Our Story
Since the very first days of Ricante, the true meaning of being a Sustainable Brand seemed impossible. What is really being sustainable anyway?

You can start out with the best intentions: collecting and reusing bottles, limiting packaging and plastics. But what about growth? How do you manage the carbon created from all the shipping in and out of a small country like Costa Rica? The inability to compete globally with companies in locations with far more access to sustainable materials? 

Fast Forward a decade and containers are being shipped monthly to the USA and thousands of units being are consumed globally, how does one handle this offset?
Striving for sustainability has always felt to me like a never-ending circle of solutions met with new issues. Like Newtons Law - energy in and energy out. Then, in 2016, a lightbulb of a solution presented itself, not through tech but through an idea, a message really.

Again and again, it came up conversations and ran through my mind.

What Makes You Happy?

Costa Rica Makes Me Happy, I replied every time. And so it began. I went hard into developing how this positive message could represent a movement of change in our process. Once Costa Rica Makes Me Happy (CRMMH) was realized, I had to ask, How do I make Costa Rica Happy with Me? The answer was to make CRMMH the body that helps Ricante find that sustainable space as a brand, and more so, for our soul. 

When I first learned the term, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), I thought, that’s exactly what CRMMH is for Ricante. An EPR is the long-term commitment a producer makes to offsetting their environmental footprint. In this case the producer is Ricante.

Here’s what Ricante does as part of its EPR, via Costa Rica Makes Me Happy:

• CRMMH partners with CRDC Global and Pedregal in Costa Rica on a mission to collect and process 100% of plastics countrywide.

• CRMMH provides logistics services so communities can plug into a program that collects 100% of their PLASTICS in 1 bag: The Bag That Builds.
  
  
• This program will now allow relief for our local landfill of over 500,000 kilos of plastics annually…and that just to start!

• These plastics are processed in an oxygen free environment, meaning zero carbon omissions, and turned into RESIN8, which is then mixed into concrete products that will be used in everything and anything built in Costa Rica: from local roads to office buildings and residential homes.

• CRMMH can use these Eco Blocks to builds homes we donate to the local community though our “Green Homes” projects.

 

CRMMH estimates that they will collect and process over 100,000 kilos of plastics monthly and that’s just to start. By 2023 the program should see an excess of 1 million kilos of plastics removed from the garbage supply chain and properly disposed of! We are amped to be part of a program where our commitment means we can offer future generations the opportunity to live in a cleaner environment as well as a roadmap to future sustainability success. (I LOVE THIS!)

Ricante’s creation of CRMMH and ongoing support is the pure definition of EPR. An impossible goal of Packaging Neutrality now is a reality.

We here at Ricante thrive on bending reality and it is done through what we call Pura Vida!
What’s your Pura Vida?!

Sincerely,
Royce Familia Ricante