Paper & Waste

Background

American catalog companies sent out nearly 17 billion catalogs in 2001, or 59 for every man, woman and child. To produce these catalogs, the industry used 3.6 million tons of paper, about 15% of all printing and writing paper produced in the United States. Manufacturing and disposing of that much paper generates significant levels of pollution, waste and greenhouse gases.

The Environmental Defense Fund-SC Johnson partnership spawned the development of the MERGE software tool, which integrates environmental considerations into the design of consumer products and packaging.

Background

Packaging has become ubiquitous in American society. It represents roughly one-third of municipal waste in the United States, and has expanded rapidly in recent times. For example, over 150 billion beverage containers are sold annually in the U.S. Typical packaging materials include cardboard, paper, glass, tin, aluminum and a wide variety of plastics such as polystyrene (styrofoam) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

Sealy, the largest bedding manufacturer in North America, is actively measuring and reducing waste in product manufacturing and decreasing GHG emissions from product transportation.

PRIMEDIA, a leading provider of print, Internet and mobile solutions designed to enable consumers to find a place to live, increased online efforts and resized its publications to reduce its use of forest resources.

Goal

Updated: Reduce paper use an additional 20% in 2009. To do this, the company has established a baseline for paper use and is continuing to:

The opportunity

In the late 1980s, public concern over solid waste disposal was high and disposable food packaging was a highly visible component of the problem. And the visible waste was only part of the story --  almost 80 percent of McDonald’s waste stream was generated behind the counter, in food prep and supply systems.

McDonald's faced rising public pressure about the amount of packaging and waste its restaurants produced. The best solutions from both an environmental and a business perspective were in reduction, reuse, recycling and composting.

The opportunity

In the early 1990’s, there were about 200 coffeehouses in the U.S., but by 2005 there were some 14,000, and about 25 percent of those were owned by Starbucks. Today, there are over 10,000 Starbucks around the world.