Ink Cartridges

On average, 70 percent of used ink cartridges are thrown into landfills, where it will take over 1,000 years for them to decompose, according to tonerrecycle.net. "When something is tossed in the garbage and either landfilled or incinerated, the value of that material is lost forever," Lauren Taylor, the Global VP of Communications for TerraCycle, says. "When an object is recycled, it provides a more circular solution." Instead of letting those cartridges spend centuries in a landfill, look for recycling instructions on the cartridge's package. Staples will give you $3 off your next cartridge purchase for bringing in your used ones, and HP accepts old HP-brand cartridges via mail. Here are more simple ways to reduce waste—and save money.

Juice Pouches

Because most juice pouches are made of plastic polymer and aluminum, they unfortunately can't be recycled. You don't need to dump them, though. For every Honest Kids, Capri Sun, and Kool-Aid Drink pouch you send to TerraCycle, the company will donate 2 cents to the charity of your choice. (They provide free shipping, too!) What's more, your old juice pouches will get a second life as colorful purses, totes, and pencil cases, which are sold at Target and Walgreens stores throughout the U.S.

As part of the brand’s plan to Reduce, Recycle and React, L’OCCITANE en Provence has cut down on excessive holiday packaging. In a bid to minimise the amount of packaging materials, the company reduced its use of cardboard by 31 tonnes in this year’s Christmas range. With sensible sustainable thinking at its core, L’OCCITANE designed its collection of Christmas products and gift sets with the environment in mind. Using a new, micro-corrugated cardboard structure, the brand reduced the weight of its most popular holiday gift boxes by 20%, which led to an overall reduction of 22 tonnes of cardboard compared to last year. In addition, L’OCCITANE optimised the format of its gift boxes, cutting another 9 tonnes of cardboard without reducing the number of products they contain.   L’OCCITANE is also committed to ensuring all its wrapping paper is made from recycled and recyclable materials. The brand has never used plastic bags in its stores, using paper bags instead. Its gift ribbons are made of a new cellulose-based material which biodegrades within six months, whilst its silk paper is 100% recycled and FSC® certified. As part of its recycling efforts, L’OCCITANE partners with TerraCycle – a collection and recycling programme that specialises in hard-to-recycle packaging – to enable the upcycling of beauty products from any brand. Customers are able to easily recycle their empties at all participating L’OCCITANE boutiques. Currently, over 40% of L’OCCITANE’s 1,572 owned stores worldwide offer in-store recycling, and L’OCCITANE has pledged to expand that to 100% by 2025. Corinne Fugier-Garrel L’OCCITANE’s Director of Packaging Conception Development, "We are proud of what we have achieved so far, but we want to go much further. We are fundamentally rethinking our approach to packaging and products and sharing our expertise with other manufacturers to collectively shape a sustainable future."

Norden

The coats are beautiful, no doubt. But we also highlighted this Montreal-based brand because of the sustainable focus. Coats are made from recycled plastics. The plastics are transformed into a yarn which is then printed with FiberPrint®, a digital serial number that can calculate the number of bottles used in a single garment. The production of Norden outerwear consumes 45% less energy, 20% less water and gives off 30% less GHG emissions than virgin polyester. Which means you can feel good, while looking good. If you feel like you’ve outgrown your coat, Norden’s end-of-life program ensures that it’s repaired and resold or donated to someone in need. If the garment is damaged beyond repair, it will be sent to their partners at TerraCycle, where it will be 100% recycled.

