TERRACYCLE NEWS
ELIMINATING THE IDEA OF WASTE®
Posts with term ZWB X
Trashless Pet Store recycles dog food bags into materials with delivery service
Michelle Smith was a customer of Trashless, an online grocery store that delivers fresh, local food in reusable containers such as mason jars. Each time you order, you put out the containers from the previous order. Those containers are picked up, cleaned and reused.
Smith says it struck her that she was doing everything she could to not create waste, but each month she would have big, empty dog food bags left over. She tried her hand at using online ordering for pet food and treats, but those companies always delivered food in huge boxes with a lot of packing materials.
Smith created Trashless Pet Store, an online pet food delivery service that now Trashless Pet Store now operates under the umbrella of Trashless, with the same delivery drivers. It has 10 different pet food brands that are animal welfare certified.
Trashless Pet Store doesn't use boxes when it delivers pet food, and it will pick up the used food bags to be recycled by TerraCycle. The bags then become materials used in plastic chairs, watering cans and leashes, among other things.
You can order samples of food to have your pet try before buying a big bag. Those samples come in mason jars.
It's also partnered with Austin Pets Alive to pick up their bags to have them recycled. Since August, it's picked up 600 bags that would have gone into the trash.
"It's practically a no-brainer," says Stephanie Bilbro, director of lifesaving operations at Austin Pets Alive. Instead of putting the bags in the trash, the staff just puts them in a tub for Trashless Pet Store to collect a couple of times a week. "It's silly not to do it, knowing that they are able to upcycle this stuff that would end up in our dumpster."
The Austin Pets Alive partnership was designed as a test project.
"Hopefully, it would be a great model for other shelters," Smith says. "It can make a huge impact."
The good deeds of Santa Claus sparks Lancaster author's desire to help other
Township's Zero-Waste Program Keeps Tons of Trash Out of Landfills
BORDENTOWN TOWNSHIP, NJ-- Bordentown Township Environmental Commission is reminding residents that there is an easy way to discard trash and help the environment at the same time.
The Township is participating in TerraCycle's Zero-Waste program, which has the goal of collecting non-recyclable packaging to reduce waste and help keep tons of the Township's garbage from ending up in the landfill.
TerraCycle, which is based in Trenton, partners with municipalities around the world to provide zero-waste solutions for certain waste streams so that the discarded items can be re-purposed.
Bordentown residents are encouraged to save their candy wrappers, chip and snack bags, gum wrappers and granola bar wrappers and bring them to the Bordentown Township Public Works building, where a dedicated collection container is in place to discard the items.
In addition, Bordentown Township is also participating in TerraCycle and Colgate's Oral Care Recycling Program.
Residents can drop off any brand of used or empty oral care products and packaging, such as toothpaste tubes, caps and cartons, toothbrushes and their outer packaging and dental floss containers, to the Public Works Building. The discarded items are then sent to TerraCycle by the Township, where they are upcycled into new, eco-friendly and affordable products to be made available at major retailers.
The Public Works Building's hours are Monday to Friday, 8am to 3:30pm, and Saturday from 9am to 1pm. The building is located at 266 Crosswicks Road.
For more information about the Township's participation in the TerraCycle program, click HERE.
Edinburgh museum using waste boxes to recycle PPE
The National Museums of Scotland are recycling disposable face masks which could otherwise end up in landfill or be littered on streets.
The Edinburgh-based museum is using a solution for PPE which isn’t recyclable through conventional facilities, giving them a new life.
The TerraCycle collection system is via Zero Waste Boxes which encourage people to dispose of PPE instead of throwing the items away.
When full, the boxes are returned for processing and the collected waste is cleaned and melted into pellets.
The material can be used to manufacture products including outdoor furniture, plastic shipping pallets, decking, watering cans, storage containers, bins, and tubes for construction..
Sparta Middle School Wants Your Candy Wrappers
Sparta Middle School Wants Your Candy Wrappers
SPARTA, NJ – The Green Team at Sparta Middle School is collecting candy wrappers. The student organizer Abby Weisbeck said the group was looking for a project to “make Halloween more green.”
