Transformative Projects

This transformative project aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of « ça Vaud l’retour », a glass bottle reuse pilot project in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, supported by the Canton and the cities of Lausanne, Gland, and Nyon. This initiative, aimed at promoting the circular economy in the beverage industry, involves a network of local businesses participating in a reuse ecosystem. This project is supported by the Canton of Vaud and the cities of Lausanne, Gland and Nyon. The primary objective of this transformative project is to assess the glass bottle reuse project’s potential for scaling up, focusing on financial and environmental aspects. To do so, the students developed an interactive Power BI dashboard that offers in-depth analysis and modeling, supported by documentation including academic research and insights from similar use cases. The target audience includes various stakeholders in the glass bottle reuse process, such as local producers, retailers, wholesalers, and research centers like E4S.

The transformative project highlights the necessity of a systemic approach to glass bottle reuse, involving collaboration among various stakeholders, including beverage producers, wholesalers, retailers, and logistic entities. The study identifies key drivers for successful returnable packaging systems: shared infrastructure, packaging standardization, and high return rates. Financially, the feasibility of integrating an internal washing facility emerges as crucial for cost-effectiveness, and interestingly, a model without such a facility can still reach profitability within five years, offering a viable solution in contexts where external funding is limited. Environmentally, the emphasis is on the number of usage cycles per bottle and the market growth rate, which are crucial for minimizing emissions and water usage. The study recommends engaging in co-creation with all ecosystem actors, clearly communicating benefits beyond environmental impact, and increasing end-user engagement to ensure high demand and return rates for reusable bottles. It also emphasizes the importance of packaging standardization for both financial and environmental outcomes and advocates for collaboration between industry and academia for better insight sharing.

The study concludes that the glass bottle reuse system shows promise in both financial and environmental terms, and underlines the potential benefits of scaling the reuse system. While highlighting the environmental superiority of reusable bottles over single-use counterparts, the study also acknowledges certain limitations, such as the use of proxies and simplifications in the variables used to create the models. The comprehensive modeling approach adopted in this project provides a valuable template for other circular economy initiatives, offering a tool for informed decision-making and stakeholder engagement. Future work could involve refining data quality, standardizing modeling frameworks, and fostering deeper integration between field operations and academic research. This project contributes significantly to the academic documentation of practical glass bottle reuse cases and offers insights into the integration of field-level considerations in academic work.

Students: Guillaume Rico, David Campbell, Ludovic Mareemootoo, Noé Lopez

Company Supervisors: Martina Rapp, Nils Moussu

Expert: Dunia Brunner, Edoardo Chiarotti