Incentivised Sustainability

July 15, 2021 | Rebecca Smith | |
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The What

Use incentives to increase recycling of old paint pots & materials in the artist community - e.g. return 10 empty paint tubes and get 20% off your next order. Return 100 empty paint tubes and get a free acrylic paint set. Or whatever incentive is feasible financially but aligns with the effort required to store and return used pots or equipment. If returned paint tubes can be re-used in the manufacturing process, potentially it's possible that this could reduce some manufacturing costs long term. Alternatively, the tubes could be donated to projects like LePlastics, which recycle plastic back into plastic chips that are then used to build much-needed infrastructure in Africa.

The Why

Sustainability is becoming more important for all companies, across all industries. The road to recovery could be paved with paint pots!

The How

Free post recycling return labels available to download from the brand websites plus a form to select your reward for being a recycling super star.

Comments

  1. This is exactly where we should be going as its a win win for us. By offering incentive to return for disposal we not only help ensure proper processing of the waste, but we also create a marketing and sales opportunity for ourselves.

    The new Acryic range for Elephant (project Gaia) takes exactly this approach where the set boxes have a return address on them for people to send back to us coupled with a discount off your subsequent order.

    The challenge though is the disposal end where often there isn’t existing streams to handle the recycling. This is one of the reasons we opted for alu tubes for Gaia as they should be easier to recycle.

  2. Thanks for commenting Toby.

    I think it’s possible for us to turn the returned plastic back into plastic chips ourselves with a small investment in equipment. The chips would take up less storage space and can be sold as a potential revenue stream. Companies like Plasgran buy whole plastic waste from businesses as well. (https://plasgranltd.co.uk/). I think part of the challenge might be cleaning the plastic properly before it is either chipped or sold. Not sure if the labour costs involved would make it financially viable. Or maybe it’s possible to sell the plastic without cleaning it. I haven’t spent any time researching the options but it all seems possible at the moment.