Cover Story: How Schoolchildren Helped
Caps for Aveda’s collection program are shipped by the
box-full to the company’s headquarters in Blaine, MN.
Elementary schools, Girl Scouts, and U.S. marines are among those sending caps to Aveda.
Aveda’s Caps-Collection Program began with just one bowl-full of plastic—and the help of one grade school in New York City. Now, marines on army bases as far away as Afghanistan are collecting caps, and the program has become a major recycling initiative that has collected more than 50,000 pounds of plastic.
It all began in 2005, at Aveda’s offices in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City. John Delfausse, vice president of global package development and chief environmental officer for Estée Lauder Corporate Packaging, asked his employees and colleagues to place a small empty wooden bowl on the table in the kitchen. Employees were asked to bring in any types of plastic caps they could find at home, and to keep collecting them.
“After several months, we had enough caps to send to a lab in New Hampshire. The lab would determine whether or not the material could be ground, cleaned, and reprocessed into pellets,” Delfausse says.
The trial run was a success. Gray plastic chips were molded from the collected material; however, many more caps were needed to take research to the next level. Andrew Fishkin, an Aveda employee, volunteered to help. Fishkin asked his wife, who was a second grade teacher at Westorchard Elementary School in Chappaqua, NY, to involve her students in the collection efforts.
It wasn’t difficult to persuade the second graders to participate. The fact that plastic ends up on beaches and in oceans, where it causes harm to birds, turtles, and other marine life, was all the information the children needed to hear to commit to the program.
“Within two months, all of the students from that one school were involved and had collected 15,000 caps. They were all super engaged in the project,” says Delfausse.
By the end of 2005, five more schools (located in New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina) were onboard with the program. Enough caps were being sent in to prove that a collection program would be a success.
Armed with this knowledge, Aveda’s packaging team began setting up a process for collecting and reworking the material. The goal was to collect enough polypropylene (PP) to mold new caps that would be made from 100%–postconsumer recycled (PCR) PP.
Aveda’s team members met each new challenge that arose by handling issues one at a time. “Finding a recycler that could rework the material was key,” says Delfausse says. “KW Plastics, which was already a partner with us for recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE), was the perfect choice. They were already making paint containers from recycled bottle cap material,” he adds.
Another issue was figuring out how to consolidate the material for shipment, as well as handling the cost of shipments. “These were big questions,” says Maune. “Right now, we’re covering the UPS charges for any school that wants to participate,” he adds.
Aveda’s Caps-Collection program officially launched in April 2008. Aveda retail stores around the country joined the mission by setting up collection centers for its customers and by recruiting local schools in the area to help. By June, 62 schools were participating. One Chicago school alone sent in 22,000 caps.
News of the program began to quickly travel across the globe. In April, an article appeared in Shape magazine, directing readers to Aveda’s Web site for more information about where to send caps. Soon after the story was published, letters and e-mails from around the world began pouring in, to Aveda’s offices and its Web site.
“The Shape article was read by marines in Afghanistan and also a Girl Scout troop in Japan. We received e-mails and letters from them saying that they wanted to help, and they began collecting caps,” says Dean Maune, executive director of Aveda Package Development. This fall, Aveda plans to expand the program with the help of its salon and spa partners.
Aveda’s Caps-Collection Program has grown into a new recycling initiative that has collected more than 50,000 pounds of plastic. The program has become Aveda’s own sustainable source of PCR PP—made possible because of the involvement of grade schools and the children’s intense dedication. Enough materials are being collected to create new dispensing caps that are currently being used on Aveda’s Vintage Clove Shampoo bottle.
Aveda has received a lot of positive feedback about the program from the schools, teachers, children, and parents, according to Maune. “One reason why the program has been such a phenomenon with younger schoolchildren is because they can touch, feel, and see the caps,” Maune says. “It has real meaning to them because they can actually count them and keep track of how many they’re bringing in. The best part about it is that we’re helping to educate the kids about recycling, and that feels great.”
A few of Aveda’s packaging team members, including Delfausse, recently visited the children from that first second-grade class. “Those kids are in the fifth grade now and are still excited about their ability to create positive change in the world,” says Delfausse.
More on Aveda's Caps-Collection Program
Feature:
The Evolution of a Cap
Sidebars:
Web Exclusive: Aveda Prevents Plastics from Polluting Oceans
Closing the Loop
From the July/August Issue: Aveda's Caps-Collection Project