From Pilot to Permanent
Building a Reuse Economy That Lasts
Did you know? A $40M investment could allow for 36 sports and entertainment venues—a sector ripe for reuse—to make that shift. The investment would fund infrastructure for collection, washing, and redistribution of high volumes of food- and beverage-ware in stadiums and arenas.
Once the infrastructure exists to do that, the entire community benefits. Grocery stores and school systems that couldn't afford reuse systems on their own can now access services. Restaurants and local food producers can shift away from single-use packaging. The economy of scale established by the stadium creates accessibility and the *sustainability* (read: enduring) reuse system for the entire metro area. What begins as a sustainability initiative for a sports venue becomes a transformation in how an entire city thinks about waste and materials—creating local jobs that can’t be exported and continually feeding the local economy.
At Upstream, our mission is to drive change toward a robust and enduring reuse economy. This kind of catalytic investment with a focus on localized workforce and supply chains is part of our vision of an enduring economy. And while we are not yet working at that level of investment, alongside our partners, we are beginning to chart that path and see what a scaled system that sticks can look like—and how it differs from innumerable pilot projects that have been conducted over the years.
For example, the project that Upstream has initiated at the Grand Canyon National Park was conceived from the start as a collaboration with the two major foodservice corporations that service all 17 of the South Rim’s dining and takeout locations. Rather than a 3rd party reuse service provider contracted to do the work, these two corporations are integrating reuse into their permanent operations.
As such, our approach is different than it would be if we were to pilot reuse for a few months: we need to plan and build wash facilities that will serve the demands of the system for years to come. Project partners are also hiring permanent staff members to help run the system. Before any of this planning and designing took place, we conducted a thorough stakeholder analysis: if this system is to have lasting power, the whole community needs to be engaged, and the right decision makers need to be at the table from the start.
A similar thing is now happening in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada), which is fast becoming a reuse hub. Just one of a few projects, the Consumer Goods Forum is collaborating with leading global retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands to create a standardized, scalable approach to reusable packaging. The partners are invested in building the necessary infrastructure in Ottawa, which will allow the city to model a complete system that can be replicated across other regions—which is also the intent of the Grand Canyon project, as we create a roadmap for other National Parks to follow.
The US Plastics Pact (USPP) is following the CPG project in Ottawa closely, as they also are leading a CPG-focused initiative intended not as a pilot but an iterative implementation. The Ottawa project will provide some of the foundation for program design, and the Ottawa and USPP projects will each help the others’ success as, over time, they learn and create the economies of scale and the consumer adoption needed for environmental and financial benefits.
While all of these new, scalable projects are drawing on learnings from reuse pilots internationally, there are marked differences. Pilots—even those implemented city-wide, such as the 3-month Petaluma reusable cup project—are designed to only be a place for a set, relatively brief, duration. As such, there tends to be little to no investment in the community itself. Instead of building infrastructure—primarily, wash hubs—pilots need to rely on what already exists, which may not be ideally situated for best ROI and climate impact, or may not be able to handle the volume of a longer term or larger project. Pilots have also tended to focus on consumer behaviour, when we know that if suppliers build smart systems, consumers will follow—just as they did when corporations created the single-use economy.
When the reuse movement was nascent, pilots were exactly what was needed—to understand the systems, what works, and what doesn’t. We have learned a lot. But, pilots don’t make the reuse movement stick: we need on-site investment, both financially and from local stakeholders who have been engaged thoroughly and understand the benefits to their community. Now, we are ready for the next step to ensure that reuse becomes systemic and widespread: we are ready for enduring projects.
