Closed Loop Defined
A closed loop system occurs when a recyclable material is used, discarded, captured, and then recycled into a new product. An example of this would be recycling waste newspaper to make paperboard or other types of paper.
The Holistic View . . .
Here at TaterWare, we don’t just make biodegradable and biocompostable tableware products; we are also in the business of investigating where our product ends up. We, therefore, have actively participated in a closed loop system with our partner distributors to recapture as much of our product from its path toward disposal as we can, so we can divert it from the landfills where it is often headed. The intention was to take the cleaned and shredded postconsumer TaterWare material, in this case, cutlery, and reformulate/remold it into industrial products such as golf tees, dispensers, packaging material, nursery pots and more. A second generation of recycled products is the result such a process and is the way we hoped to responsibly close this loop.
We’ve been promoting the Cutlery Recapture Program through a closed-looped process since early 2010, but here at Biodegradable Food Service we recently decided to drop the project due to lack of response from the marketplace.
As with most large-scale concepts, it’s difficult to start them on an individual basis. Because of the requirements of logistics, our pilot locations need to have a dozen or more cooperative member locations. Furthermore, pilot locations need to be grouped on a regional basis, sized perhaps as a 3- or 4-state area at most. Finally, this pilot region needs to be relatively close to one of only a few re-processing centers equipped to take our cutlery, grind it up, and sterilize it. Until there is a proliferation of these specialized operators, the carbon footprint of such a recapture endeavor overtakes the acceptable conservation limits and discounts any benefits that the recycling effort is meant to create.
It’s conceivable that we might resurrect the program if we can find the right needle-in-a-haystack match to our partner profile. Until then, it’s a program we’ve decided to put on hold for the time being.