What goes around comes around

method is now using bottles made of 100% recycled plastic!

You’ve heard the term “cradle to grave,” right? In marketing-speak, it refers to the importance of getting consumers hooked on your brand while they’re young so they’ll remain loyal to you over the course of their lifetime. And hey, that’s something we aspire to, although not in a creepy way.

Environmentally speaking, however, “cradle to grave” refers to the life cycle of a product, from manufacture (“cradle”) to disposal (“grave”). Putting our bottles and other packaging back into circulation has always been important to us, which is why we encourage all you people against dirty to recycle every scrap of it.

“Cradle to cradle” is even better: new, identical products created from recycled ones. So we’re thrilled to announce that we’re moving to 100% recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate – “#1” plastics) for nearly all our bottles this year, starting with our cleaning products. We’re the first company in the US to do this for custom designed (i.e., non-stock) bottles, so you’ll have to excuse us for patting ourselves on the back for a minute.

What we’re up against is pretty daunting. Even though PET is the most-recycled type of plastic, more than 4 billion tons of it ended up in US landfills in 2006; only 23.5% of it was recycled. Expanded recycling programs are having an impact in many communities, but we’re still throwing way too much of the stuff away, while demand continues to accelerate.

This is where using recycled bottles can make a real difference. Recycling plastic containers into new products saves about 50 percent of the energy used to make the same product from new material. And that’s just cleaner – for us, for our kids, for the planet.

Some more facts about PET:
- The first PET bottle was recycled in 1977
- In 2006, there were approximately 9,400 curbside recycling programs in the US
- One ton of recycled PET saves 7.4 cubic yards of landfill space
- The EPA estimates that for every pound of PET recycled, we save 12,000 BTUs
- In 2006, about 16% of recycled PET was reclaimed for food/beverage bottles, 7% for non-food bottles, and almost 50% for fiber – carpets, insulated clothing, sleeping bags, etc.

Keep recycling!

[source: NAPCOR]

Comments

[Anonymous]

That's a good move, that you can design attractive bottles and use recycled materials. But I think it would be awesome if we could just avoid the bottles almost entirely. If somebody could take the following idea of a refill station to a well-designed and large scale adoption.

http://www.restoreproducts.com/refill_station.html

Like how some grocery stores sell bulk grains, candy, and distilled water.

So instead of designing bottles to be thrown away or recycled, we could be designing bottles to keep and reuse.

[colleen reilly]

we're with you. we offer refills for our hand wash and aroma pills already, and we plan to offer them for more products soon. we're cutting down the packaging on refills too. love the idea of a refill station.

[Laura]

Yea! I am happy to hear this. Now I can feel even better about buying Method products to clean my home and keep my little boys healthy. And I already felt pretty darn good about it. Bravo!

[Terri Richards]

I sometimes have ideas I want to submit to Method but I do not know how to get them to the right place.

One idea I have is for Method to include their green bag with a product for purchase in a store to make it easier for customers to start using them more. I realize the cost of the bag must be included in the price of the product, but for the sake of eliminating the use of plastic bags, selling the green bags with a product will put more of them in customers' hands than just having them for sale throught the website. I also have been using my foam handcleaner pump with my dish soap after I used up the hand soap and it works great for doing dishes by hand. I also would like to be able to buy the hand cleaner in a refill bottle so I can just reuse the foam pump bottle.

[Tom Greenwood]

This is really great. The bottles are really nicely designed too so its a good example of how green doesn't need to mean sacrificing style and quality.

Could anybody tell us who is the manufacturer/supplier of these 100% recycled PET bottles, so that we can spread the word?

Tom Greenwood

Scamper Brand Strategy

[colleen reilly]

Thanks for your question - we're really excited to be leading the way on using recycled content in our packaging. The real challenge in this case is finding the right quality of plastic resin made from recycled material, so right now we're working with multiple sources to get the quality we need. Stay tuned on this one and we'll get back to you once we have a single supplier that has tackled this challenge with us.

[Caren Hunt]

The Method hand wash bottles are beautiful, however, I cut myself on the dispenser top when I pressed down it with wet hands and it slipped, cutting my finger. The top part needs to be re-designed.

[Mitch]

100% recycled is good, well done. 100% recylable too, I presume? The only thing that bugs me is even with this in place, a lot of the bottles will still end up in the ocean. Once there, it takes a looong time to degrade. Plastic is nasty and persistent, even tho it's recycled. I understand that glass takes a lot of energy to make and is heavier to ship, but might that not be a better material? Pricier too, I suspect, but maybe worthwhile? Glass also has a cradle to cradle personality and unlike PET is more earth friendly when it lands outside of the recycle net. A last note -- your PET supplier (the bottle maker) has safeguards in place to make sure the PET pellets don't escape, right? These little buggers are insidious and so all those in the supply chain who handle them need to have safeguards in place to contain these floaty little (diabolical) rascals that tend to end up suspended in the oceans. Cheers and keep up the fight!

