Food Packaging: Can ‘Reuse’ Defeat ‘Single Use?’

As a lifelong West Michigan resident and avid beach walker whose hometown draws its drinking water from Lake Michigan, Arthur Hirsch has always loved spending time along the Great Lakes.  That’s how he spotted something worrying in the water three summers ago.  Thousands of plastic pellets littered the beach’s sandy shore, just a small sampling of the 22 million pounds of plastic waste that enters the Great Lakes annually, much of it in the form of tiny “microplastics” small enough to be ingested or embedded in flesh. Hirsch had discovered nurdles, tiny plastic pellets that are melted down to create products ranging from clothing to water bottles. “I was pissed that this unknown sourced plastic material was polluting Lake Michigan and my beach environment,” said Hirsch, an activist with the West Michigan Chapter of the Climate Reality Project. 

Renault is going to turn its Flins factory outside Paris into a research, recycling and repair centre and will generate more than 1 billion euros in sales from circular economy. Renault’s chief executive Luca de Meo told the french “du dimanche” that the company will will seek to generate more than 1 billion euros in sales from the so-called “circular economy” by turning its Flins factory outside Paris into a research, recycling and repair centre. “Our ambition, by 2030, is to achieve more revenue (from recycling and repair at Flins) than from assembling cars there,” said de Meo. “And to generate more than a billion euros in turnover in the circular economy.”