In many ways, Top 40 supplier Garyline (asi/55990) is the perfect partner for Eco Promotional Products (asi/185797), a sustainability-minded distributor and certified B Corp that’s been around since 2008.

Garyline makes the majority of its reusable promotional products in the United States – right in its 300,000-square-foot factory in the Bronx – and the 60-year-old family business has been recycling since before it was cool, as part of a lean, mean manufacturing strategy that keeps it competitive with its counterparts overseas.

“As a USA manufacturer, we need to look for savings at every level to remain competitive,” says Scott Denny, vice president of sales and marketing. “We bring in plastic pellets, and we ship out sports bottles.  We can make as many as anyone can sell, but we cannot afford to waste materials. … If we make a bad sports bottle or lid, we’ll regrind and recycle the plastic - it’s pretty likely to turn into a fly swatter next spring, and if we make a mistake on a clipboard, the recycled content will be used for a license plate frame.”

Garyline offers this 32-oz. transparent water bottle (RNX32D) made from Tritan Renew, which includes at least 50% certified recycled content.

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In addition to all the post-industrial recycling, Garyline has also expanded into the rapidly expanding realm of post-consumer recycling: pulling single-use soda and water bottles from the waste stream, sanitizing and turning them into pellets, then molding them into reusable 100% recycled PET sports bottles. The supplier also offers reusable bottles made of the relatively new Tritan Renew – a clear, durable, BPA-free polyester made of at least 50% certified recycled content.

But there was one area where Garyline and Eco Promotional Products recently were at loggerheads: excess packaging.

“We’re always trying to reduce wasteful packaging that doesn’t have a purpose,” says Michelle Sheldon, owner of Eco Promotional Products and a member of ASI’s Promo for the Planet advisory board.

Her distributorship has a process it follows to reduce packaging, and one part is that if a product is being individually polybagged, the supplier notifies Eco Promotional Products so the distributor can either make alternative shipping arrangements or get permission from the client for the polybag to be used, according to Sheldon. But those requirements were causing friction on Garyline’s end.

Eco Promotional Products also took issue with Garyline’s use of plastic foam packaging, a material which isn’t biodegradable and tends to be difficult to recycle.

What could have devolved into a contentious, combative exchange instead became a productive, transformative collaboration between the two businesses. “We understand that there are costs involved, and one of the biggest things is changing a production-line process,” Sheldon says. “So, what we’re trying to provide education about is the bigger impact of this, and we’re sharing solutions that other suppliers are doing whenever possible. … I completely understand that it’s not easy, but when we keep talking about it and not just talking about the problem, but we offer solutions, it seems to be much better collaboration.”

After some experimentation, Denny says that Garyline has been able to implement some changes to its processes that everyone can live with – and in some cases, the new packing processes are actually saving the supplier some money. “We had a few products that were layer-packed with a thin foam sheet between each layer to protect the product in shipping,” Denny adds. “Eco Promotional Products asked us to remove the foam and replace it with paper. It was a really easy change, it’s environmentally friendly and it costs less for the paper.”

The supplier is also looking at its use of polybags. Garyline has eliminated individual polybags for most of its recycled products and has been testing whether using smaller and tighter cartons – rather than individual polybags – will allow items to ship without damaging an imprint, Denny notes.

Sheldon and the team at Eco Promotional Products say they’re gratified to see some real change as a result of the discussions. “We’ve had a very long relationship with Garyline,” she says. “I think they’re open to learning and adapting. … We have an active partnership and collaboration with someone who’s willing to hear what we have to say and do something about it.”

Denny, for his part, says it just makes sense for Garyline to heed even smaller customers like Eco Promotional Products: “I don’t know why more people don’t listen to distributors. They have good ideas. They talk to the customers; we don’t. Where are we going to get ideas, if not from them?”

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