In the current era, many initiatives are put forward to reduce pollution as much as possible. Concerned about its environment, the Toothbox also wants to be part of the change by adopting responsible behaviors as for the reduction of the waste. For example, the company recently joined the TerraCycle program, a world leader in recycling waste that is generally considered non-recyclable.   In fact, each of the Alma, Chicoutimi, Jonquière and Roberval branches is now equipped with a "Zero Waste" box for the recycling of oral care waste. The Toothbox therefore offers you to bring all your empty packaging of toothpaste tubes, your old toothbrushes, old prostheses, as well as floss containers. The boxes will then be sent to TerraCycle for waste management and processing.   About Terracycle  All the waste that would ordinarily be incinerated and sent to a landfill, TerraCycle recycles it and transcycle it. The program also aims to give new life to waste by creating new products that can be used with materials that would simply have ended up in the trash. As a result, a lot of waste is converted into plastic pellets that can be used to make benches, picnic tables and even playgrounds.    Recycle everything  All waste received is mechanically and manually separated into fiber categories (such as wood and film-coated paper), fabrics, metals, plastic and other materials. Subsequently, the resulting fibers will be hydrotransformed to separate the coatings, such as wax and plastic. Once the fibers are separated, they will be recycled into new paper products or composted if recycling is not feasible. The resulting plastics will be recycled into plastic polymers. Fabrics will be separated for reuse, recycling or upcycling. Flexible and rigid plastics undergo extrusion and granulation to mold into various recycled plastic products. Other materials, such as glass or rubbers, will be recycled appropriately for this category of waste.   This is an initiative that aims once again to make the world smile!   To learn more about the program, visit www.terracycle.com.  

  SARCAN currently doesn’t recycle used plastic containers obtained from licenced recreational cannabis stores in Saskatchewan. When cannabis was legalized, many consumers weren’t expecting to cope with more excessive plastic waste, especially after the hubbub over plastic bags and bottles filling landfills and water bodies. But in the era of post-legalization, plastic bottles, boxes and cartons have replaced baggies for cannabis purchases.   The plastic containers for cannabis are designed to manage this new government-controlled product. Manufacturers don’t have to follow specified regulations in regards to the materials they use for the containers, but they have to follow specific guidelines set by Health Canada and the Federal Cannabis Act. The containers must be opaque or semi-transparent. Also, cannabis containers in Canada must be unappealing to children and youth, be able to guard against contamination and the boxes should keep the products fresh.   Across Canada, most of the provinces and territories haven’t yet addressed the issue of recycling cannabis containers. In Ontario, packaging for cannabis can be recycled in curbside recycling programs, or at the province’s recycling depots. The polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) containers are recyclable at all depots in Ontario. But containers manufactured from low-density polyethylene are only accepted at certain facilities. Meanwhile, containers made from polypropylene aren’t taken for recycling at the majority of Ontario’s sites. Since cannabis products come in a variety of packaging, including sealed envelopes, plastic jars, tubes and boxes, consumers in Ontario are asked to check the bottoms of their containers for the appropriate codes before recycling.   In the rest of Canada, there are options whenever local recycling programs aren’t available in either the province or the community. Canopy Growth Corporation have arranged a container recycling program through Tweed – the manufacturer’s retail brand. The recycling program is administered by the New Jersey-based company, TerraCycle.   TerraCycle will accept containers from all licenced producers in Canada. The containers must originate from licenced producers – the packages themselves don’t have to be derived from companies affiliated with Canopy Growth. Individual consumers can even post their used containers to TerraCycle for recycling. TerraCycle and their subcontractors will take the containers, clean them, then melt the boxes into plastic pellets, allowing them to be refashioned and manufactured into different products, such as park benches.   Currently, some cannabis retail outfits in Saskatchewan and elsewhere in Canada have recycling boxes for TerraCycle in their stores, where used cannabis containers can be dropped off after they’re cleaned. Unlike deposit bottles and cans, used cannabis containers cannot be redeemed for cash at this time.

Legal pot can do a lot of things — entertain, excite, destress — but it’s not often that you get to do some good for someone else, someone who really needs help, just by smoking up. Superette, the startup Westboro dispensary that has been raking in the praise (and awards) within the cannabis world, is setting out to change that by teaming up with the Ottawa Food Bank to turn recycled packaging into donated food. “Starting in December, and throughout 2020, we will be matching every unit of cannabis packaging that is recycled and brought back to the store with a unit of non-perishable food,” the store’s founder, Mimi Lam, announced to a group of supporters, neighbours and media on Friday morning. The store is initially committing to at least 5,000 items of food per month, and aiming for 60,000 by this time next year. That’s just a minimum, though — if more people recycle their pot packaging, more food gets donated. It will, admittedly, mean that the cannabis users of Ottawa — or at least Superette’s customers — need to up their game in the recycling department. Most people don’t know that cannabis packaging is, generally speaking, recyclable — the catch is that you can’t just throw it in with the cans and bottles and old newspapers, since the cannabis residue inside, however slight, renders it trash in the eyes of regulators. All recycling is done by TerraCycle, a private recycling company who teamed up with Tweed, in Smiths Falls, to develop a cannabis recycling program after a cacophony of complaints about excessive packaging at legalization’s outset. Right now, Superette gets “a couple hundred packages” returned every week. “We’re hoping that the people who aren’t currently recycling will jump on this initiative,” Cressida Firth, the store’s manager, told OttawaMatters. “We have everybody on the floor pushing it.” "It's like the feel-good version of bringing your empties back to the beer store," said one customer, Jane, in passing.

