Green shopping bags are helping to replace some of the 500 billion plastic bags used worldwide annually. But what happens to the old green bags? One eco bag company is trying to change the lifecycle of its products.
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Entrepreneur: Elizabeth Kasell, General Manager, Melbourne
Company: Green Bag Pty Ltd
Business type: Development and supply of reusable shopping bags to the Australian market
Founded: 2001
Employees: 3 full-time, 2 part-time in Australia
Turnover: $1.1 million
Head office: Ireland; other offices in San Francisco, Hampstead (UK), Melbourne and Shanghai
Contact details: 1300 786 019
The Green Bag Company Story
Growing up in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains in New Mexico gave Elizabeth Kasell a deep love of the natural environment. When CEO Online spoke with her, she had just returned from a camping trip down Victoria’s Great Ocean Road. So you can take it as given that she values her role as the General Manager at Green Bag, which produces reusable shopping bags. Kasell says: “I just loved the idea of the green bag because it was something you could do for the environment easily, everyday”.
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Key learning points:
- Social Responsibility - Many customers and workers are showing increasing awareness of the environmental costs of the products they buy, manufacture and sell. Companies that continue to simply bin and forget their waste, risk being outed as ugly corporate citizens.
- Eco PR - In contrast to the ugly corporate litterers, companies that attemp to minimise their environmental footprint can help raise staff morale and build brand goodwill among their customers.
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In 2001, the Irish entrepreneur Bill Clohessy established Green Bag. His aim: to reduce and help eliminate the estimated 500 billion plastic bags thrown away around the world each year. An estimated 3.76 billion or 20,700 tonnes of plastic bags are disposed of in landfill sites throughout Australia each year. Clohessy pioneered the concept of the reusable “green” shopping bag and was the first person to offer them on a mass scale in response to the plastic bag levy introduced in Ireland in 1999.
Australia had no plastic bag levy but Clohessy thought the concept would be popular here too, according to Kasell, who began working as a consultant to the company in 2005. She took on a full-time role three years ago. Kasell says: “[Bill] thought the concept would work here because a green bag is strong, cheap, easy to use and a simple way people could make a difference”.
Green bags have a life-span of about three years. If it is used properly, a green bag - made of non-woven polypropylene - should replace 1000 single-use plastic bags. Kasell estimates the company has sold more than 10 million units since it was introduced into Australia in 2002.
But Green Bag’s success spawned a new problem: how to dispose of the bags when they reach their use-by date. Kasell says: “By about 2005-06, Australians had embraced the concept of the reusable green bag and millions had been sold. But we knew that in three years’ time there would be a flood of green bags at the end of their useful life. Polypropylene is one of the less toxic plastics although it still behaves as a plastic in landfill - meaning that it is not biodegradable - but it is fully recyclable”.
“We were watching closely to see if there was anything on the horizon for the waste management of these bags. Australian municipal recycling centres just don’t have the sorting facilities to cope with this kind of flexible plastic so we knew we’d have to come up with a solution ourselves. It goes back to our original core value of finding an environmentally sound alternative to plastic bags. We don’t want to create one problem by solving another”.
The Challenge
To manage Green Bag's products at the end of their lifecycle.
The Solution
Kassel has faced two key tasks in taking responsibility for green bags at the end of their life span. First, the need to raise awareness and educate consumers that the bags are completely recyclable. Second, to design and implement a recycling program.
Kasell’s research showed that most people have five to eight old bags in their kitchen cupboard that they don’t know what to do with. “There is also a huge issue of people being given ‘reusable’ bags for promotional purposes that are an impractical size and never used”.
To raise awareness about recycling green bags, Kasell developed the RED program in 2009. RED stands for Recycling plus Education equals the Difference. The idea is to make primary schools the collection point for green bags.
RED works by encouraging students to collect green bags during regular green bag drives and Green Bag arranges for their collection. The collected bags are sent to recycling partner, Replas, based in Carrum Downs, Victoria. The old bags are recycled into useful products for schools such as playground furniture, signs, walkways or garden beds.
Schools receive a voucher valued at $10 for every kilogram collected. The voucher can be used by the school to purchase recycled products made from the collected waste. Schools can also participate by purchasing from a range of RED sustainable products including drink bottles, pencil cases, art smocks, library bags, and school chair bags, which can also be recycled through the program.
RED is designed to work as a closed-loop system: the waste collected is recycled into products that are returned to the collection point to be used in a new way. No waste will go to overseas recycling facilities or into landfill. Kasell says: “We don’t believe in the bin mentality that forgets about things once they are thrown away”. She wants people to think about what happens to waste.
Kasell is passionate about getting the program to work and changing the thinking of future generations about recycling. She says: “Motherhood has been one of the big motivations for me. I didn’t want my six-year-old son being raised to think that he’s done his part just by putting something in the recycle bin. We all need to take responsibility by looking at where waste product goes at the end of its life”. She wants a one-way trip turned into a closed loop.
When it is fully functioning, students participating in RED will be able to see the end product of their recycling efforts. Kasell hopes that being able to touch and feel the recycled playground furniture, for instance, will help students appreciate the value of recycling and that not everything needs to end up in landfill.
How much the program will cost Green Bag is uncertain. Kasell says that costs associated with marketing the program, including her travel, are significant in the implementation phase, but will drop off once the program is in place and supported by key school groups, local government and business.
The other expense is the collection costs. Kasell says: “The green bag is flat and light and relatively clean, so it is not that expensive to collect. The cost of collection in metropolitan Melbourne is estimated at about $200 per school. But collection costs will vary according to where the school is. We are talking to schools in the Northern Territory and remote parts of Western Australia, including the Pilbara and the Kimberley, so once we have those schools on board, we will have more of an idea of what it is going to cost”.
The Result
Getting schools involved in the RED program is Kasell’s challenge for 2010. So far, 150 schools Australia-wide have committed to the initiative. Kasell says: “We are in advanced discussions with a major supermarket to partner in the program with a national launch in June. This would be a first of its kind for a supermarket to offer a closed-loop recycling solution for plastic waste they are responsible for generating”.
Kasell says: “The program is gaining momentum, but it has not yet received any formal recognition. The key result at this stage is really about a business coming up with a sustainable, end of life solution for their product where one did not exist”.