perspective it's probably awful. But they have to establish themselves; they have to get an inventory of products and a customer base. Then they can make deals to put recycling points in every supermarket and have their recyclable packaging available along side conventional packaging. In other words, don't think about today, think about where this can go tomorrow.

Also, if your packaging consumption consists of a jar of honey and a few personal items, you are far from typical (but good! Whole food diets are great). Many people consume lots of packaged foods and goods. In any event, you have to think of this spread across billions of people consuming goods.

Finally, reusable packaging is not new. You charge a deposit large enough to incentivize the consumer to return the packaging. This has been done with glass bottles.

I bet their angle is that they can handle a wide variety of package types and quickly calculate customer refund amounts. I.e., each container will have a unique id (QR code, rfid). I would say this is why the model hasn't worked until now...it was too difficult to manage the menagerie of containers and quickly processing refunds. So it might work for water or milk, but it wouldn't work for 300 different container types in a supermarket.

Side note: if each container has a UUID, you could track how fast people are consuming products. How much butter DID you consume last week? There are real privacy implications, as I'm sure that data would have monetary value to advertisers and health insurers.

[lorax]

I'm not sure that you should separate the "avoid waste" and "conserve energy", they seem intertwined to me. Recycling in the supermarket is part of their plan, but I don't know how much it matters (there are UPS trucks going through my neighborhood every day, the amount of extra energy required to stop at my house versus me driving to the supermarket seems like a wash).

My packaging consumption consists of a lot more than what I stated, I based my comments on the partners they listed and the examples they gave (on the terracycle website), they are going to have to move in to products that get used up every week or two, not ones that get used up a few times a year to actually have an impact.

Side note: the parent company, Terracycle seems like it is more about giving you the feeling of saving the environment instead of actually having a positive impact. Current promotion: recycle little-bites (a brand of muffins) packages by packaging them up and mailing them in, the cost (resources and energy) of doing that is far above any value the get from recycling a few ounces of packaging.

[rjayatilleka]

I don't think you would need to track each container individually (as another commenter said, consumers will probably keep an extra of each item for buffer). The subscription/ordering system knows when you get a new instance of each item, so it already has all the data without tracking containers.