Kickstart: Reducing plastics use, one chicken at a time

What does it look like when one of the biggest retailers changes up its plastic packaging to boost sustainability? It may look like chicken in a bag.

Costco Warehouse Corp. is in the process of swapping out rigid clamshell packaging for its $4.99 rotisserie chicken in favor of a flexible plastic bag.

The Issaquah, Wash.-based chain began switching out its chicken containers for bags in Canada in 2023, and this year it's rolling out the swap in the U.S. But while the chicken may be getting headlines — in part because the chicken is such a symbol of Costco's "loss leader" marketing strategy that maintains a low price for certain items — it is just one part of a corporatewide update of its packaging.

Costco corporate leaders said in 2023 it could use its own in-house brand, Kirkland Signature, to move forward its "broader sustainability goals."

Swapping a bag for a clamshell for chicken reduces plastic packaging use by 75 percent. Transitioning Kirkland-brand nuts from a plastic jar to bags resulted in using 85 percent less plastic. And in a January presentation to shareholders, Costco noted it cut 42 tons of annual plastics use by eliminating a scoop in a protein powder and cut another 85 percent worth of its plastics by switching from rigid to flexible plastic packaging.

But don't expect plastics to disappear.

"The primary goal of packaging is to protect the product and make sure it isn't damaged or destroyed," said Tim Wahlquist, who oversees Costco's packaging team. "There are some cases where using plastic packaging still makes sense."

A "micro" plastics recycling operation is coming to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

OPT USA, the U.S. subsidiary of South Africa-based Ocean Plastic Technologies, builds a small closed-loop recycling system that can handle all of the recycling steps using equipment that fits into a shipping container. The first site will go to the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, our sister paper Sustainable Plastics writes.

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste is supporting the project along with University of the Virgin Islands, the Virgin Islands Waste Management Authority and nonprofit group Opi'a Taino.

Lego A/S is getting multilingual in Braille.

The Danish toymaker introduced its Braille Bricks program in 2020, using the raised dots typical on a Lego brick to duplicate Braille characters, giving kids with vision impairments a chance to play and learn the alphabet at the same time. The bricks were available only on a limited basis until 2023, when they went on sale to a general audience.

But even then, they were available only with English, Spanish, German, Italian and French characters. Now the company is offering "top-up packs" that include characters unique to Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch and Portuguese that can be added to existing English or Spanish base packs.