CPG Repurpose Puts Plants Over Plastic

Here are three not-so-fun facts that seriously concern anyone paying attention to the many crises caused by our culture of overconsumption:

1. Only a mere 5 percent of all the world’s plastics have ever been recycled.
2. The average human ingests a credit card’s worth of microplastics every week.
3. Traditional toilet paper production kills 27,000 trees per day.

Now: What’s one thing that all three of those highly troubling truths have in common? If you guessed waste, you’re right on the money — and if you guessed wasted single use products, you get bonus points. How is it that nature does not create waste, yet we seem to in most of our standard designs and processes?

Is waste simply a design flaw?

There’s a growing belief — and now proof — that it might be. Several startups are endeavoring to execute on a collective mission to tackle the growing waste problem by focusing on redesigning our wasteful, single-use culture: the products themselves, and the attitudes and behaviors that have led humanity down this destructive path.

Repurposing as Much Stuff as Practicable

The CPG Repurpose was one of the first US companies to work on the problem of single-use petroleum products practically, then to educate and advocate for another way. Today it’s one of the most impactful of those businesses. The fourteen-year-old company makes plant-based (“bioplastic”) disposables for the consumer retail space. Available at 17,000+ stores nationwide, and with a subscription option, Repurpose customers receive compostable, upcycled, durable, and renewable products in eco-friendly packaging and shipping materials.

Repurpose’s consumer goods are fully green, sustainable, effective products with a 100 percent non-toxic guarantee: zero BPA’s, PFAs (“forever chemicals”), etc. The company’s out to prove that “Single use doesn’t need to be trash.”

A Leader’s Purpose

“Repurpose is a mom-founded business with a mission to make Earth a better place, now and for the future,” says Lauren Gropper, green entrepreneur and eco-architecture vanguard.

Gropper, who grew up in Vancouver, Canada, says she’s always been “obsessed with sustainability. I was exposed to a lot of time in nature as a kid. I did a bunch of outdoor ed in high school. I slept in an igloo. I was doing these backcountry trips at a very young, impressionable age. That was the initial spark, and then it never really left. I just always had this worldview that I’ve got to do something in the sustainability world.”

Gropper got a Masters in design from Pratt Institute. There, she was inspired by the idea of “cradle to cradle design,” as outlined in the 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by Michael Braungart and William McDonough. The concept integrates design and science to “provide enduring benefits for society,” according to McDonough, through safe materials, water and energy. It was an early example of an argument for circular economies. Notably, the “cradle to cradle” design eliminates the very concept of waste.

No More “Take, Make, Waste”

Says Gropper, “The way that we have traditionally designed products, buildings, et cetera, is this ‘take, make, waste’” process. She began her career in sustainable design, setting out to end that unstainable cycle. She parlayed her education and early sustainable design experience into green real estate investment and development, and eventually wound up consulting in Hollywood. She was a forerunner in sustainable set design, consulting for the likes of the Discovery Network, starting around 2010.

Gropper co-founder Minimal Productions, an environmental consulting firm, and was a founding partner in SHFT.com, an environmental media platform created with actor, producer, and philanthropist, Adrian Grenier. SHFT has partnered with eco-conscious brands such as Ford Motor Company, AOL/Huffington Post, Virgin America, Stonyfield Farm, The W Hollywood, The Weather Channel, and Estée Lauder.

As a set designer, Gropper recounts Herculean efforts to shift the film and TV culture toward sustainable design. “Then on those sets, we would break for lunch and basically use a plastic bottle, eat with a plastic fork, and out of a plastic salad bowl. So, it seemed like that was an area that was just ripe for disruption. Why on Earth are we spending all this money to try to make a more ‘green and clean’ set — and then using plastic all day, every day?

“That was the aha moment,” says Gropper. “How can we use design? Can we change the way these products are made, first and foremost? What is out there and what can be done to make better products, and then can we use business as a tool to magnify the impact?”

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back …

Since then, Gropper’s seen massive changes regarding green design and regenerative production in consumer expectations and demands, corporate response, and entrepreneurial innovation. And a lot of “copycats,” which is a good sign “on the one hand,” she says. On the other hand, the more widespread interest in reusable, refillable, recyclable, compostable products has also potentially diluted the movement, because it’s harder to tell who’s really doing it right — and who’s just trying to “tick a box.”

Overall, “There’s not this linear move to sustainability,” Gropper argues. “It’s definitely a little bit two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward …”

But given its growth since inception, Repurpose has written “a permission slip for the rest of the world,” Gropper recounts. She and her partners set out to prove that “this can be done and that there can be great returns and a great impact.” They always thought if they could do that, “then we’ve won the day.”

But, of course Gropper recognizes the enormity of the challenge. “Can it be solved? At Repurpose, we’re advocating that we are not the single solution. We are one of myriad solutions. We are a piece of this puzzle.

“And our piece of this puzzle is twofold. One, we’re taking the toxins out of the environment. Two, we’re trying to eliminate waste and address the recycling issues, by bringing composting infrastructure into the mainstream to really see significant change.”

With dozens of intentionally designed, biodegradable, third-party certified bio-plastic and molder fiber SKUs, such as bamboo paper products, compostable table settings, and other household and catering supplies, customers — and the world at large — get “More party, less landfill!”