Global corporations join Brookfield to invest nearly $1B in Circular Services

Closed Loop Partners, New York, has announced that six global companies—Nestle, PepsiCo, SK Group, Starbucks and Unilever—are joining U.K.-based Brookfield Renewable to invest in scaling circular economy infrastructure and services.

Closed Loop Partners says commitment in its Circular Services operating group, which it established with Brookfield in November 2022, has now reached nearly $1 billion, building on investments from Brookfield as well as from the Closed Loop Circular Plastics Fund and the Partnership Fund for New York City.

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According to Closed Loop, Circular Services is the largest privately held recycling company in the U.S., focusing on a wide range of recycled commodities across packaging, organics, textiles and electronics. It owns and operates 12 facilities across the U.S. and seeks to help municipalities and businesses eliminate the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on landfill disposal costs by ensuring that valuable commodities are recycled and reused in domestic supply chains. The company says companies investing in Circular Services are demonstrating the power of both collaboration and targeted investments to accelerate the transition from a linear to a circular economy.

“Scaling best-in-class circular infrastructure can help increase the supply of recycled plastic, which is key to making circular supply chains a reality,” Unilever USA President Esi Eggleston Bracey says. “Our investment in Circular Services is an important step in increasing the feedstock needed to achieve Unilever’s 2025 plastics goals for recycled content in our packaging and our goal to collect and process more plastic packaging than we produce. These types of investments are critical for addressing plastic waste, which will take action from all of us across industries.”

Starbucks Chief Sustainability Officer Michael Kobori adds that his company is excited to join with the other investors in Circular Services. “This builds upon our longstanding work with Closed Loop Partners, whose NextGen Consortium has made significant strides in advancing sustainable packaging, including bringing hot cup recycling to more communities.”

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Closed Loop says Circular Services’ focus on packaging as a key material for recovery is spurred by a growing need to increase recovery rates for the material. Currently, recovery rates for packaging and food service plastics are reported to be as low as 28 percent in the U.S.

“To create a world where packaging never ends up in landfill or as litter, recycling capabilities must evolve, and investing in the infrastructure and circular systems that can help collect, sort, reuse and recycle is a critical step,” says Molly Fogarty, head of sustainability, corporate and government affairs at Nestle North America. “This investment will help upgrade recycling infrastructure in the U.S. and expand the availability of recycled content, as well as bolster packaging materials collection.”

Closed Loop adds that in addition to the focus on packaging recovery, companies investing in Circular Services are bolstering efforts to recover electronic scrap, which it considers one of the fastest-growing scrap streams in the world. According to Brandon Middaugh, senior director of Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, the two companies have already began working together to test e-scrap recycling in Denver and will look into collaborating in other areas in the future.

“With our third investment in the Closed Loop Partners ecosystem, we look forward to being part of this new venture to build circular systems that can help our industry achieve our sustainability goals,” Middaugh says.

Todd Squarek, chief sustainability officer of PepsiCo Beverages North America, says his company has been a longtime partner of Closed Loop and wanted to be an active partner of Circular Services when it was launched in order to drive impact and get access to more recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) for its bottles. “Closed Loop Partners is a trusted ally with a proven track record and we look forward to continuing our work with them to help transform the packaging supply chains of the future,” he says.

“Expanding access to recycling and reuse services will enable cities and businesses to avoid the cost of landfilling products and packaging and achieve their sustainability goals,” Closed Loop Chief Strategy Officer Jessica Long says. “Circular Services continues its work to accelerate a circular economy, an economic system that invests in the continual use of materials, reduces reliance on natural resource extraction and landfills and advances a waste-free future.”