It’s Good News Friday, and we’ve got a good news story we want to share with you. Years ago, we had two clients near the same time who were both in the recycling industry, both trying to develop cutting edge technologies for how to deal with recycling. The problem with recycling is it’s all in the trash, so how do you separate, in an efficient manner, plastics from glass and different colors of glass and different kinds of plastics? It’s actually been an area of development in technology for a long time. Most of the large waste handlers have figured it out. They’ve got us sorting it for them and putting in different bins, but that’s only getting a small fraction of the material that’s going into landfills every day, not to mention the stuff that goes in the oceans.
The good news on this front is Sir David Attenborough is backing a new tech technology for a company that is recycling plastics. Years ago, our client was trying to automate that process by shining a beam of light through the plastic that would determine what type it was and then the machine would sort of different ways. This is something completely different, and it’s hugely timely because with all the emphasis on the environment, we’ve just got to be doing better with our trash.
Alternatively, there’s also a British grocery store chain that has been working with its vendors to reduce packaging and plastics from the products that go into the stores. If you’ve ever picked up anything, or if you’ve ever ordered anything from Amazon, over half of the cost of what you’re buying is in packaging! The packaging is important, but it is also a huge part of marketing. Packaging helps sell the product as well. So this chain has been working with vendors to reduce the packaging, saying, let’s sell the product. It’s going on the shelves, and it’s really interesting to see that effort. They’ve removed what they’ve called over a billion pounds of plastics from their store shelves.
Exciting good news for a Friday! We hope you have a great weekend. If Harvard Grace can help you in any way with planning, forecasting, or in your real estate interests, please reach out and give us a holler. We would love to talk to you!