Colgate-Palmolive Joins TerraCycle’s Loop Initiative to Eliminate Single-Use Packaging

Colgate-Palmolive Joins TerraCycle’s Loop Initiative to Eliminate Single-Use Packaging (wallstreet:online)

• Colgate is joining TerraCycle’s Loop initiative – a circular shopping platform that replaces single-use packaging with durable, reusable alternatives – in a move to expand its commitment to reducing waste.
• The announced pilot program in parts of the US and France will start by replacing the packaging of mouthwash with durable containers that can later be collected, cleaned, refilled, and reused. Based on the results from this and subsequent pilots, Colgate hopes to expand the initiative to other oral care products and categories.
• Colgate joined the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy Initiative in 2018, reflecting its commitment to reducing the use of plastic and achieving a number of ambitious recycling/ packaging targets by 2025.

Analysis & Comments

• The Loop initiative was announced in January this year and includes three models that are planned to be rolled out over time. The upcoming pilots in New York and Paris include customers shopping on the Loop website with Loop arranging the delivery & pick-up. The second model will allow customers to order through partner retailers’ websites, delivered in the usual way with the same driver picking up the empty containers. The third model involves consumers buying products and dropping off containers in-store.
• Loop is addressing a difficult issue – the fact that we have lived with linear systems for the past decades and are used to the cheap convenience of disposable items.
• The core idea is really not that unlike a rebooted version of the 1930s milkman concept, with consumers being able to op in to receiving auto-replenishments of their products based on their consumption.