TERRACYCLE NEWS
ELIMINATING THE IDEA OF WASTE®
Earth Day, Every Day
Today is National Earth Day! What a remarkable place we get to call home, but with so many challenges facing our big, beautiful planet, we need to do our part to protect it. Here at Yorkdale we are committed to sustainability through our recycling program, green rooftop, solar panels, bee adoption program and many other initiatives to try to reduce our footprint. 
Cannabis Packaging Recycling Programs
Tweed x TerraCycle Launched a Canada-Wide Recycling Program
Canada's first country-wide Cannabis Packaging Recycling Program is launching thanks to cannabis brand Tweed and TerraCycle, a company that works with hard-to-recycle materials. While the recycling program has been available to consumers in select stores and provinces prior to this point, this initiative is now rolling out across Canada. To divert a variety of cannabis product packaging from landfills, the recycling program will allow for the many containers, tubes and packages from this legal new industry to be collected and potentially even upcycled into other products. The Tweed x TerraCycle Cannabis Packaging Recycling Program accepts all cannabis containers from all licensed producers like tins, plastic bags, tubes and even items like bottles with child-proof caps, which are ordinarily tough to recycle. On its drop-off boxes, Tweed makes a note about cannabis packaging, clarifying that it "Doesn't matter if you got it from another brand, we happily recycle it all."REAL Deal in Smiths Falls can help you recycle your dead pens
Everyone has them: dead pens and markers lying in the bottom of your desk drawer like a sad literary graveyard.
And as a writer, I've got more than my fair share of used writing instruments. I didn’t know what to do with them, until now.
The REAL Deal Reuse Store allows you to drop off your used pens and pen caps, mechanical pencils, markers and marker caps, permanent markets and permanent market caps, highlighters and highlighter caps. REAL then delivers them to Staples, which runs a recycling program out of their store in partnership with waste management company, TerraCycle.
The two companies have partnered up in an effort to provide a second life for used writing instruments. Once collected, they're separated by material composition and then are cleaned, shredded, and made into new recycled products. Through the in-store collections across Canada, over two million writing instruments have been diverted from landfills.
Looking for ways to recycle household waste that isn't available through recycling programs offered through our municipalities has become really important to me. Lately, I've become more and more critical of things I'm throwing in the trash. Before, I wouldn't have thought twice about tossing another dead pen in the garbage.
Now, I've got an alternative. Although the pen recycling program isn't run by REAL, president Barb Hicks, said offering to collect the items at the reuse store, an effort that started last fall, helps make recycling the items more accessible for everyone.
Hicks said it's a small thing, but recycling them instead of throwing them out can make a difference.
I've now got a box for people in our newsroom to put their dead pens in. I've committed to disposing of them through this recycling program. It'll be interesting how many pens, pencils, highlighters and markers we can divert from the landfill over the next couple of years.
To find out more about products REAL can help you recycle, visit: https://www.realaction.These Eco-Conscious Brands Deserve Some Recognition
From sustainably-sourced ingredients to carbon neutral initiatives, these brands are helping offset their environmental impact.
Weleda
Each year, 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in our oceans, and according to a 2017 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, only 9 percent of plastic actually ends up being recycled. To make it easier for consumers, Weleda has partnered with TerraCycle on a free recycling program for their Skin Food line. “Preserving the balance between what we take from nature with what we give back is our core value,” says Rob Keen, CEO of Weleda North America, via press release. “This respect for nature is in our DNA and it guides everything we do – from our innovative biodynamic farming practices that actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere, to our manufacturing facilities in France, Germany and Switzerland that use energy from 100% renewable sources. We also employ thoughtful ingredient sourcing and ethical partnerships that protect the life energy and potency of our products. Now we are teaming up with TerraCycle to ensure that our recently launched Skin Food packaging has every opportunity to be recycled.” TerraCycle will collect empty packaging from the Skin Food line of products where it’s then cleaned and melted into hard plastic that can be remolded into new recycled products. Full details about how to participate can be found at terracycle.ca.Dia Mundial da Terra: conscientização da importância da preservação do meio ambiente
O Dia Mundial da Terra, comemorado hoje, 22 de abril, representa a luta pela defesa do meio ambiente e o incentivo à reflexão sobre a importância da conservação dos recursos do planeta. Como a sustentabilidade é um de seus pilares estratégicos, a 3M realiza ações para conscientizar a população sobre a importância da preservação ambiental.
