A garbage incineration plant
Retailers, manufacturers and brands face a myriad of regulations about how to handle and dispose of millions of potentially hazardous consumer products, from bathroom cleansers to nail polish—about 7,000 in all. Those rules determine, among other things, whether, for example, an item can be recycled and, ultimately, how expensive a company’s supply chain activities are.
Plus, many companies end up sending products to be incinerated, the better to avoid the possibility of paying costly fines for making the wrong move.
That’s the problem Smarter Sorting addresses. Founded in 2015, its platform uses data and computational algorithms to allow manufacturers and retailers to determine the potential hazards of environmentally sensitive and regulated consumer products, allowing them to make, market and dispose of their wares more efficiently and sustainably.
“You might know what the ingredients in your product are, but not how the rules apply to the ingredients you have in the concentration you have them,” says Jacqueline Claudia, Smarter Sorting’s CEO. Making matters more complicated, those multiple rules often change.
Jacqueline Claudia
How does it work? The platform analyzes the physical and chemical attributes of regulated consumer products by breaking chemicals down into their constituent parts, also pulling information from other data bases, using billions of data points on millions of products. Ultimately, users reduce their environmental impact, while avoiding hefty penalties and lowering supply chain costs.
Storage and End of Life
For retailers, one problem the platform targets is the matter of storage. For example, flammable products typically need to be placed in a special area of a warehouse with additional fire suppression equipment. Usually a small space, retailers may not have enough room to store everything—and may not have enough information to understand what products really need to go in that special room. But if there isn’t sufficient storage capacity, then the manufacturer will have to ship the product directly to stores. That forces the company into choosing the most expensive supply chain option available
On the other hand, if a product can be stored safely outside of that special area, then it can be shipped to a fulfillment center, instead.
Determining the right path for handling a product’s end of life is another issue. Without the right information about how to dispose of an item, companies tend to choose the most conservative method, which tends to be incineration, a highly polluting process. Plus, in states that don’t allow such methods, the product would be trucked to a state that does, thereby creating even more greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, knowing the composition of a product allows for choosing for another, more sustainable path, like recycling.
Ultimately, according to Claudia, the platform makes the whole process highly transparent and traceable. “It brings a level of accountability to the industry that’s been lacking for a long time,” she says.
The platform has been adopted by more than 1,700 brands and 24 major retailers, such as Costco, according to the company, which has raised a total of $55.2 million.