How Nespresso and On Turn Recycling Into Retention

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Good morning,

Eight in ten Americans say recycling is worth the effort.

Yet more than half of household recyclables still end up in the trash.

The gap is convenience. Today, we look at how Pela, Nespresso and On remove that friction while creating another reason for customers to return.

Today:
We break down how brands turn recycling into retention, build a Shopify app that audits AI shopping readiness, examine Barry Hott’s $800K CBO campaign and review five recent returns.

The Recycling Partnership surveyed more than 10,000 Americans and found:

People are willing. The system makes acting difficult.

Most brands tell customers that a product is recyclable, then leave them to work out where to take it, how to package it and what happens next.

Pela, Nespresso and On build that journey for them.

Every new Pela case arrives in a reusable envelope.

Customers place their old Pela case or conventional plastic case inside, add postage and mail it back. Pela then upcycles or recycles it.

The replacement creates the return path for the old product.

Customers can add a free pre-labelled UPS recycling bag to their Nespresso order.

They fill it with used capsules and drop it at a collection point.

Recycling becomes part of a purchase customers already make regularly.

On accepts pre-loved gear, inspects it and grades its condition.

Products that qualify are prepared for resale. The rest can be donated or recycled.

Customers only need to return the product. On decides its best next use.

Do not stop at telling customers that your product can be recycled, returned or resold.

Build the return journey:

A well-designed take-back programm reduces waste, recovers value and turns the end of one product into the beginning of the next customer interaction.

Engagement is easy to mistake for pipeline. On Sep 30, watch how a founder turns LinkedIn content into real outreach. Live. You'll walk away with a repeatable system: what to post, who to reach out to, and how to sequence it. 

Eligible startups also get the LinkedIn-to-Leads Toolkit: ad credits, Apollo, Captions, and HubSpot's Prospecting Agent.

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The How-To

I shopping tools cannot recommend what they cannot clearly understand.

Your products might be live, available and perfectly clear to a human. But vague descriptions, missing attributes and confusing variants can leave AI without enough information to confidently match them to a shopper.

We built an internal Shopify app to find those gaps.

It reviewed the catalogue and gave every product an AI Shopping Readiness Score based on:

Our average score was 52 out of 100. Not one product was ready, and 22 were marked as high priority.

The dashboard shows which products need attention and the information most commonly missing across the catalogue.

Clicking Review opens the full diagnosis.

You can see what passed, what failed and the evidence behind every point.

More importantly, it turns a vague instruction like “improve your product data” into a precise list of fields to fix.

The score does not guarantee that a product will appear in an AI shopping result. It shows whether your catalogue provides enough clear, structured information for AI to understand the product.

AI Launch Codes members get the master prompt we used to build this app inside Shopify. Copy it, run it and audit your entire catalogue in minutes.

Shoppers Want AI Advice, but Still Want to Make the Purchase

Consumers are using AI to find products and deals, but remain reluctant to let it complete purchases for them. Product discovery may move into AI faster than customer trust does.

Shopify Makes Store Experiments Easier to Control

Shopify’s updated Rollouts tool lets merchants combine changes across themes, checkout and customer accounts, then control timing and traffic allocation. Brands can now test larger customer-journey changes without exposing every visitor at once.

Barry Hott has spent more than $1 billion on ads, so when he shares a rare look inside an $800,000 CBO campaign, it is worth paying attention.

His point is powerful: an ad with a high CPA today may have performed before, may contribute elsewhere in the journey and may cost nothing when Meta stops allocating spend to it. The full thread is long, but well worth the read.

Open five recent returns and write down the reason behind each one.

Do not stop at “wrong size” or “not as expected.” Find what the customer misunderstood before buying.

Why this works:

Your rep:

Report: “One return reason removed.”

Every prevented return protects the sale and the customer relationship.