What if packaging could be fully recovered, reused, and repurposed — seamlessly tracked, efficiently collected, and integrated into a circular system?

The waste crisis is escalating, and single-use packaging continues to pile up, while circular solutions struggle to scale. Despite ambitious sustainability goals, operational barriers, ineffective collection systems, and low consumer engagement are holding back real progress.

Traditional recycling and reuse models aren’t enough. We need smarter, scalable solutions that bridge the physical and digital worlds — optimizing reuse, refill, and collection with advanced tracking, intelligent materials, and seamless consumer participation.

We’re looking for innovative solutions that can reshape the future of packaging and waste management, making circularity not just possible, but the new standard.

For this theme, we’ve partnered with PepsiCo as our brand partner. They’ve played a key role in shaping the challenge statement with the goal of finding the right partner for a joint pilot to tackle critical collection challenges. A pilot with PepsiCo will be contingent on the applicability of the selected technologies to their operations.