Circular Services, the waste diversion infrastructure and operations offshoot of Closed Loop Partners, is investing in reuse. The company announced its acquisition of New York City-based Re:Dish, an end-to-end operator of reusable containers and dishware systems serving corporate and school campuses in the Northeast with customers like Barclays and Aramark.

Re:Dish has been operating since 2020, and the time was right for an acquisition because there have been valuable economic and behavioral change learnings the last few years, said Jessica Long, Circular Services’ chief strategy officer and chief operating officer.

“We've known since we started Circular Services four years ago that we wanted to be in reuse,” said Long. Re:Dish in particular was attractive because it manages program design, collection, washing, tracking and reporting, as opposed to just one piece of the process, she said.

Long also noted that prior to the acquisition, Circular Services had already been taking Re:Dish’s broken items for recycling. Re:Dish uses polypropylene cups, containers and plates.

Since Re:Dish launched, it has diverted more than 9 million single-use packaging items from landfill, according to the announcement.

Corporate and school customers are looking for a more holistic materials management solution and cost savings in procurement, she said, whether it’s taking care of single-use items for recycling, managing food waste, or reusables.

Ultimately, “my goal would be that we are offering reuse services everywhere that we provide recycling or food waste services today,” she said. In cafeterias in particular, food waste and dishware are in close proximity. “There’s a clear overlap and opportunity to add reuse into that service.”

Managing shredding services or electronics, which are also part of Circular Services’ portfolio, could be concurrent opportunities.

“If I’m already doing that, the incremental effort associated with me adding on the service is relatively small for me, but could be huge for you as a customer,” Long said, “so that reuse is now achievable for you in a way that maybe it wasn't when it was a standalone one-off service.”

There are potential logistics benefits as well. “If we're able to coordinate things in such a way that we can reduce the number of stops that we're making, reduce the number of times we're touching the materials within a company or a customer, the better for everybody” from both a cost and environmental perspective, as well as for customer relationships.

In the future, Circular Services expects to grow reuse through scaling and potentially other regional acquisitions, Long said. Closed Loop Partners is also assessing reuse programs in more “open-loop” environments, such as through the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project in California. 

“I do believe that the switch to reuse is going to grow significantly over the next five, 10 years.”