As news of the closures of two cannabis dispensaries rolled through Squamish on Nov. 5, so too did rumours about the only licensed store in town. Linley Mussett, the general manager of Sky High Cannabis Ltd., spoke with The Chiefto clear up misconceptions they've been hearing about edibles, packaging and prices. While edibles are not sold in the form of food at Sky High, Musset said there are other edible products that can be used in the same way, to similar effect. Among their products are oils, sprays, and capsules. (They hope to be adding gummies and cookies before the end of December, based on producers.) "I think they're so used to the convenience," Mussett said of edibles versus oils. "They're so easy, they're tasty. They're used to that small price—$10 to $12 seems really easy at the time. Paying $30 to $40 for a much longer period of time is going to benefit them in the long run, for sure." She said that typically with edibles, it takes so long to feel the effects that people tend to eat more than they need. "It's a lot easier to end up eating too much," she said. Taking too much is likely why the government has been reluctant to greenlight edibles in licensed stores, Mussett said. The dose can be difficult to gauge, which is why Sky High is looking into offering DIY edible cooking classes. They currently sell edible-making kits in store. "We really want to encourage people to start making their own, because there are people who are making edibles already who maybe don't know what they're doing," she said. She thinks the next issue people will soon be talking about is the regulated dose in licensed edible products, which is anticipated to be set at 10mg per pack. Another concern Mussett has heard is about the packaging their product now comes in. While Sky High has a petition in store that calls for producers to reduce the packaging, in the meantime the company asks that customers bring back packaging to be recycled. Sky High works with Tweed and TerraCycle, a cannabis packaging recycling program that recycles packaging from all licensed producers and is in contact with the government. "If people are just recycling at home, the government's not really going to tell what's happening with it," Mussett said. "This way, they can see every week how much we're sending back. We actually really hope people will start doing a little bit more… probably half the people actually bring it back. Bring back the box, any bag, any tube — all of them." As for pricing, Mussett said, like any store, Sky High sets its prices after buying from the BC Liquor Distribution Branch and, contrary to popular belief, many products have stayed at the same price. "Some are more expensive, but everything that we offered before, we do have the same prices — some of the things are actually cheaper," she said. "The options are there, you just have to pick and choose what's best for you." Sky High became the first (and so far, only) provincially licensed cannabis dispensary in Squamish in September. It is owned and operated by Mussett's family, who have lived in the Sea to Sky for decades (Pemberton, Whistler and, as of 2018, Squamish). To be provincially approved, the company had to abide by the regulations (listed at cannabis.gov.bc.ca). Mussett describes the process as very thorough. "My mom used to work for ReMAX for 12 years," Mussett said. "She is a paperwork master." Mussett said every detail had to be just right before the company could get its inspection. All told, the process took around 13 months. "When we got our licence, we were number 63, and now they're at 160-something." As of Nov. 18, 164 applications of the 539 submitted have been approved, according to provincial government stats. Sky High will be hosting a Seniors' Cannabis 101 at the Squamish Manor on Dec. 6 and a general Cannabis 101 (19+) at the Squamish Public Library on Jan. 23. Find more information at www.skyhighcannabis.ca. Her biggest piece of advice is to contact Health Canada or the prime minister with concerns and questions. "If you are passionate about anything, speak up. Let them know—they're the ones who can affect the change and hear you," Mussett said. "We'd be happy to advocate on behalf of anyone."

