Lauren Emenaker

Compostable Packaging: Defining a Responsible Product Launch, Summer 2018
Capstone Project for the Sustainable Innovation MBA at the University of Vermont by Lauren Emenaker and Sarah Healey

Hosts: Keurig Green Mountain & Casella Waste Systems

Keurig Green Mountain continues to be a leader in specialty coffee & innovative single serve brewing for 35 years and counting. As a company founded on social responsibility, Keurig is committed to using the power of business to brew a better world through their work to build resilient supply chains, sustainable products, and thriving communities. Casella Waste Systems provides a vast array of waste and recycling services to customers in over 40 states. Recycling, collection, organics, energy, landfills, professional services and sustainability form the foundation for providing service to Casella’s customers. These two companies have come together to develop a partnership to innovate creative solutions to the sustainability challenges of single serve coffee.

This year, two students are working alongside Keurig Green Mountain & Casella Waste Systems in order to examine the “what” and “how” for a responsible product launch of compostable coffee pods. There is a delicate balance between product and packaging innovation, and infrastructure development to accommodate re-use. Compostable packaging is an example of innovation that does not yet enjoy robust infrastructure to process and breakdown material for next use. This practicum will focus on examining the current compostable packaging landscape as it exists today, as well as the technology and infrastructure being developed in the near future. Additionally, students will research the consumer market and draft consumer and community acceptance proposals in order to give recommendations for the product position in the United States.

Cotel, 2017
Sustainable Business Pitch for World Challenges Course at UVM
Group Project by Lauren Emenaker, Liz Ford, Robert Hacker and Ilir Hass

Across the world each year tourists take over 1 billion trips into foreign countries. This number has been on the rise for some time. But once we drill down to look at emerging economies, we can see that rate of growth over the last decade-plus is actually three times that of advanced economies. The big takeaway is that there are huge business opportunities in tourism especially in the developing world.

The people in these communities have the largest stake in what’s happening there and the most local knowledge, but they aren’t being invited to the party. There’s little chance for them to do it themselves because access to large amounts of capital and green technology are limited. So much potential for benefit from tourism but no real path forward.

All of this got us thinking about how international travel destinations, specifically hotels, are a prime candidate for a fundamental disruption. Why not partnerships between communities who want to have a say in their own future with established companies who want a place to foment and capture new ideas to better serve more of humanity – and access emerging markets at the same time? Shared projects and even shared space – like hotels – could provide the vehicle for this kind of creative fusion. 

Enter the Cotel. We aren’t just trying to create a green, socially-conscious hotel chain, we want to create an entirely new platform for shared growth – so different from the status quo that it needs a new term other than hotel. Cotel – part green tourist destination, part shared community space, part business incubator.  Cotel as in community, cooperation, co-creation. Our mission is to build travel destinations from the ground up by working with local communities, sourcing local, sustainable products and providing social benefits.

We believe it is time to disrupt the tourism sector, and hotels are just the first step. Cotel introduces a win-win-win situation for local communities, the environment and the tourism industry.

Cotel. The next generation of hotels that are truly sustainable. Community minded, locally supported and sustainably developed.