Repairing our frayed world one reuse system at a time

I grew up in the late 60s and 70s - a sweet spot of incredible economic and social progress. Utterly imperfect with many trails of tears. And utterly thrilling, as great social mobility bred optimism. We don’t live in that world any more, but the euphoric sense of great potential remains embedded in our mythology. Our next great potential lies in building a resilient economy where we accept our dependence on the natural world. Reusable packaging does just that.

Our embrace of a throwaway world weakened us in every respect. But reuse systems circulate packaging so the packaging is used, washed, sanitised and reused numerous times. In addition to delivering major environmental benefits, reuse addresses critical business pain points—tariffs, plastic-price volatility, product unavailability, fragile global supply chains and geopolitical instability. Reuse is also part of the repair job on our frayed social fabric.

Reuse systems need people, businesses and governments of all stripes to collaborate. How does it work? You buy a cup of coffee or a packaged item. You place the used container in a bin. It is then picked up, sorted and washed. If it is a consumer good, it gets refilled at a specialised facility. The clean container is then returned to the point of sale. And you get to have your next cup of coffee. No new extraction, no new production, no long supply chain and no carrying around a dirty cup because there are reuse bins everywhere. Reuse is the embodiment of the circular economy.

Reuse eliminates up to 90% of the production of packaging when compared with similar single-use products. Most people don’t realise that recycling is still single-use—it requires remanufacturing of the package. But recycling remains important because it reintegrates resources into the supply chain after a package has been used and reused, from a few to dozens of times.

Reuse is already happening, especially in sports and entertainment venues. In 2023, the Moda Center and Crypto.com Arena became the first professional sports venues in the United States to launch scaled reuse systems. So far, Bold Reuse has helped Moda to avoid 1.8m single-use items and reuse service provider r.World, has diverted 20 million single-use items across numerous venues in the last decade. Reuse was deployed at the 2026 SuperBowl in San Francisco, and the Pertamina Mandalika International Race Circuit in Indonesia. There is also reuse at Carrefour supermarkets in France, pizzerias in Colombia, McDonald’s in Paris and Starbucks in Hong Kong. Reuse is coming to closed-loop institutions, including schools, hospitals and corporate campuses around the world, and a few cities are launching city-wide open-loop systems.

To assure interoperability, reliability and profitability at scale, there are now standards for the new industry.

PR3: The Alliance to Advance Reuse, the NGO that I co-founded in 2019, convened more than 100 leaders from multinationals to environmental-justice advocates to develop six global standards. After more than four years collaborating, the PR3 Standards Panel has introduced four of six standards (Washing, Container Design, Labelling and Marking, Collection Points); the final two are nearing completion (Digital and System Operations and Performance).

Most of the standards are quite technical, ensuring sanitisation and efficiency, while there is palpable energy growing around the new reuse symbol in the Labelling standard. The symbol is already being used on packaging and infrastructure on every continent. The new reuse symbol is subject to criteria for usage, unlike the recycling logo, which was introduced 50 years ago with no guidelines whatsoever.

Reuse also bolsters local economic development.

Reuse infrastructure requires washing facilities, collection points, non-compaction trucks and durable packaging. In addition, co-packing facilities are needed for refill before consumer goods are returned to retail or e-tail. These facilities all need staff and build local resilience both economically and environmentally.

Government policy is a range of good and bad news stories for the reuse industry.

California, the world's fourth-largest economy, along with a few other US states and several countries including the EU, have new policies that incentivise reuse, with the possibility of early funding for infrastructure. But the petrochemical industry is pushing back hard against these policies. 5.3% of global greenhouse emissions come from plastic. 40% of plastic is used for packaging, and single-use packaging is the fastest growing component of plastic demand. We are in global geopolitical territory here.

Reuse is growing rapidly because of tenacious entrepreneurs, courageous changemakers inside multinationals, a wide-scale hunger for eliminating waste, government officials that are determined to address the waste and plastic crises, and activist campaigners who are moving public opinion to eschew plastic. My daily work with these global and diverse leaders reminds me of the culture I grew up in where cynicism didn’t govern our every opinion, and people who disagreed on many things regularly accomplished great things together.

Today’s world is in a state that feels akin to global war. Reuse means that the beer cup or ketchup bottle you use today can be sanitised and then used by your neighbour next week. A thriving reuse economy is one of the victories we can aspire to achieve together. And it’s a future for the history books.

Views or opinions expressed are those of the author and any individuals cited, and do not necessarily reflect those of Economist Enterprise or any other member of The Economist Group.