It is in a constant concern for respect for the environment that the Dental Center Deschênes now proceeds to the recycling of various dental products thus avoiding the burial of thousands of them.   "We have always been very sensitive to the environment," says Dr. Isabelle Deschênes, owner of the Dental Center. "We have been recycling paper, cardboard and ink cartridges for a long time now and we are no longer offering individual water bottles to our customers. It was important, however, to do more. "   It is now possible for Deschênes Dental Center clients to drop their used toothbrushes, empty toothpaste tubes and floss containers into a specially designed container directly at the Dental Center. It is the company Terracycle, specialized in the recovery of this type of waste, which will handle the recycling at the Dental Center.   In addition, customers and staff using the Center's coffee machine will also be able to collect coffee capsules. The same goes for all latex and nitrile gloves; which can represent more than 2,000 gloves per month.   Dental Center Deschênes 98 Amyot Street # 130, Rivière-du-Loup, QC G5R 3G3 (418) 860-3368 centredentairedeschenes.net

The Green Vanity accepts empty product containers for recycling People have been programmed to perpetually buy beauty products whether they need them or not, creating a sustainability problem for both consumers and the industry.   That’s according to Nikki Hunter, owner of The Green Vanity.   Hunter said The Green Vanity is a “bridge” to help guide consumers as they try to make the switch to a cleaner and greener beauty routine.   “When you’re trying to discover those clean brands, it can be overwhelming because there’s a lot of messy dialogue and really polarized views on performance and ethics,” Hunter said.   “We don’t believe in trial and error, because trial and error is part of the sustainability issue. We continually fill that box under the sink because of overbuying and misunderstanding.”   She said they provide consultation so that people will only buy the items they need and make sure those products work effectively, so they don’t feel the need to keep buying more products.   Hunter said the boutique is also contributing to a cleaner industry by carrying brands that try to be as close to zero waste as possible.   “Zero-waste doesn’t technically exist. Everything we make as humans has waste but the part that we can talk about the most is our post-consumer waste. So what happens to what we have in our hand and who are we going to give our money to who’s doing the least amount of waste before then?”   Hunter said more and more brands are now considering materials used not only in their products, but also their packaging. She said more brands are using water-treated bamboo containers with refillable product, which makes for non-toxic and low-waste products in general.   But at the end of the day, all that packaging still needs to be taken care of.   “We are a recycle depot. We take plastics, we take glass, we take aluminum. We also have TerraCycle (which converts waste to raw materials for new products).”

“Our host is so big that she won Big Brother Canada,” said Matei Olaru, CEO of Toronto-based tech company Lift & Co, as he introduced host Sarah Hanlon to a room full of “best buds” at Toronto’s Fairmont Royal York on Friday night.   It was also a very big night — the 6th Annual Canadian Cannabis Awards, an annual event that this year was estimated to bring together nearly 900 cannabis industry leaders. The glittering award night was dedicated to the movers and shakers of the Canadian industry. Recognizing top people, products and companies, the award ceremony was hosted by Sarah Hanlon, winner of Big Brother Canada 3, and The GrowthOp (TGO) contributor. “The awards a year before were hosted by Rick Campanelli, of ET Canada fame, so I clearly have some big shoes to fill,” she wrote in TGO’s Pot Culture column late in October. Kevin Anderson from Broken Coast Cannabis Ltd. was awarded the Top Master Grower award, who in his acceptance speech had only one thing to say: “Thank you, everyone, that loves weed.”   The top cannabis flower and oil products were chosen with a record-setting over 31,000 votes by consumers, Lift&Co. confirmed in a press statement. Select top products of the year included:  

• Top High THC Bottle Oil: Rossignol by Organigram;
• Top Capsule: Argyle Softgels by Tweed;
• Top Sativa Preroll: Jean Guy by Good Supply;
• Top Sativa Flower: Tangerine Dream by San Rafael ’71;
• Top Hybrid Flower: Ruxton (Sour OG) by Broken Coast Cannabis.

  “And that was it, we did,” said Hanlon as all the winners were announced, and in some cases displayed on the screen.   As the celebration came to a close, attendees were encouraged to give to a choice of four Canadian charities as part of the campaign, Trec With Purpose, to Dress for Success Toronto, HXOUSE, Evergreen, and Cannabis Amnesty. Donations are open here until the end of the year.