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Container and Packaging
Recycling UPDATE
Summer/Fall 2001 Issue

ATLANTA - Imagine a new creature quietly hunting for ways to increase bottle and can recycling in the United States, with the goal of achieving an 80 percent recycling rate. Imagine businesses and environmentalists sitting down together plotting strategy. In a unique new alliance, known as BEAR, that is precisely what is happening.

Established last year, Businesses and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling (BEAR) is searching for ways to halt the proliferation of beverage container waste. A project of Global Green USA, the American affiliate of Mikhail S. Gorbachev's Green Cross International, BEAR is attempting to break through the wall of suspicion that so often leads to stalemate in the waste and recycling arena.

Advocacy groups like the Container Recycling Institute and the Grassroots Recycling Network want to eliminate waste by increasing container recycling. A leading manufacturer of carpeting, Beaulieu of America, needs more plastic bottles to make polyester carpet.

Ferrari has served on Ben & Jerry's Board of Directors and contributed to resolving environmental concerns over Home Depot sales of wood from old growth forests.

Although new to recycling, both the business and environmental leaders asked Ferrari to become chairman of BEAR. He advocated reaching out quietly to old adversaries to start a new dialogue and pressed the group to conduct a 'value chain analysis', examining costs and benefits of various recycling strategies.

Months of private discussions led to setting a goal of roughly doubling the national recycling rate to 80 percent, without setting a particular deadline. In September 2000, the BEAR Executive Committee held its first meeting. With financial support provided by a grant from the Turner Foundation and matching funds from businesses, the alliance began working on outreach to key stakeholders.

"Taking a close look at the value chain to see the cost and benefits of various approaches to recycling seemed to me a good starting point," BEAR Chairman Pierre Ferrari said. By spring 2001, BEAR had secured commitments to a Multi-Stakeholder Recovery Project (MSRP), which is conducting a value chain analysis as one of the first steps in a process that participants hope will yield new approaches to increase beverage container recycling, with plastics being the highest priority initially. News about BEAR leaked periodically, first to trade publications like Plastics News and then to mainstream media like the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Associated Press.

Even before BEAR formally announced the MSRP project, Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO Doug Daft told shareholders at the annual meeting in April 2001 that his company would work with the new alliance.

In June 2001, BEAR formally announced the leadership of the alliance and formation of the MSRP. BEAR is led by an ex-

ecutive committee with representatives of Beaulieu, TOMRA North America, the GrassRoots Recycling Network, Global Green USA and Pierre Ferrari as chair.

The Container Recycling Institute participated in the dialogue leading to formation of BEAR, serves on the BEAR Steering Committee and on the MSRP.

"We see real value in sitting down with a wide range of interested parties to seek solutions to the growing beverage container waste problem," said CRI Executive Director Pat Franklin.

The project's diverse participants assembled on June 28 and 29 in Atlanta to formally begin discussions. BEAR's members include Beaulieu of America, Tomra North America, EvCo Research, LLC, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Grassroots Recycling Network and the Container Recycling Institute. In addition to BEAR's members, partners in the MSRP include: Waste Management, Inc., Southeastern Container, Inc., the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance and The Coca-Cola Company.

BEAR commissioned Ed Boisson, former director of the Northeast Recycling Council (NERC), to act as the MSRP Project Manager. To provide an objective, quantitative analysis of costs, BEAR has retained a research consulting team comprising R.W. Beck, Inc., Franklin Associates, Ltd., the Tellus Institute and Sound Resource Management Group.

Once the research is complete, the BEAR Executive Committee and MSRP participants will work to develop a consensus on the best means to increase recycling of beverage containers. If no consensus is reached, the BEAR Executive Committee may choose to pursue solutions independently. Whatever the eventual outcome, formation of BEAR and MSRP reflects growing concern about the beverage container waste problem and the need to find solutions.

Concern about the potential impact of Coca-Cola using increasing amounts of recycled plastic in beverage bottles brought these parties together in early 2000, in a groundbreaking dialogue facilitated by Global Green USA.

Along the way, many more leaders in the business and environmental community were brought to the table before BEAR was formally established. Pierre Ferrari, a former senior marketing executive at Coca-Cola, joined the discussions at an early stage.