In the previous blog, The Movement Towards Corporate Circularity and Sustainability, we discussed economic circularity as it pertains to large businesses and corporations. However, corporations are not solely responsible for the climate crisis. In fact, opportunities between emerging socially driven platforms and profit-driven companies create the potential for scalable, sustainable solutions.
The Loop initiative, launched in 2019 as a derivative of the social enterprise Terracycle, has partnered with Kroger to mitigate the need for single-use packaging in the retail grocery industry (Loop). Social enterprises can help reorient large corporations towards economic circularity, an economic system that minimizes waste and maximizes reuse during all phases of operation.
A social enterprise can be thought of as a hybrid between a non-profit and a standard business. It utilizes market-based, profit-maximizing strategies to address socio-environmental problems (Social Enterprise Alliance). A form of socially-conscious capitalism, social enterprises are businesses, large or small, that are motivated by sustaining revenue and targeting specific social objectives (Investopedia).
In Kroger’s 2020 sustainability report, the company aims to “transition to 100% recyclable, compostable or reusable Our Brands packaging by 2030” (Kroger). Loop advances Kroger’s sustainability goal by shipping brand-name products in durable packaging that the consumer can send back to a facility to be cleaned and reused for another shipment. They provide packaging for products of major brands such as Febreze, Tropicana, and Gillette (Loop).
The 2020 Acumen report asserts that social enterprises can further corporate sustainability by providing “concrete and measurable progress” through social impact measurements. Impact metrics are any way companies quantify the influences manufacturing, distribution, and disposal of a product have on society (Harvard Business Review).
Loop claims to assess their impact through “Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) on transportation, product use, cleaning and more, and have them independently reviewed by third party agencies” (Loop Impact). More testing and pilots will have to be done to determine if the material, transportation, and disposal of Loop’s durable packaging is actually more environmentally friendly than the single-use model (WasteDive). However, Loop’s vice president of research and development claims that the Loop business model resulted in a 35% reduction in global warming potential (WasteDive).
Social enterprises like Loop further their sustainable progress by connecting impact metrics to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In fact, social enterprises are 37% more likely than corporations to do so (Acumen Report). The Loop initiative supports SDGs 11 and 12: Sustainable Communities and Responsible Consumption, respectively. By extension, partner companies like Kroger can advance these goals as well, contextualizing their impact metrics to a universal sustainability framework.
Loop is still in the early phases of implementation, and it is still unclear how far-reaching their impact will be in solving the single-use waste issue. However, even small efforts are going to make a difference, in the next blog we will discuss the ramifications of companies who don’t make an effort to protect the environment.
Writing by Nia-Simone Eccleston, Design Strategist Apprentice. Illustration by Sophie Becker, Design Innovation Strategist.
