"Wishcycling" is putting an empty takeout container in the recycling bin with a hope and a prayer that it actually gets recycled — but with limited faith that it will.
According to a recent report by the Recycling Partnership, only 17% of respondents feel well-informed about what happens to their recycling, and only 21% of recyclable material actually ends up getting recycled. A lot of that confusion is because there's no national recycling law, meaning it's up to state and local governments to decide what to recycle and what to send to landfills — and how to communicate that to consumers.
So to prevent more confusion, How2Recycle, the 800-plus-brand coalition behind the "chasing arrows" ♻️ label you see on most products, just launched a major change: a new dynamic label with a QR code on it so that you get a clear-cut answer on whether a product can be recycled in your specific region.
One of the goals of the big shift was to see if it was possible to "have a scannable label that works really well … and allows a consumer to know regional information — even though it changes from time to time for recycling."
👆 That's Paul Nowak, the executive director of GreenBlue, which runs the How2Recycle coalition. In an exclusive conversation with The Cool Down, he walked us through how the new QR code works.
📶 How to use the new QR code
Once you've got your empty peanut butter jar or pie crust tin, for example, you'd look on the container for the regular ♻️ label and new QR code.
"Once you scan it, on the first click you will go to a website that will show you what you scanned," Nowak explained.
Then, it will ask for your ZIP code (instead of tracking your location) to access the National Recycling Database, which has community recycling acceptance information for 99% of the U.S. population.
"We purposely don't want to do geotracking because of the security questions around information and data," Nowak said.
"So you put in your ZIP code and then it would say basically, green, yellow, red — widely recyclable, you can recycle this, or it is more of a 'check local' … or it is not recyclable," Nowak told us.
🐻🐻🐻 The 'Goldilocks' solution
As anyone who's ever been to a restaurant that only uses QR code menus knows, sometimes it's nice to have the analog version, too. Next to every QR code, there will still be traditional "chasing arrows" language that'll provide details on how to recycle that specific product — it just won't have the hyper-focused regionality aspect.
"What we were looking for was a Goldilocks solution with the QR code," Nowak said. "A QR code by itself … is great, but isn't as inclusive as [we] would like it to be."
Sometimes there's a language barrier issue, or maybe your phone has a low battery and you want to conserve power. For instances like that, "we wanted to have a code that was scannable with language still around it."
🗣️ What confuses you most about recycling protocol?
🔘 Which materials I can recycle 📦
🔘 How clean the material needs to be 🧼
🔘 What the plastic numbers mean ♻️
🔘 Nothing at all 😇
🗳️ Click your choice to see results and speak your mind
📅 When and where you can find the new QR codes
You may have already seen the new labels on certain products like Pillsbury pie crusts and Silk's plant-based milk products.
"We had the three organizations that did pilots," Nowak told us: General Mills, Danone, and Reynolds (specifically the Hefty brand) over the past year. "Danone's Silk product was the first one to have it on it … they were an early adopter in some of the testing."
And, according to Packaging Dive, a Danone spokesperson reports the brand plans on "using the new label on other cartons, polypropylene cups, and additional packaging formats that aren't yet considered widely recyclable."
Expect to see more of the QR codes roll out in 2025.
🏆 What does success look like?
For Nowak, he will consider the rebranding successful if the team achieves a couple of key things, including a continued adoption rate of brands participating in the How2Recycle coalition and an increased number of products with recycling labels on them.
Brands in the How2Recycle coalition will have the choice of using the new dynamic label or opting for the traditional (and recently refreshed) ♻️ chasing arrows label — but they'll have to pay more to use the QR code tech. Nowak suggested that one way for brands to jump on the QR code momentum is to time it with their next rebranding, to apply the label "at the same time they're printing new packaging," for example, to save money and reduce logistics.
🔢 What do the numbers say?
Another big success metric is the scannability of the QR code label. "Is it being scanned? How often is it being scanned?" Nowak wondered. "Currently we're seeing between 5% and 12% on the pilots" with Danone, General Mills, and Reynolds.
"Our goal is to get that to 20%, 25% — to keep pushing that up. Obviously you'd love 100%, but that's not a really reasonable goal."
Plus, repeat customers theoretically need only scan the item once and may remember moving forward.
"If you print a million pieces of packaging and 1% are scanned, that doesn't mean you give up. That goes back to [the bigger question of] 'does there need to be [an awareness] campaign?'"
"That's also a reason why we didn't want to have the QR code by itself," Nowak told us. "We wanted language around it because … not everyone will adopt scanning." With both the label and the code, though, "they're still getting the information they need."
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