Aldi

• HOUSTON, Feb. 21, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Whitestone REIT (NYSE:WSR) (“Whitestone” or the “Company”) today announced the acquisition of the grocery-anchored Garden Oaks Shopping Center in Houston.
• “Garden Oaks property values are up nearly 50% since 2019, and the area is poised to continue with very strong growth as young professionals settle beyond the Heights area and take advantage of the larger plots and tree-lined streets in Garden Oaks,” said Whitestone REIT COO, Christine Mastandrea.
• Since the third quarter of 2022, Whitestone has acquired four high quality shopping centers, including Lake Woodlands Crossing , Dana Park Pad and Arcadia Towne Center .
• “We are very pleased to add the Garden Oaks Shopping Center, which serves young, family-oriented professionals that live in the surrounding Garden Oaks Neighborhoods, to our portfolio.

• After the memorable collapse of Australia’s largest soft plastic recycling program REDcycle in late 2022, a new scheme is emerging.
• The trial underway in 12 Melbourne supermarkets intends, once again, to provide customers with an in-store option for recycling “scrunchable” food packaging.
• Read more:
  REDcycle's collapse is more proof that plastic recycling is a broken system

What do we know about the new scheme?

• The taskforce is a coalition of the three major supermarkets: Woolworths, Coles and Aldi.
• The taskforce assumed responsibility for roughly 11,000 tonnes of soft plastic, formerly managed by REDcycle, across 44 locations across Australia.
• Much like the original REDcycle scheme, the new small-scale trial in Victoria has identified several potential end markets for used soft plastic.

Why are soft plastics so difficult to recycle?

• There’s also less demand for recycled soft plastics, compared to other plastics.
• Many manufacturers prefer using brand new or “virgin” plastics or recycled rigid plastics instead, such as recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET), leaving limited avenues for recycled soft plastics to find new uses.
• Soft plastics can get tangled or stuck in machinery at recycling or waste-processing facilities, causing inefficiencies and disruptions in the process.

Finding local solutions

• So local, decentralised, small-scale recycling or reprocessing infrastructure is the way to go.
• We need to encourage individuals to participate actively in recycling efforts, and foster local businesses focused on resource recovery.
• To this end, we are currently exploring innovative enterprise-based recycling solutions in remote First Nations communities in Queensland.

The high cost of cheap packaging

• This has made them popular choices for packaging.
• Recycling soft plastic packaging does face numerous obstacles.
• These stem from complex composition, contamination risks, sorting and processing challenges, scarce recycling infrastructure and limited demand for the end product.
• Read more:
  We need a global treaty to solve plastic pollution – acid rain and ozone depletion show us why

Anya Phelan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• In this inaugural RPI for Leadership in Personalization, dunnhumby found that Amazon stands apart from all other retailers followed by H-E-B in second and Kroger rounding out the top three.
• “The goal of this report is to help retailers improve personalization as a whole – the way customers define it.
• The PRPI includes 65 of the largest grocery retailers in the industry that sell everyday food and non-food household.
• Retailers included in the RPI that are interested in receiving their individual banner profiles can speak with their dunnhumby account executive or contact dunnhumby at: https://www.go.dunnhumby.com/personalization-deep-dives .

• McCann Worldgroup Europe Awarded Agency Network of the Year at Effie,
  NEW YORK, Dec. 8, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- McCann Worldgroup is closing the year with strong creative momentum, having been named 2023 Network of the Year by the Epica Awards, the sixth time the network has been awarded this coveted distinction in the last seven years and the latest in a string of top industry honors, including 2023 Effie Europe Agency Network of the Year and Agency of the Year at the Campaign US BIG Awards for McCann New York.
• The network also won 5 Gold, 10 Silver, and 11 Bronze awards across its agencies.
• Prasoon Joshi, CEO & CCO at McCann Worldgroup India and Chairman, Asia Pacific, was named Southeast Asia Creative Leader of the Year.
• McCann Worldgroup Global CEO Daryl Lee concluded, "We are incredibly proud to see the enduring success of McCann Worldgroup in winning, year after year, the awards that recognize groundbreaking creative work that activates all the flavors of creativity in the world.