NEW IN FROM L’OCCITANE IN MAY: FACE MASKS AND A BRAND NEW LIP COLLECTION
Every year, millions of beauty and skincare packaging end up in dumpsters and landfills. They are working with TerraCycle® to put an end to this enormous loss of resources. Participating is completely free and very easy:
7 Influential People on Environmental Advocacy in the Beauty Industry
Our environmental crises might conjure the seventh circle of hell, but a group of trailblazers may just help lead us (and, yes, our beauty routines) to eco-redemption.
The Visionary
Rhandi Goodman, TerraCycle Because everything can be recycled. You can’t commit to loving the climate without three crucial words: mixed-material objects. We’re talking about things like lotion pumps made of both plastic and metal coils. Collecting and sorting these materials costs more than the items themselves. So TerraCycle takes objects that cannot be categorized into a standard sorting bin (toothbrushes) or even things normally tossed in the garbage (cigarette butts, candy wrappers) and makes it happen. “When we think about recycling,” says Rhandi Goodman, the global vice president of Zero Waste at TerraCycle in Trenton, New Jersey, “most people just think of what they collect curbside. In reality, everything can be recycled; it’s just a matter of being able to sort and separate. At TerraCycle, we have a team of scientists to develop the recycling process for these items.” Step one: providing packaging recycling for companies (some of them beauty brands) that use mixed materials. Two: showing them how to use sustainable materials in their products. Three: achieving zero waste through a new program called Loop that refills existing durable packaging. For instance, TerraCycle worked with Bausch + Lomb to implement a recycling program for its contact lenses and blister packs. Admittedly, this process is expensive. But companies who have joined TerraCycle (40,000 and growing) have worked not just to make their own products recyclable but also to fund their categories. “Our national free recycling program is funded by major brands and allows consumers to collect and send their waste to TerraCycle for recycling at no cost to the consumer,” says Goodman.Living green: what it takes to be a master recycler
Note: This story appears in the Sunday, April 21 newspaper on Page A1.
Do you ever feel like you have too much stuff?
That is a common feeling. Another is the dread of cleaning out the items, and for those with an environmentally-conscious mindset, figuring out where those items are going can be just as stressful.
Aubrei Krummert, owner of the Athens business Real World Organizing, has made her job one where she can be as environmentally conscious and “green” as possible. Krummert is a professional organizer, in the same vein as pop-culture icon Marie Kondo, but Krummert’s philosophy is less focused on minimalism and more geared toward functionality. One of the defining parts of her business is how concerned she remains about the future of the items she removes from clients’ homes.
Because of that, Krummert has become an expert on local ways to recycle or donate almost anything a home would have, and has found numerous ways to divert even the smallest items from landfills. A stray screw? She’ll hold onto that for ReUse Industries. Fraying T-shirts? She’ll drop a bunch off at Goodwill, which recycles fabrics. Even old beauty products are gathered in a big box and shipped off to TerraCycle, a company that offers recycling solutions for almost anything.
In Krummert’s world, everything has a meaningful purpose that allows it to be changed into something new and useful.
Krummert first was introduced to professional organizing seven years ago, and immediately took an interest. Sometimes, she said, her work is just about the material items. Usually, though, the removal of items and organizing of clients’ homes resonates with something deeper than that. Krummert says she starts her consultations by asking about the mindset and emotional status of her clients.
“Because if someone is totally preoccupied with something else in their head, be it major or minor, then I’d rather know that so I know how to deal with their stuff and them, because it’s very personal,” she explained. “It has everything to do with peoples’ lifestyle habits and routines.”
