How Plastic Reuse Can Actually Boost Business Profits

We’ve all heard of the term “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” when it comes to having less of an impact on our environment.

But it seems like most media attention is always on reducing energy consumption and recycling waste products more efficiently.

Those are important factors, but reuse almost seems like it’s the ugly duckling that nobody wants to embrace.

GreenBiz recently ran a story about the economic benefits that businesses are missing out on by not taking an approach of reusing materials like plastic.

According to GreenBiz, “If we succeed in building and scaling reuse systems, they will outperform single-use systems. This not only benefits the environment but also businesses. About 95 percent of the value of plastic packaging material ($83 to $124 billion annually) is lost to the economy after a very short first-use cycle. Most of it ends up in our environment.”

Some economists have calculated that switching to reusable plastics could save up to 30% on material costs compared to sticking with the throw-away model.

That’s a huge amount of untapped payoffs.

If companies have been reluctant to make the right changes for environmental reasons, then maybe this financial incentive is going to give the push needed to put a significant dent in our plastic consumption.