SUMANI Trendster Blog: The Recycling Partnership

Leveraging the power of reuse schemes to boost the transition towards a circular economy

In February 2020, the project in collaboration with The Recycling Partnership was launched. The Recycling Partnership is a leading nonprofit organization transforming recycling for good in states, cities and communities all across the U.S. For this particular project The Recycling Partnership chose to expand its horizons and gave us the task to conduct a landscape analysis of reuse initiatives across the country. This analysis aimed to provide the organization with a detailed list of potential scalable solutions that could be in the future expanded and taped into with the help of TRP.

Process

We have been in charge of exploring the waste management industry with a focus on researching current reuse schemes and models across industries and international boundaries. Our second task was identifying gaps in reuse models and present opportunities for The Recycling Partnership. Ultimately our goal was to identify scalable investment solutions to protect resources, empower sustainable action and unlock opportunity.

Challenges

We faced challenges while selecting the most scalable alternatives. At the end of the day reuse is a fairly new field and one initiative over another is hard to compare. Audiences and services may differ a lot and all initiatives are needed so it was hard to deliver the ultimate recommendation.

Result

This encompassing landscape analysis of reuse schemes enabled us to gain knowledge on the ambitious initiatives that have been undertaken so far in the reuse space. Additionally this research will be an asset for TRP to leverage for the expansion of their outreach.

Takeaway

The team members were exceptionally thankful for the opportunity to work for first hand with the client. We gained circular economy and waste management knowledge, developed research and analytical skills along with relationship development. At the same time, TRP provided fast and efficient responses that allowed the team to tackle each barrier quickly.