Reynolds Consumer Products announced a milestone for its Hefty® EnergyBag® program. The program has diverted over one million pounds of hard to recycle plastics from landfills.
National Geographic estimates that as of 2017, 79 percent of plastic waste in the U.S. ends up in landfills, which includes hard to recycle plastics such as candy wrappers, packing peanuts, straws and foam carry out containers. The Hefty EnergyBag program gives consumers in participating markets the ability to collect these hard-to-recycle items and see them converted into valuable resources rather than getting taken out with the trash.
“We are really proud of surpassing our ambitious goal of diverting one million pounds in just three years,” said Lindsey Walter, director of the Hefty EnergyBag program. “We are grateful to the many people and communities out there who have embraced this program as something we can all do together to make our world a little bit better.”
In partnership with Dow and other community collaborators, the Hefty EnergyBag program was set up to complement existing recycling programs, allowing hard to recycle plastics to be picked up at curbside.
Participants place hard to recycle plastics in the Hefty orange bag, tie the bag when full and place it in their curbside recycling cart or bin. Once collected, the plastics are converted into valuable resources including fuel and new plastic products like park benches, composite decking and concrete blocks. The signature bright orange bags used for collection make it easy for recycling facilities to separate and forward the materials they cannot process, so the hard to recycle plastics don’t contaminate other recycling streams.
Since inception in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2016, the EnergyBag program has expanded to 13 communities across the U.S., making it available to more than 500,000 households.
Consumers can learn more about the Hefty EnergyBag program, including whether their community participates, and can also sign up to request the program in their city by visiting www.heftysustainability.com.
Published in the June 2020 Edition