Once she knows what items are leaving and what are staying, that’s when her work as a “master recycler” begins. She works with the Athens-Hocking Recycling Centers, ReStore, Athens MakerSpace and many other organizations (on a local and national level) to ensure that she is discarding items as responsibly as possible. She says the educational component of recycling is one of the reasons why it can seem so prohibitive to begin.
“People want to be green — they do. But the education component of being green is highly misleading. The education component nationwide is something the recycling industries has not done well at,” she said. “As a business owner, I feel the responsibility to take advantage of it, and I see the opportunity and feel the need for it.”
Krummert’s house, where she bases Real World Organizing, reflects that undertaking. In her garage, one wall is dedicated to the sorting of various items that will later be transported for recycling, reuse and more. Of course, she’s not perfect and some items do go to the landfill, but as Krummert said, “once you know, you can’t un-know.”
Recycling, native plantings help the planet
Tara Witherow, of Davenport, plants native coreopsis and purple coneflowers in her front yard, saying a green lawn is "just a waste" because it provides nothing for birds or insects.
Rod Saelens, of Fyre Lake, Illinois, gives money to Planned Parenthood because he considers overpopulation as the globe's biggest challenge.
Sandy Stanely, of Muscatine, is board president of Clean Air Muscatine, a nonprofit group organized in 2011 to prod Grain Processing Co. to stop polluting the city's air with particulate matter and sulfur dioxide.
These are the stories of four of the 20-25 Quad-City area residents who showed up March 25 at a gathering of environmentally minded people at a Davenport restaurant.
The event was organized by members of Progressive Action for the Common Good, a nonprofit that aims to educate, engage and empower for the common good. But the goal was to launch a different, informal group called Green Drinks.
The aim of Green Drinks is to bring together like-minded people to share interests and socialize. It is targeted at people who work in environmental fields, but anyone interested is welcome. The first group was organized in London in 1989.
Climate change was high on the minds of everyone at the Davenport meeting, but participants also had personal stories — things they're worried about, things they're doing in their own lives.
In celebration of the 49th observance of Earth Day, here are their stories.
Karen Neder, passionate recycler
Neder got started on her recycling path in 2007 when she joined an Earth Keepers group at Trinity Lutheran Church, Moline. The group was to figure out ways the congregation could be more environmentally responsible.
Going online, Neder located TerraCycle, a private U.S. recycling business headquartered in Trenton, New Jersey. According to its website, it collects what is essentially non-recyclable waste and partners with corporate donors to turn it into raw material to be used in new products.
There's even a rebate program in which recycling can be a fundraiser.
One of the items Neder recycles is chip bags, the foil-lined containers in which Fritos or similar snacks are packaged. Forty pounds is the minimum amount accepted for credit; the last time Neder sent in a shipment, she had 54 pounds.
"That is a lot of snack bags," she said. "And you have to have a gigantic box. I went to Menards and got a refrigerator box." For her efforts, she received two cents per bag, or $84.
Neder has her pastor's enthusiastic blessing, and he has given her a room in the church complex in which to collect, sort and box her recyclables. (She previously did everything at home.) The church has sorting parties once a month.
By now Neder has expanded her reach beyond TerraCycle, thanks to ferreting out programs on the internet for glue sticks, crayons, blue jeans, floppy discs, old sports trophies ... all sorts of things.
She speaks to various groups to spread the word and is heartened by the support she is getting.
"Over the last year, this program has taken off like you wouldn't believe," she said.
Ultimately, though, society's goal should be to slash its dependence on plastic, which is infecting every place on earth, including the human body.
"Plastic never ever goes away," Neder said. "Every single bit that has ever been made is still on the planet. You can't recycle it, you can only downcycle... I think of our oceans, the garbage in our oceans, whales filled with garbage."
To reduce her own use of plastic, she has adopted a habit that she recommends to others of always carrying with her a reusable straw, at least two reusable bags and a reusable drinking container.
That way, one can turn down single-use plastic straws and bags and when buying a beverage, can ask to have it poured into your own reusable container rather than a single-use cup.
Neder also keeps a container in her car trunk to take with her into restaurants in case she has leftover food.
"The hardest part is remembering," she said.