Dart is the National Sponsor of a new “plogging” program from Keep America Beautiful. Plogging is a trend from Scandinavia that encourages people to pick up litter as they walk or run. Dart’s sponsorship introduces plogging at community running events across the US and provides free trash grabbers. Participants can continue to use trash grabbers to collect litter long after an event.

In 2019 we kicked off the first annual “Trash Dash” event on September 15 in Norwalk, CT. Participants picked up nearly 750 pounds of waste during the event.

We also sponsored eight KAB plogging events in Norwalk; Las Vegas, NV; Houston, San Antonio and Dallas, TX; Tupelo, MS; Knoxville, TN; and Oklahoma City, OK. We provided 2,300 plogging kits, complete with reusable gloves, bags and trash grabbers, to KAB affiliates, volunteers and participants.

Our partnership with KAB continues, with many more plogging events currently planned for 2020, including the second annual Trash Dash.

In 2019 Dart’s affiliate, Omni Recycling, opened the first-of-its-kind facility dedicated to recycling mixed bales of foam and rigid polystyrene from residential curbside recycling programs in the US and Canada. This $18+ million facility is located in Indianapolis, IN, which will help reduce North American dependency on overseas reclamation facilities.
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We opened our $32 million technical and innovation center on our Mason, MI, campus in early 2019. Known as The Vertical, the center enables us to develop new and improved products with a focus on sustainability and improved speed to market.

The Vertical’s mix of technical and creative spaces is a ripe proving ground for continued innovation in the food and beverage packaging industry.

Dart’s Community Action Team is a group of Dart employees throughout North America who volunteer to improve their local communities. Dart has committed that each of our locations will participate in one or more clean-up events in the communities where we live and work, with a goal of contributing at least 7,500 hours of community service annually by 2021. Then, we’re going to continue to push ourselves until we average one hour for each of our 15,000 employees.

In 2019 we piloted our new DCAT program in Lodi, CA, and Mason, MI. In single-day events centered around local waterways, Lodi volunteers picked up more than 600 pounds of trash and Mason volunteers collected more than 900 pounds. After each cleanup, volunteers sorted trash to separate recyclables from items that needed to be landfilled.

By 2021, Dart will promote the use of certifications to prove the fiber and plastic we use are sustainably sourced, and post-consumer recycled content and compostability claims are verified through an industry-recognized, third-party certification body. Our openness will inspire others in our industry to do the same.

In 2019, we promoted the following certifications for relevant products and processes:

• Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) for third-party verification of end-of-use compostability claims.
• Cedar Grove Acceptance indicates that products are accepted at Cedar Grove facilities, a leading composter in the Pacific Northwest.
• Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification™ (PEFC) for chain-of-custody certification of sustainably-sourced fiber and manufacturing processes globally.
• Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI) for chain-of-custody certification of sustainably sourced fiber and manufacturing processes in North America.
• USDA BioPreferred designates that product is preferred in the federal procurement process aimed at increasing the use of bio-based materials.

We are inspiring others to invest in secondary material reclamation facilities (MRFs) and committed significant dollars to advance the concept of secondary MRFs in the US. We also pushed for secondary MRF adoption with industry associations and through public policy.

Secondary MRFs help solve the challenge primary MRFs face regarding materials that lack critical mass. Primary MRFs can recycle the materials they choose to sort, then send materials they don’t want to sort to a secondary MRF. Since a secondary MRF receives material from several primary MRFs, it reaches the volume necessary for profitable recycling of items such as aseptic cartons, non-clear PET, polypropylene and polystyrene. Titus, the company in which Dart has invested since 2014, has diverted 210,000 pounds of aluminum cans, 3.3 million pounds of PET bottles and 35 million pounds of paper from landfills.

Read more about our thoughts on secondary MRFs in this Plastics News op-ed.

Dart is committing to Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) Blue, a program dedicated to achieving zero plastic resin, pellet, flake and powder loss in the manufacturing process. In 2019 our US manufacturing facilities began working toward recognition by Operation Clean Sweep, a program designed to ensure zero plastic resin, pellet, flake and powder loss at plastic manufacturing facilities. While Dart has always prioritized zero pellet loss, this program confirms Dart is subscribing to strict industry guidelines. Our goal is to ensure all our US facilities are compliant by the end of 2020. Once this is achieved, we will pursue OCS Blue, a program for plastics companies already excelling as OCS partners.

Dart is committing to accountability, and by 2020 will fully measure and publicly report our carbon footprint.

Dart will play an active role in industry associations to advance sustainable solutions for the products we manufacture. In 2019, Dart served on the following boards of directors to ensure foodservice packaging has a voice and becomes more sustainable:

• Association of Plastic Recyclers
• Biodegradable Products Institute
• Foodservice Packaging Institute
• Keep America Beautiful
• National Association of PET Container Resources.

In Europe, we served on the board of directors for the following organizations:

• Paper Cup Alliance
• Recoup
• Paper Cup Recovery Group
• Pack2Go Europe
• Packaging Federation
• Foodservice Packaging Association.

We were also active with many other organizations including The Recycling Partnership and the Trash Free Seas Alliance.