In March 2020, Talking Rain Beverage Company announced that it had joined the Recycling Partnership, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting sustainability and improving recycling education among consumers. Talking Rain is the Preston, Washington-based producers of Talking Rain Waters, Sparkling Ice, and Sparkling Ice Plus Caffeine.
The company expressed its commitment to environmental sustainability, and this partnership is the company’s newest effort toward making their products eco-friendly, informing their customers about recycling, and putting that commitment to sustainability into action..
The Recycling Partnership is a national non-profit organization that strives to make recycling more accessible for individuals, communities, and corporations. The partnership is engaged along the entire length of the supply chain. They work with manufacturers who create products and packaging, local governments that regulate recycling in their towns, and the recycling and material recovery facilities themselves.
When companies partner with the Recycling Partnership, they commit to making their products recyclable and environmentally-friendly, and they help fund the Recycling Partnership’s efforts to expand recycling all across the United States. According to their Press Release, Talking Rain is now one of 46 brands that fund the Recycling Partnership, and the list is consistently growing.
Talking Rain’s main sustainability goals are to educate customers about its products’ ability to be recycled and to get more recyclables back into the circular economy. As of 2020, all Talking Rain Waters, Sparkling Ice, and Sparkling Ice +Caffeine products are made from 100% recyclable material, including the cans, bottles, wraps, labels, and corrugate trays.
Talking Rain has promoted sustainability through their manufacturing process for several years. In 2019, the brand saved 100,000 pounds of plastic by making its bottle labels thinner. The labels only decreased from 1.5 to 1.4 millimeters, but this small change saved a massive amount of material. The company also saved 250,000 gallons of water at its Preston, Washington campus by installing a new water main, sensor faucets, and water-less urinals in their bathrooms.
Beginning in 2020, all of Talking Rain’s packaging includes information for consumers on how to recycle. The company has announced that it is dedicating 25 percent of its direct-to-consumer communications to spreading awareness about its recyclable packaging and to instructing consumers on how best to recycle it. Also, Talking Rain has joined the American Beverage Association’s #EveryBottleBack initiative, a movement with the goal of getting every bottle and can recycled so that the materials can be reused.
Keefe Harrison, CEO of the Recycling Partnership, issued a statement about Talking Rain’s investment. He and the rest of the Recycling Partnership team are grateful for the beverage company’s support and are hopeful that this will increase recycling efforts among Talking Rain’s customers across the nation. Harrison says, “We are all in this bin together, and the investment by Talking Rain helps us educate Americans about what is and isn’t recyclable to help them feel more confident in recycling even more. Decreasing confusion and increasing access to recycling moves us one giant step closer to creating a system where the use of virgin resources is minimized, and materials are recycled over and over again.”
Talking Rain’s CEO, Chris Hall, also commented on the beverage company’s collaboration with the Recycling Partnership. He says, “We’re thrilled to be taking the next step in our commitment through our collaboration with the Recycling Partnership, which raises awareness around the importance of sustainability across the globe.”
This partnership is Talking Rain’s most recent gesture showing the brand’s fortitude in keeping their commitment to recycling, environmental sustainability, and consumer education.
