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A charged effort

When it’s time to revamp a room in your home, The Home Depot is a good place to start. The home improvement retailer also is a good place to recycle rechargeable batteries.

Through its partnership with Call2Recycle, a nonprofit organization with U.S. headquarters in Atlanta, The Home Depot, also based in Atlanta, recycled more than 1 million pounds of rechargeable batteries in 2016 through its in-store takeback program. It is Call2Recycle’s first North American retail partner to achieve this milestone in a single year.

In total, Home Depot has recycled more than 8 million pounds of rechargeable batteries since the partnership launched in 2001.

Lush packaging

Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics’ recent recognition had nothing to do with its shampoos, fragrances or specialty products. The bath and body products company, along with KW Plastics, Troy, Alabama, was instead honored for the packaging that contains its products.

The Lush Black Pot, a package made for creams and lotions, was recognized as the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration- (FDA-) approved rigid packaging application for cosmetics use made from recycled polypropylene (PP). The company was honored during the 2017 Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) Plastics Recycling Showcase, which was held in conjunction with the Plastics Recycling Conference, March 6-8, 2017, in New Orleans.

The Lush Black Pot is an injection molded container and lid made with 100 percent postconsumer PP. The package is made with KWR621FDA and KWR621FDA-20 resins from KW Plastics that have received FDA letters of nonobjection for 100 percent recycled content.

A variety of humanitarian, environmental and animal welfare organizations benefit from Charity Pot purchases.

Beach to bottle

A day at the beach can include umbrellas, sunscreen and the plastic bottle it was packaged in, which may be left behind. To help rid beaches of this discarded plastic, consumer products company Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G), Cincinnati, will make its Head & Shoulders shampoo bottles from up to 25 percent recycled beach plastic.

P&G, in partnership with Trenton, New Jersey-based TerraCycle and Suez Environnement, Paris, will begin the beach plastic recycling program in France by the middle of this year, producing a limited-edition shampoo bottle. The shampoo will be sold through French retailer Carrefour.

It will be the world’s largest production run of recyclable bottles made with postconsumer recycled beach plastic.