BARNARD — One man is trying to cut back on plastic waste in the form of the toppers that connect four-packs of beer common among craft brewers.
The toppers are marketed as recyclable, but Barnard resident Ben Kogan said he was shocked to learn from a friend that can carriers cannot be properly recycled at most recycling centers.
“I was like, ‘It’s crazy; it can’t be true,’ ” Kogan said.
Because of the carriers’ flat shape, it is difficult for the automatic sorting machines at most recycling centers to distinguish them from other materials, such as sheets of paper. They often end up contaminating bales of other recyclables.
Kogan is attempting to solve the problem through the VT/NH Can Carrier Program, which he runs himself. He collects the plastic tops, cleans and sorts them and sells a portion of them back to brewers at a reduced rate. The rest are recycled.
Kogan, a musician by trade, operates a company called Reusable Solutions and has spearheaded several sustainability projects in Vermont, including an eco-friendly music festival dubbed Imagine Zero Festival.
He started a pilot version of the can carrier recycling in 2021. Building the program has been a system of trial and error, he said.
He didn’t keep a close tally of how many carriers were being reused in the beginning, but said that there has been an uptick in reuse in recent months. He estimates that since 2021 the program has saved over half a million can carriers from the landfill through either reuse or proper recycling.
After four years, he has worked out a system where a larger share of the carriers he collects are being reused rather than recycled: Businesses such as grocery stores pay about $1,000 each year to be collection points for people to return the can carriers after use. There are five collection points at grocery stores in Vermont and one in New Hampshire.
Kogan presents participation as a way for businesses to “become aligned with sustainability” and market their participation to customers.
In the Upper Valley, people can return their used can carriers at the Co-op Food Stores in Lebanon, Hanover and White River Junction.
“The idea here is to make it less difficult” to recycle, Kogan said. “It should be as convenient as disposable. It’s the only way.”
For the Co-op, participating in the program was an easy decision, Environmental, Social and Governance Program Manager April Harkness said.
The Co-op has its own sustainability goals set in 2023, including that all of its locations will be zero waste and that all of its own packaging will be compostable, reusable or recyclable by this year.
“We’re always looking for new ways to partner on values aligned projects like this,” Harkness said. “It seems to be well received by all three of our food store locations as the bins are filling up on a regular basis.”
A few times each month, Kogan collects the carriers that shoppers turn in at each store.
He brings them to be professionally cleaned at Fable Farm in Barnard and sorts them by color in his garage.
Kogan sells the carriers back to area brewers for $25 for 164. That’s about 15 cents each.
When breweries purchase carriers new, they typically cost more.
For example, Uline sells cartons of 788 4-pack carriers for $205, or about 26 cents each.
On Nov. 7, Kogan processed six weeks of can collections.
He brought about 126 pounds, or just under 4,000 can carriers, to the Northwest Solid Waste District in Georgia, Vt., which has an advanced recyclable sorting machine to properly dispose of them.
During the same period, he resold about 1,640 can carriers.
Kogan would like to see more carriers reused, pointing out that the phrase is reduce, reuse, recycle “in that order on purpose.”
Convincing breweries to reuse the carriers is the hardest part of the operation.
“I think any energy and funding going towards fixing recycling should be going toward how to reuse,” he said.
In many ways, can carriers are “the easy one, this is the low-hanging fruit” to reuse because they don’t touch food and people aren’t eating off of them, unlike other kinds of plastic packaging, Kogan said.
But, there are still many snags that make reusing the carriers difficult.
One of the biggest issues, Kogan said, is that many breweries package beers using machines that will jam if they are fed bent or damaged carriers. Reuse is a non-starter for these brewers.
Other carriers might be damaged or difficult to sell because they are unusual colors. Those are the ones Kogan brings these to the Northwest Solid Waste District.
Kogan hopes to continue to grow the program and make it more sustainable for himself. He declined to say how much he earns from it, but joked that he’d like to eventually make a living wage. He estimates he spends about 20 to 30 hours a month on the project.
“I like doing it, but it’s not easy,” Kogan said.
He hopes to eventually move on to reusing other kinds of packaging such as glass beer bottles, maple syrup containers or tubes used for pre-rolled cannabis cigarettes.
He is inspired by milk bottle return programs such as those at McNamara Dairy and Strafford Organic Creamery.
“Why can’t we repurpose that for reusable beer bottles?” Kogan asked.