Closed Loop Companions, a New York-based funding agency centered on funding corporations and applied sciences with a optimistic social and environmental affect, has introduced the winners of its Beyond the Bag Challenge. In all, they chose 9 tasks that run the gamut from materials improvements and technological enablers to reuse and refill packages. 

The winners will now work intently with the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag, led by Closed Loop Companions. This may even embody founding members from CVS, Goal, and Walmart, in addition to innovation accomplice IDEO, environmental buddies Dialog Worldwide and Ocean Conservancy, amongst others representing the retail sector. The winners will share a portion of the $1 million prize pool, together with continued help from the consortium.

Among the many materials innovation winners, you may discover paper producer Domtar and its stretchable and sturdy cellulose-based materials. PlaticFri is growing a biodegradable plastic alternative appropriate for baggage and consuming cups. Sway goals to create plastic alternate options out of seaweed, and in doing so, increase seaweed farms, harvesting a low-load crop that is straightforward to handle and may present an alternative choice to overfishing.

Goatote makes use of sturdy, reusable luggage in a shared system the place customers deposit and pull totes out of a kiosk. Returnity is constructed on an analogous reuse enterprise mannequin however serves the e-commerce area, providing reusable and sturdy mailers whereas specializing in non-fragile items corresponding to clothes.

“There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all resolution to deal with an issue as complicated as our reliance on single-use plastic luggage,” Kate Daly, managing director of the Heart for the Round Financial system at Closed Loop Companions, mentioned in a press release. 

“The variety of our winners underscores how companies and customers alike have to make use of a variety of options to suit completely different geographic, social, and financial contexts,” she added in the identical press launch. “We’re thrilled to announce these corporations coming into the subsequent section of the initiative as we proceed to help their development and start to implement choose pilot packages.”

Study extra in regards to the winners here.