Eric Kawabata, general manager for Asia-Pacific with TerraCycle, a US-based recycling company, says the China ban has created a “global crisis in plastic waste”. Japan, where he is based, was a big exporter to China before the ban. “Now all this trash is building up in Japan and there’s nothing to do with it; the incinerators are working at full capacity,” he says.

One of my favorite resources in this fascinating world of green innovation is the company TerraCycle. Simply put, founder and Princeton-dropout Tom Szaky recycles the unrecyclable. You can participate by signing up for different recycling collection programs, collecting your waste, and then shipping it back to TerraCycle. Often for free

One of my favorite resources in this fascinating world of green innovation is the company TerraCycle. Simply put, founder and Princeton-dropout Tom Szaky recycles the unrecyclable. You can participate by signing up for different recycling collection programs, collecting your waste, and then shipping it back to TerraCycle. Often for free.

For example, Walkers — the UK’s largest snack firm, owned by PepsiCo — is working with my company, TerraCycle, to launch the nation’s first-ever mail-in recycling program for crisp packets. Set to officially go live in December, the program will allow consumers to send any brand of crisp packaging, not just Walkers, back to us for recycling into new products. This will offer households, schools, businesses and individuals an easy-to-use solution for the category’s typically unrecyclable packaging in the UK.

For nearly nine months, Main Street has partnered with TerraCycle, a company that converts otherwise non-recyclable waste into reusable raw material. TerraCycle separates the cigarettes and packaging and melts them into hard plastic. This plastic can then be used to make recycled industrial products.

If you do find yourself over-stocked in traditional candy wrappers try to re-purpose them instead of tossing them out. Can you turn wrappers into a tote bag or a fun kid’s craft project like a necklace or a bracelet? Finally, a waste recycling company called TerraCycle allows you to collect your waste and send it to them to use for a variety of recycled applications.

“L’OCCITANE will showcase and explain its recycling program, created in partnership with TerraCycle in 2014, in every store that offers it. Empty cosmetic containers (of any cosmetics brand) can be recycled inside the store. The company hopes to provide recycling facilities at all company-owned stores by 2025 (all stores in France already have them), as well as expand the program with TerraCycle to recycle non-readily recyclable material. “We want to achieve a circular economy where every material used can have a second life,” says Geiger.