Reuse Works. Getting the Package Back Is the Hard Part.

In the first two parts of this series, I looked at Oregon’s shift from rigid polypropylene packaging toward mylar and what that change means for recycling.

But recycling isn’t the best possible outcome for a package.

Reuse is.

Every time we can clean a package and put it back into circulation, we avoid manufacturing another one and avoid the energy and processing required to turn the old package into something else.

In Oregon cannabis, we aren’t just talking about the potential for reuse. We’re already doing it.

Thousands of Jars Are Already Getting a Second Life

P3 has been collecting, processing and reselling glass concentrate jars through our recycling program.

Last year, we sold approximately 18,000 reused glass jars. So far this year, we’ve sold more than 10,000.

July gives us a particularly good snapshot of what that looks like.

During the month, we sold 66,160 glass concentrate jars. Of those, 6,080 were reused jars, meaning reuse represented just over 9% of our glass jar sales. We also processed another 2,880 recovered jars that are ready to go back into circulation.

At this point, we’ve proven that the process works. Businesses will buy reused jars, the economics make sense, and the operation can scale.

With enough material coming in, we could increase automation and build the capacity to process hundreds of thousands, potentially millions, of jars per year.

Our biggest obstacle isn’t processing capacity.

It’s getting enough jars back.

Getting the Package Back Is the Hard Part

A customer buys a gram of concentrate and takes it home. Days or weeks later, they finish it.

For reuse to happen, that customer has to know the jar can be returned. They have to remember that after they’ve used the product. They have to hold onto the empty jar. Then they have to remember to bring it with them the next time they visit a participating dispensary.

None of those things is particularly difficult on its own.

Getting thousands of people to do all of them consistently is.

Communication has always been one of the biggest challenges with our recycling program. We can put collection boxes in dispensaries. We can talk about the program online. Retailers can tell customers about it.

But we’re competing for a few seconds of someone’s attention at the point of sale, and we’re asking them to remember that conversation weeks later.

This isn’t a problem unique to cannabis.

Mature return systems have demonstrated that extremely high return rates are possible. Germany’s deposit system for single-use beverage containers, for example, achieves return rates around 98%. Other reusable packaging programs have also shown that deposits, convenient return locations and clear communication can dramatically increase the likelihood that a package comes back.

Those systems don’t simply make packaging reusable.

They build a system around getting it returned.

That distinction matters.

Oregon Already Has Part of the Infrastructure

One reason I remain optimistic about cannabis packaging reuse is that we don’t have to start from zero.

Our recycling program already collects packaging from dispensaries across Oregon. Participating retailers already have collection boxes. Material is already being transported back to us, sorted and processed.

Once a reusable glass jar reaches our facility, we know what to do with it.

That means the next big challenge isn’t necessarily building a massive new processing facility. It’s increasing participation in the system we already have.

What would happen if twice as many consumers brought their jars back?

What about five times as many?

At that point, automation starts making more sense. Processing capacity increases. More used jars become available to manufacturers. And every time one of those jars goes back into circulation, it replaces the need for another new package.

The potential scale is significant.

But the Concentrate Market Is Changing

There is another part of this story that we can’t ignore.

The concentrate market itself is changing.

More cannabis oil is being sold through vape cartridges and disposable vaporizers, while traditional concentrates packaged in glass jars appear to represent a smaller part of the market than they once did.

Unfortunately, Oregon’s public market data makes that shift difficult to quantify precisely.

OLCC groups concentrates and extracts together in its public reporting. That means we can’t simply look at the state’s concentrate sales and determine how many glass jars entered the market. Some of those sales represent traditional concentrates packaged in jars, while others represent vape cartridges and disposable devices.

Those are very different waste streams.

A glass concentrate jar can potentially be collected, cleaned and used again. A disposable vaporizer combines plastics, metals, electronics and a lithium battery into a completely different recycling problem.

I’ve been spending more time looking at the vape side of this issue, and it deserves its own discussion. I’ll come back to that in a future article.

For now, the important point is that even as the market changes, there are still a tremendous number of glass jars moving through Oregon’s cannabis industry.

The opportunity to reuse them hasn’t disappeared.

We just need to get more of them back.

What Does This Mean for Pop-Tops?

This brings the discussion back to the polypropylene packaging I wrote about in the first two parts of this series.

Oregon’s deli-style flower market creates an unusual opportunity for reuse.

Unlike markets where cannabis is almost entirely prepackaged by producers, Oregon dispensaries commonly package flower at the point of sale. In theory, that makes a standardized reusable flower container possible.

I still think that’s an opportunity worth exploring.

But operating the glass program has also changed how I think about the problem.

Before we build another cleaning and reuse system, we need to fully develop the one we already have.

The glass system works. We know businesses will buy the finished product. We know we can scale processing. Yet the amount we can reuse is still limited by how much packaging actually comes back.

A pop-top reuse program would face the exact same challenge.

So for now, our focus is on growing the glass program and learning how to increase returns. If we can solve that problem, what we learn could eventually apply to other cannabis packaging as well.

Recyclable and Reusable Don’t Mean Recycled and Reused

There is a larger lesson here that goes beyond glass jars or pop-tops.

We spend a lot of time talking about whether packaging is recyclable, compostable or reusable.

Those labels describe what can happen to a package.

They don’t tell us what actually happens.

A recyclable package thrown into the garbage isn’t recycled.

A reusable package that never comes back isn’t reused.

Designing better packaging matters, but the collection system matters just as much.

That’s one reason I continue to believe rigid cannabis packaging has advantages worth protecting. Polypropylene gives us a viable recycling pathway today and the possibility of reuse in the future. Glass gives us both recycling and a reuse opportunity that we’re already demonstrating at meaningful scale.

But neither material can reach its potential sitting in someone’s garbage can.

The Next Step Isn’t Another Package

We’ve already put tens of thousands of glass jars back into circulation.

We know how to process them. We know businesses will buy them. We know the economics work, and we know we can build significantly more capacity when the volume justifies it.

The hardest part is getting the jar from the consumer back into the system.

That’s where I think the next stage of this work needs to focus.

Better communication. More convenient returns. More participation from retailers and brands. Maybe incentives. Maybe deposits. Maybe something we haven’t tried yet.

Because if we can dramatically increase the number of packages that come back, we don’t need to invent a new material or wait for a new recycling technology.

We can simply use the package again.

And that’s about as circular as packaging gets.