Ben Grossman is unequivocal about protecting the environment.

“We all share one planet, and we have finite resources,” says the co-president of the Somerville, MA-based distributor Grossman Marketing Group (asi/215205). The 42-year-old father of three has been blogging about sustainability for close to 15 years. When he began writing about the topic, there was lots of debate about the veracity of climate change. In recent years, however, the conversation has shifted. “It’s been so obvious,” he says, “that [climate change is] a fact, that the temperature on the earth is rising, that we need to produce less waste and generate less carbon emissions.”

Ben Grossman is the founder of SwagCycle, an outgrowth of Grossman Marketing Group (asi/215205), where Grossman is co-president.

So, in 2019, Grossman and his team decided to do something concrete to lessen the promo industry’s impact by keeping unused and unusable promotional products out of landfills. Building on the infrastructure created at Grossman Marketing Group – which has acquired eight companies in the last nine years and counts household names like the Boston Celtics and Harvard University among its clients – they launched SwagCycle. The initiative allows brands and other promo companies to recycle or repurpose unwanted promo products, often connecting companies with worthy charitable causes. “We wanted to make it really simple for a company to divest of their obsolete items in either a philanthropic or environ­mentally friendly way,” Grossman says. “We wanted to remove the friction from the process.”

So far, so good. By the end of 2021, SwagCycle managed to keep more than 776,000 items out of landfills, and the platform has facilitated a cumulative $2.12 million in charitable donations.

A particular point of pride for Grossman and his team is the work SwagCycle has done with YMCA International Services in Houston. The YMCA was helping to resettle refugee families from Afghanistan who came to the U.S. with little more than their special immigrant visas. SwagCycle put out a call to its network, facilitating around 20 corporate donations of apparel, bags, drinkware and other goods. “We reached out to SwagCycle to seek high-quality product donations, and we’ve been blown away by their support and care,” says Sharon Friedman of the Houston YMCA.

Another highlight from 2021 includes facilitating a donation of Moleskine notebooks from a large tech company to Dress for Success in Boston to assist its women’s professional networking program. “It’s been a real honor to be able to help deliver high-quality items to these women and to treat them with the dignity and respect that they deserve,” Grossman says.

When products can’t be donated, SwagCycle will instead figure out how to recycle them. For instance, a home healthcare organization in Nebraska wanted to responsibly dispose of old garments from field staff after a corporate rebrand, however due to patient security concerns, the items couldn’t be donated. Instead, some of the obsolete apparel became painter’s rags while other shirts were shredded and recycled back into yarn.

SwagCycle has also started branching out beyond the U.S. Earlier this year, the platform facilitated several significant donations in Europe, collecting high-quality goods to help Ukrainian refugees resettle.

SwagCycle facilitated the donation of merchandise giftbags to the YMCA International Services in Houston, which was working to resettle families from Afghanistan and had an urgent need for clothing and other items, such as water bottles, bags and drinkware.

Going forward, Grossman says his goal is to expand the footprint of its charitable donations, particularly by building out its “bespoke waste management” capabilities to help underwrite those donations. SwagCycle doesn’t charge fees for charitable donation facilitation other than shipping costs to get the goods from the donor to recipient, and if the donor coordinates the shipment, no money exchanges between the donor and SwagCycle. It does charge a fee for recycling and waste management services.

Grossman also hopes SwagCycle can act as an example and partner for the rest of the promo industry. “We view SwagCycle as almost an enabling technology for other distributors,” he says, “where they can turn to us when they need our support and keep our capabilities in their sustainability toolbox.”