Written by L. Park, Sustainability
There is a particular slide that shows up in almost every sustainability presentation about packaging. It is a circle. Arrows go around the circle. The circle is labeled 'closed loop' and the arrows are labeled with words like 'collect,' 'sort,' 'reuse.' The implication is that the system is 100% efficient — that what goes around, comes around, forever. Nobody believes this is literally true, but the industry talks as if it were, and that talk has consequences.
The actual numbers.
In our own closed-loop programs, the best-performing customer retains about 92% of dedicated boxes after one full year of cycling. The average is 78%. The worst is around 60%. Boxes drop out of the loop because they get damaged beyond repair, get accidentally co-mingled with non-loop inventory, or just disappear (every loading dock has a couple of mysteries). The lost units have to be replaced from general grade-A inventory.
Why this matters.
A program that is honestly 80% closed is a great program. A program that is advertised as 100% closed and is actually 80% closed has a problem: it sets expectations it cannot meet, and the gap shows up as either uncomfortable conversations with customers or quietly inflated sustainability metrics in annual reports.
What we tell customers up front.
Every closed-loop contract we sign includes a budget line for replacement units. We assume 15-25% annual attrition, depending on the use case. Customers know this from day one and budget for it. Nobody is surprised when boxes need replacing, because we put it in the spreadsheet from the start.
The math is still very good.
A loop with 80% retention and a 4x reuse rate per loop cycle still saves dramatically more carbon and money than a single-use system. The point is not that closed loops are bad — they are great — the point is that they are not magic, and pretending they are makes them harder to sell to skeptical procurement teams.