For the past 20+ years, recycling has been available in most municipalities in Canada. It would appear that in that time, recycling would be a straight forward business where all recyclable materials are being recycled.  Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Recycling of materials varies from municipality to municipality and from region to region. Large cities and metropolitans tend to have a better recycling program as oppose to suburban or rural areas. In many rural areas all recycling materials need to be dropped off at a local recycling drop-off stations. Needless to say, this greatly reduces the success of recycling. Other factors influencing recycling success rates are understanding of what materials are acceptable, how to prepare and sort items and the most importantly, having access to affordable recycling programs. Many waste management companies and smaller recyclers offer various programs in urban and suburban areas. Yet much of the waste makes it into our streets, forests and waterways.  The oceans are littered with cigarette butts, plastic bottles, plastic bags and other plastic items that are recyclable, but not recycled. According to Statistics Canada, in 2010 only 32% of our waste was recycled. To fill the gap in our recycling system,  Terracycle has launched its new program ZeroWaste boxes. They offer recycling options for hard-to-recycle materials such as plastic packaging, styrofoam products, household and cleaning items, beauty products, pet food bags, lunch room waste and much more. The boxes are an affordable solution for businesses that may not have large quantities of waste, yet want to recycle as much as possible. At NewSpring Energy, we have been using ZeroWaste boxes for plastic packaging since the summer. It has been astonishing how much plastic we have collected in those few months. Plastic wraps, styrofoam packaging, shrink wrap, food packaging, plastic bags, styrofoam containers, milk bags and more. It showed us just how difficult it is to avoid all that plastic. With TerraCycle ZeroWaste box program,  we have diverted from landfill 3.8 ft3 of plastic packaging waste to day. We are committed to reducing waste and recycle as much as possible.