Its Full Circle Recycled Cotton Blanket is crafted, in part, from recycled cotton received through the 2nd Home program. “It’s not easy bringing these products to life because the recycling infrastructure is still in its early stages, but we are excited to learn from our pilots and be ready to scale as the industry advances,” Chung says.
With the launch of the 2nd Home Take-Back initiative, customers can return Coyuchi products when they’re ready to replace them. Through its Home Renewed recommerce program, Coyuchi, working with Bleckmann and Recurate, renews and offers for sale customers’ pre-loved Coyuchi items. The renewal technology and solutions offered by Bleckmann, a provider of
The sustainable origin of Garnica’s products is based on the plywood producer’s commitment to sourcing wood from fast-growing tree farms, located in environments close to its production sites.
Construction Materials Build on Sustainability
be resold, Bassett notes. As a result, the only information available on a returned shirt might be its brand, size, and fabric content. A starting step for brands interested in circularity is to identify each product, ideally with a digital ID. Until recently, 2nd Home Renewed was hosted on a site separate from Coyuchi’s main ecommerce site. This made for a less-than-ideal shopping experience. It also was challenging for Chung and his team, who were managing multiple sites, and separate marketing and other functions. Coyuchi partnered with Recurate, which offers a tech-enabled resale service, to integrate 2nd Home Renewed into its main site, and now can offer customers a seamless shopping experience. Coyuchi also is better able to better understand customers’ behaviors, while introducing its main customers to the resale opportunity. Coyuchi also is creating new products using post-consumer waste from returns.
supply chain management services for fashion and lifestyle brands, enable Coyuchi to restore products to like- new condition. “Without their thorough cleaning and processing, we could not offer 2nd Home Renewed product to our customers,” Chung says. Nicole Bassett, circularity lead with Bleckmann, and her team renew the products returned for resale, which can involve numerous manual processes, such as replacing buttons or cleaning. After the team completes these steps, each item is barcoded, inspected, and assigned a quality level. All information associated with the item is tracked and made transparent to the customer. The data is also visible to the brand, which can leverage the data to determine, for instance, if some items need repairs more frequently than others. The products are packaged and placed into inventory to be resold. One hurdle often is the product itself. Currently, few items are designed to
Garnica, a global plywood producer, has long employed sustainable, circular manufacturing and supply chain processes. “The good thing about wood products is that the raw material is renewable, recyclable, and captures carbon from the very beginning,” says Óscar Crespo, ESG officer. Even so, Garnica goes beyond this. “We try to make our processes as circular as possible by, for example, using bio- based ingredients for some of the chemical components we use in our manufacturing process,” Crespo says. For instance, for most wood products, the main use of energy is getting water out of the wood, as a log is about half water, Crespo says. Depending on the product being manufactured, the proportion or water needs to drop to between about 4% and 10%. This typically is accomplished with the help of dryers. In North America,
Circular Business Models Can Deliver Economic Benefits
Resource efficiency
Next generation resilience New consumers
Economic growth
Environmental sustainability
28%
39%
66%
$4.5T
of firms with circular strategies did not face supply chain issues due to the pandemic...
higher revenue growth for insurgent brands scoring highest on sustainability compared with traditional brands 10x
lower material use in circular supply chains, decreasing dependence on scarce resources
of potential economic growth if businesses switch to a circular business model
of greenhouse gas emissions can be cut by adopting circular practices
2%
...vs
for others
Source: Circle Economy, The Circularity Gap Report (2021); Circular Flanders and VITO resilience survey, 2020, (n=540); Bain Elements of Value consumer survey, 2021 (n=8,303); World Economic Forum, The World Needs a Circular Economy (2020)
30 Inbound Logistics • June 2024
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