Hello everyone!
Hope you are ok! I am so pleased that more and more people are reading this blog. As I said a couple of weeks a go I have some more exciting posts in the pipeline so please stay tuned.
Hope everyone is ok.
TerraCycle.
With all the best intentions, sometimes recycling can be difficult. Different rules and regulations in different counties. What do all the letters and numbers actually mean?
Don’t feel silly. I remember living away from home and just staring at the pack of plastic packaging and not knowing where on earth to put it! Knowing it probably wouldn’t be wise to ring home and ask!
Also, quite a lot of people think that recycling is solely related to food and drink packaging. But what about, pens, contact lenses, beauty products, blister plasters…where on earth does all of that go? Chances are, and I am guilty of this – they will just go into the bin – landfill – incinerator – doom. Oh, the guilt! Oh, the shame!
However, after doing some research, I came across a company called TerraCycle. And boy is it a breath of fresh air.
TerraCycle offers free recycling programmes which are funded by various well known ‘brands, manufacturers and retailers around the world.’ Such as L’Occitane and The Body Shop etc.
On their website (I’ll link it further down) they state that:
‘To date, over 202 million people are collecting in 21 countries and have collected billions of pieces of waste, raising over 44 million dollars for charities around the world.’
TerraCycle
Background.
TerraCycle was founded in 2001 by Princeton student Tom Szaky, who wanted to make more materials, mainly the hard to recycle ones and repurposing them! TerraCycle now has an impressive presence across the globe, with 60 million people involved!
In 2019 they launched Loop in the US and France, named because it is a circular shopping delivery service, where some well-loved brands are delivered in reusable packaging, which is then collected, and reused to send back out to customers.
How good is that?! They even provide manufactural and laboratory waste recycling as well. Something that many of us probably don’t even contemplate.
‘TerraCycle reuses, upcycles and recycles waste instead of incinerating or landfilling it. This moves waste from a linear system to a circular one, allowing it to keep cycling in our economy.’
TerraCycle
Many eco-conscious (and well known) brands take part in this fabulous scheme.
Here are just a few:
- Ella’s Kitchen
- ACUVUE® Contact Lens (for contact lenses and blister packs)
- Lenor/Flash/Febreeze/Fairy/Ariel
- Baylis and Harding
- The Beach Plastic Recycling Programme
- Burt’s Bees and Burt’s Bees wipes
- The Carex® Recycling Programme
- The L’Occitane® Recycling Programme
- The Writing Instruments Recycling Programme
- And many more!
There really are so many more. I would really urge you to have a look and even take part.
Some participating brands have collection points in selected stores across the country, and are free to use. Some brands also offer the incentive of a discount on products when you recycle your stuff at their drop off point. You don’t have to hand in empties from just one brand, you can recycle any brand. Drop off points can be found on the TerraCycle website, along with advice.
TerraCycle also offer other programmes apart from the ‘Free Recycling Programme’; they offer ‘Zero Waste Boxes’ which come in 3 different sizes for products that aren’t supported by the free schemes or ‘normal’ household recycling. These have to be paid for and there are multiple types of boxes for various materials. I think these would be great for an eco-conscious community (that should be all communities, right?) and offices or workplaces. They even offer a no separation box, just to make things easier for us! All you have to do is to choose the type and size of box you want, use it, arrange UPS to deliver it back to TerraCycle – but don’t worry – shipping is included in the cost.
There is so much more that I could talk about on TerraCycle, they really are innovative and I hope they become more popular as it really is an important and simple way to benefit the environment and the planet.
To learn more about TerraCycle yourself, I will leave the link to their website here.
If you are inspired to reboot your recycling game, go for it. If you make mistakes along the way, just learn from them, every little helps after all. Perhaps make some swaps in your lifestyle. Even the smallest of changes you make will make a massive difference in the long run. And you’ll be surprised how quickly they become second nature.
Charlotte xoxo
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