| By K Oanh Ha One-time teen idol Zac Efron is riding a skateboard, and then he's dressed for some reason in a bee-keeper's uniform. He's talking about the "pretty freaking cool" second life of recycled plastics, including the wrappers of Nature Valley granola bars, that have been ground down to make park benches and picnic tables. "The planet deserves better," Efron says, "and in-store recycling is an easy first step." This 2021 video posted to Efron's Instagram account received nearly 7 million likes. The sponsor, food giant General Mills, worked with the High School Musical star in an effort to spread the word about a recycling program that uses "store drop-off" labeling. It's become a last line of defense against landfills for companies that sell plastic-wrapped consumer products. Municipal recycling programs almost always reject flimsy, low-value packaging materials.  Plastic bags are deposited into a store drop-off recycling bin. Photographer: Hannah Beier/Bloomberg More than 500 brands sold in the US and Canada participate in store drop-off recycling, using labels from an effort called How2Recycle that tell customers to bring used packaging waste to some 17,000 US retail outlets. The instructions are printed right on the wrappers, and a web link directs consumers to retailers that offer special bins inside the stores. It's likely one of the world's biggest in-store recycling efforts. Amazon, Nestle and Procter & Gamble are among the companies that have signed up to slap store drop-off symbols — complete with the three-arrows recycling logo — on tens of thousands of consumer products found in American homes. Target, Home Depot and Kroger are among those collecting the packaging. Just one problem: Bloomberg Green found that the packaging dropped off for recycling at US retailers often ends up in landfills. We placed trackers in 30 bundles of plastic packaging, wrappers and shopping bags — all marked with store drop-off labels — and deposited the recycling at stores in nine states and Washington, D.C. All of the bundles contained up to 12 pieces of recyclable plastic, including wrappers from Ritz crackers and drink packaging on Coca-Cola Co. products. Thirteen of the trackers — more than 40% — ended up at landfills. Only four arrived at locations that recycle plastic, and the others stopped sharing location data before reaching a final destination. GreenBlue, a Virginia-based nonprofit whose board includes executives from consumer brands, packaging companies and Dow Chemical Co., oversees the How2Recycle labeling program. It declined to comment. One company, Virginia-based Trex Co., received three of the four plastic bundles that did ultimately make it to a recycler. Trex turns plastic from drop-off programs, among other sources, into decking material and lumber. But executive David Heglas says there isn't enough demand for plastic packaging recycling to make the drop-off system successful. Few companies want to pay the higher costs to use recycled plastic. "All the claims the companies are making are just greenwashing," Heglas says. "Recycling's failed."  Dave Heglas, an executive at Trex and a 30-year industry veteran. Photographer: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg GreenBlue's How2Recycle logo program started in 2012 but didn't take off until almost a decade later, after a Chinese ban on waste imports prompted many US curbside collection programs to stop taking plastic films. By 2020, How2Recycle said it was issuing recyclability labels to brands and retailers for over 225 products daily. Companies pay as much as $8,500 to join to have their packaging vetted and approved. But neither How2Recycle nor its parent, GreenBlue, oversee facilities that collect plastic. The program's website points to a directory run by a consulting firm, Stina Inc., listing retailers that collect the plastic. Stina says it no longer receives funding from the plastics industry to maintain the directory, so it's now out of date. Companies offered a mix of explanations for how the trackers ended up in landfills. A spokeswoman for Target said there are too many variables to address why plastic bags dropped off at its stores ended up in garbage dumps. Amazon, Nestle and Unilever said they don't control the management of plastic waste once it is dropped off. General Mills, which makes Nature Valley bars, said it aims to design packaging that's recyclable and clearly labels products using icons and language provided by How2Recycle. Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola declined to comment. The sheer size of the store drop-off effort makes it the most extensive retail recycling initiatives of its kind in the US. But unlike in Europe, the US doesn't incentivize or require producers of packaging to ensure that a certain percentage of it is recycled. That gives companies even less reason to use recycled plastic when virgin plastic is cheaper. It also means unclear accountability for programs like How2Recycle, at a time when more companies are pledging to increase sustainability goals and more brands are turning to cheaper, flexible plastic packing for an array of consumer items. "There's pressure on companies to put recycling labels on everything," Heglas says. But "just because a package has that label on it, doesn't mean it will be recycled." Read and share a full version of this story on Bloomberg.com. For unlimited access to climate news, original data and graphics reporting and Bloomberg Green magazine, please subscribe. -
Net zero by 2050 is still possible — technically. It would require tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030 and boosting green investments to $4.5 trillion a year globally. -
Europe has a (new) plan for wind power. The EU is set to unveil measures that include accelerating permitting for wind projects and improving the rules on auctioning, -
One ESG fund category is killing. US assets in "climate transition funds," which invest in big emitters to clean them up, surged 304% in 18 months. -
Lego dropped plans for recycled-bottle bricks. The company said making recycled PET blocks won't reduce emissions because it requires too much new equipment. -
The world's tallest timber wind turbine is almost complete. Startup Modvion AB says using wood for its turbine reduced the project's carbon footprint by more than 90%.  Two men working on a part of a wind tower at the Modvion factory in Gothenburg, Sweden, on July 3. Photographer: Frederik Lerneryd/Bloomberg China's dominance of the transition to EVs is the latest source of geopolitical tension with the US and Europe, where policymakers face a costly catchup effort to avoid long-term dependency. Define costly? Industry data and estimates by BloombergNEF show how difficult it will be to even reduce reliance on China.  Pools of brine containing lithium carbonate and mounds of salt byproduct stretch through a lithium project in the Atacama Desert in Solar de Atacama, China, in August 2022. Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images As executive director of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, Brynn O'Brien is acutely aware of how corporations face strict financial accounting standards and lax carbon accounting standards. Her job is to tackle those disconnects head-on, and from within. On this week's Zero, O'Brien and Akshat Rathi talk about why shareholder engagement is preferable to divestment. | 
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