Reckitt Benckiser teams up with French start-up for recycling initiative

Date: 04 August 2020

Five-month pilot

The partnership includes a five-month pilot that aims to collect a minimum of one tonne of plastic, the equivalent of 33,000 bottles, across ten districts of Lyon, France.

According to RB, only 29% of French households’ plastic is properly recycled, which is significantly lower than the European average. Residents don’t yet have the necessary recycling awareness to make it part of a daily routine.

How will this work?

Yoyo will be distributing recycling bags to homes across France via a network of ‘coaches’, which consumers can use to fill their used plastic products. The bags will then be collected and the plastic processed, sorted and recycled.

As an incentive, consumers are given rewards each time their plastics are recycled.

In addition, the recycling trial will accept plastics from all brands and if the pilot succeeds, Reckitt Benckiser aims to scale up the project to offer more recycling opportunities in France.

Popular recycling system

The Yoyo recycling system has proven to be extremely popular with a commonly used plastic material called PET (e.g. used for drinks bottles), with more than 50,000 households and 500 collection points having signed up to the scheme.

Also, the trial will focus on collecting HDPE plastic (used for many RB products), which has low recycling rates and is used in the packaging of a range of household goods.

Check our waste and sustainability hub for more related content.

Source: IDG.com