[Mitch]

One more thing, my smart friend Art (Smart Art, I guess) looked at this and did the math. 400 billion tons is a lot for the US in one year - you might want to check this, seems like too much. (66 pounds per person, per day?)

[Karla Hjorth]

I use several of your products and really like them. My comment is about the laundry detergent and fabric softener. I wish that you could redesign the tops(like Tide has) so that the top of the bottle catches what is left in the cap instead of it running down the sides and making a big mess. Did no one try out the bottle design with liquid in it? A change would be great. Thanks

[jean bolger]

is the 34 oz. refill pouch for the method hand wash recyclable?

[Felicia]

Great question! We put a lot of thought into this packaging, so we're glad to see it getting some attention.
First off: this pouch design is not recyclable in US recycling systems, although it is in some other countries in the world. It may seem counterintuitive that a non-recyclable package is more eco-friendly, which is the reason we thought about this option for so long.
An ecological impact calculation was performed on several packaging options by a Swiss company (Migros) that makes food products. It concluded that the pouch had one seventh the ecological impact than an equivalent-volume PET bottle even if this bottle was assumed to be recycled 80% of the time. Given that US recycling rates are far lower than this, the degree of favorability is even higher. The reason for this is that the packaging weight of the pouch is drastically lower than for the PET bottle, with the result that all of the material, water, air and energy inputs in the production, manufacturing process, transportation, usage and retail are scaled down significantly for the pouch.
The pouch is the resoundingly preferable packaging option; however, it is clearly not perfect. The ideal solution would be a version of the pouch that is recyclable. method is currently pursuing this option and hopes to eventually replace the current pouch.

[Don A]

How do you unscrew the hand soap? I've never seen anything like this. I can't get the pump to work ;-(

[Elke Sisco]

Any news on refillables? I am almost out of dish soap, and as much as I love my lavender dish soap, I don't think I'll buy another one of the newest bottles, because this design is extremely frustrating (it is not easy to hold and handle, especially with wet hands, and the "spout" keeps clogging). I liked the previous "waisted" design, and I loved your first "icon" design - but it's not refillable, is it?

[Katie]

Hey
I just wanted to know if you guys have found a supplier yet for 100% recycled PET this is such a great idea I really hope you can find a supplier who can produce enough

[sarah homeijer]

Refills, refills, refills... we currently offer refill sizes of our most quickly used products - the Daily Shower Cleaner, Daily Granite, Aroma Pill, Aroma Ring, etc. - and are hoping to introduce more and more of these as our product line grows and develops and as retailers begin carrying them. 2009 should be a big refill year for us if all goes as planned.

Also, we are working on using 100% recycled plastic in all of our PET bottles. Currently the 28 oz clear spray cleaners and specialty spray bottles are 100% PCR, and we are looking to transition all of our PET bottles to this by the end of the year.

Happy cleaning!

[Jeanne C.]

I really like your pink grapefruit and
cucumber dish soaps, but I'm having a
horrible time unscrewing the cone-like
tops off of the bottles. I can't even pry
them off with a screwdriver! Please tell
me how so I can rinse out the bottles and
recycle them properly.

[Don A]

I wish there was a was to contact the Method company, even an email address. It's a great concept, but there is apparently no customer service. Am I wrong? ;-(

[Bonnie]

While I realize Method might want to keep the information about who their bottle suppliers are a secret (as do many product producers). The green community needs this information to be shared. I have been looking for a 100% recycled stock bottle and have been unable to find suppliers that have stock of higher than 25% and I have been looking for months. Please consider sharing your supplier info for the benefit of the planet and all the people on it.

[Sarah Wechsberg]

I'm really glad to see this story about the Cradle-to-Cradle feature of Method products, however, I was disappointed to see that you did not give any acknowledgment to Bill McDonough & Michael Braungart for their concept and book "Cradle to Cradle"

[drummond lawson]

Good catch, Sarah - the whole Cradle to Cradle design ethos was created by Braungart and McDonough, and explained fully in their 2002 book, Cradle to Cradle: remaking how we make things.

At method, We not only follow the Cradle to Cradle ethos as our environmental design vision, we work with its creators on an ongoing basis. Dr Braungart and his team at EPEA complete materials assessments that we use when designing products, where they research the health and environmental compatibilities of all the ingredients we are considering for use in our products. This allows us to fully comprehend the materials we are using and best tailor their use to meet the cradle to cradle vision of environmentally beneficial products.

[drummond lawson]

oh, forgot to mention - you can learn more about the ingredient assessments at www.methodhome.com/#EPEA

[Mary Jo Danton]

I love your products - but even though your pouch bottle for the hand wash uses less energy - I may not continue to buy it since it's not recyclable. While others may not recycle - I recycle as much as possible! I don't want to contribute more plastic to be laying about in the environment than I have to - so please work hard to make the pouch recyclable!

Also - please get a customer service number that people can call with questions or comments!