Reynolds Consumer Products announced a monumental milestone for its groundbreaking Hefty® EnergyBag® program. The innovative program, stemming from the brand’s commitment to helping create end-of-life solutions for plastic waste across the United States, has officially diverted over one million pounds of hard-to-recycle plastics from landfills.
National Geographic estimates that as of 2017, 79% of plastic waste in the United States ends up in landfills, which includes hard-to-recycle plastics such as candy wrappers, packing peanuts, straws and foam carry-out containers. The Hefty® EnergyBag® program gives consumers in participating markets the ability to collect these hard-to-recycle items and see them converted into valuable resources rather than getting taken out with the trash.
“We are really proud of surpassing our ambitious goal of diverting one million pounds in just three years,” said Lindsey Walter, Director of the Hefty® EnergyBag® program. “We are grateful to the many people and communities out there who have embraced this program as something we can all do together to make our world a little bit better.”
In partnership with Dow and other community collaborators, the Hefty® EnergyBag® program was set up to complement existing recycling programs, allowing hard-to-recycle plastics to be picked up at curbside.
Participants simply place hard-to-recycle plastics in the Hefty® orange bag, tie the bag when full and place it in their curbside recycling cart or bin. Once collected, the plastics are converted into valuable resources including fuel and new plastic products like park benches, composite decking and concrete blocks. The signature bright orange bags used for collection make it easy for recycling facilities to separate and forward the materials they cannot process, so the hard-to-recycle plastics don’t contaminate other recycling streams.
“We are grateful for Hefty’s partnership and their ability to help galvanize people so that we all can do our part to help minimize hard-to-recycle waste by converting it into valuable resources,” said Julie Zaniewski, Dow’s North Americasustainability director for Packaging & Specialty Plastics. “We are encouraged by people’s desire to be a part of the program and the impressive growth it has seen thus far.”