The Halifax Wire      21 Jul 2021        CONTRIBUTED Halifax’s Anchor Dental is committing to helping the environment with the installation of Safety Equipment and Protective Gear Zero Waste Boxes. They are in partnership with TerraCycle®. When the staff at Anchor Dental noticed the amount of personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks, gloves and disinfectant wipes that were entering landfills, they decided to help. After partnering with TerraCycle® to employ a Safety Equipment and Protective Gear Zero Waste Box in their office, Anchor Dental is now providing an easy way for staff to recycle used masks, gloves and disinfectant wipes. With TerraCycle’s special waste box placed conveniently inside the office, staff can divert this waste from landfills.

Especially in the wake of COVID-19, the planet needs protection from the surge of improperly discarded PPE that is leaking into marine environments and posing serious hazards to ocean wildlife. TerraCycle, focusing in the collection and repurposing of complex waste streams, created the Zero Waste Box program to provide solutions for difficult-to-recycle waste that cannot be recycled through the company’s brandsponsored,

national recycling programs or standard municipal recycling. When customers return a Safety Equipment and Protective Gear Zero Waste Box for recycling, it’s received at a regional TerraCycle warehouse where the waste is manually sorted by material type. The individual waste streams are sent to third party specialty subcontracting facilities for mechanical processing. After undergoing mechanical processing, the resulting material can be remolded into a variety of new products such as plastic shipping pallets, railroad ties or outdoor furniture. Before its partnership with TerraCycle, Anchor Dental was - and continues to be recycling all used plastic air/ water syringe tips and suction tips through local municipalities. "If we are not going to recycle these items, we are not setting the correct example. If we can reduce these items in the waste stream, then we are better corporate citizens. It’s that simple. You need to do what you can,” Dr. Ken Rhodenizer, DDS at Anchor Dental, said in a press release. More information about Anchor Dental can be found at www.anchordental.ca/. More details on TerraCycle is at www.TerraCycle.ca.

Harmonizing his professional life with his personal values, this is what drove Mayer Vafi to co-found Better Narrative in 2018. He was then Creative and Business Director within the Pajar clothing brand, and roamed the globe in search of duvets and other furs for the manufacture of coats. An antithetical situation for this follower of veganism, which pushed him finally to leave behind a brilliant career of 15 years. " The challenge was to continue working in technical clothing, but with better practices, " he says. A reflection that, beyond veganism, led him to explore the principles of circular economy.   From there was born Norden , a brand of vegan clothing and accessories, made of polyester from recycled plastic bottles. " Compared to ordinary clothing, the use of this yarn in the manufacturing process can consume 45% less energy, 20% less water and emit 30% less GHG."Focusing on transparency, the choice of the wire manufacturer was on Repreve, American recycling company that has developed two technologies traceability of its product. The first, FiberPrint, prints on the wire a serial number to know the source and the number of bottles used for making a garment. The second, UTrust, verifies the actual use of the yarn in the finished product, thus discouraging misleading advertising.   More broadly, Better Narrative's ambition is to complete the life cycle loop of its products. The company offers a coats recovery program at least two years after purchase in exchange for a discount on the next purchase. Returned coats are washed, repaired and sold at a reduced price or donated to a charity, such as Welcome Hall Mission. Otherwise, TerraCycle, in Ontario, upgrades defective clothing to make polyester yarn again. If the manufacture of coat components is currently done in China to ensure a certain volume and accessibility of the finished product at a reasonable price, the selected plant is certified WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Production Manager), thus ensuring a legal textile manufacturing , human and ethical ".   All these values have enabled Better Narrative to obtain PETA certification, guaranteeing vegan products, and to be in the process of being certified by B-Corp to supervise and validate its performances in sustainable development. Following last year's successful pre-launch with four retailers, Better Narrative is poised to officially launch its Norden Coat brand at 75 outlets in Canada, Germany. and in Japan. Raincoats, winter boots and school bags, all made from recycled materials, will complete the range of products in 2020. In the long term, Mayer Vafi intends to gather in Quebec all stages of the manufacturing process, recycling bottles recovered locally until the confection.

TerraCycle helps businesses recycle hard-to-recycle materials (2). We ran a pilot project in the Vancouver warehouse by filling a TerraCycle Zero Waste Box with used nitrile gloves instead of just throwing them out. The pilot was hugely successful. When the box was full (after a few rounds of our warehouse employees taking turns jumping in the box to pack it all down), it was sent back to TerraCycle where a unique process was carried out which hardened the glove material, enabling grinders to turn that material into a reusable powder.