The wrappers brought in by Sparta will be added to many others ultimately to be collected by Terracycle. Weisbeck said their internet research led them to the organization with will take the wrappers and turn them into park benches, tables and playground equipment.
TerraCycle offers recycling programs for items that are difficult to recycle. For this campaign they are accepting individual, multipack and family size snack bags and wrappers, including candy, chip and granola wrappers. Food waste and carboard cartons are not part of this initiative.
The Green Team’s co-advisor Douglass Crouse and Cara Johnson said they are partnering with Subaru of Newton’s general manager Chris Dexter.
Weisbeck said she is working with Bridget and five others though “many more students helped out.” The Green Team was formed last year, Weisbeck said but this is the first project they took on this year. She said they were inspired by a “plastic free” day initiative in the school last year and from “talking with other students.”
They are still collecting wrappers and plan to continue through the school year.
“This is the first year,” Crouse said. “In future years, we hope to expand to other schools.”
VetPartners launches environmental PPE project
VetPartners has launched a major environmental project at 130 of its largest sites by trialling zero-waste boxes for used PPE.
The boxes are provided by TerraCycle – a company that specialises in hard-to-recycle waste including PPE masks, gloves and aprons worn by clinical team members when treating patients.
All PPE not contaminated with animal or pharmaceutical waste can be recycled as part of the scheme, and is collected and quarantined for 72 hours to ensure it is safe.
OUR 2020 WASTE AUDIT
- We buy very little, preferring to thrift, DIY, swap or borrow where possible;
- We are dedicated to supporting local – receiving weekly farm deliveries, promoting and supporting farmers’ markets;
- We avoid plastic and packaging as much as possible, bringing reusables or refilling in bulk;
- We spend a lot of time in the kitchen making plant-based meals and snacks;
- We grow a garden, have honey bees and even grow mushrooms; and
- We compost like nobody’s business!
ONE BIN, ONE YEAR CHALLENGE
BUT, in 2020, we embarked on a whole new challenge – inspired by British eco-duo, Ander and Adam of GoxuBoys – the One Bin, One Year Challenge! I wanted to show that it can be done – even as a family of 4, living a pretty typical life (2 working parents, 2 school-aged kids, commuting and running the “daily grind”) in Canada’s capital city. In 2018, I had already removed the trash bin from our kitchen, so the biggest obstacle now was to actually track our monthly waste (i.e. weigh it, analyze it.. and prevent my husband from putting it all to the curb for a full 12 months!!)PRELIMINARY RESULTS
- On average, our family of 4 produces about 300 grams of kitchen trash per month (typically about 1/2 a grocery bag full)
- The biggest ‘culprit’ for our household is chip bags – to counter this, we have invested in a small “plastic packaging” Terracycle Zero Waste box so that once our tracking is complete, we can still send these chip bags somewhere other than our precious landfill! Also of note, we opt to source our chips locally from Against the Grain, a heritage grain farm near Ottawa. While their chips still come in plastic, we appreciate that our snacks are locally-made, chemical free, and not transported all over the world to get to our plates.
- Our trash output reduced by about 60% during the summer months – likely because we were growing a lot ourselves, and/or sourcing from local farms/markets while crops were in season (thanks to Funny Duck Farms, Hidden Trails, Just Food Farm stand, among others!)
- We have never used the City of Ottawa’s Green Bin (compost) program – rather, we collect our own compost in our backyard to generate soil for our garden; however, if you’re interested in doing a waste audit yourself, composting (in any format) will be your biggest ally – as soon as you eliminate food and organic scraps from your waste stream, your trash is significantly reduced AND you decrease greenhouse gas emissions, automatically, JUST by composting!
- We regularly pick up trash in our neighbourhood, and on the biggest 2 trash collection days of the year (Earth Day in April, and Cleaning the Capital in September) collected approximately 3000g and 5000g, respectively (Note: these totals were NOT counted in our household waste tracking report, but thought it would be interesting to monitor them as well.)
^^ Earth Day pick up and Cleaning the Capital pick up (not included in our household waste audit)
SO, WHAT’S NEXT?
With less than 2 months to go in 2020, stay tuned to get the full breakdown and report of our waste output! Spoiler alert: we are totally going to meet our #1bin1year goal
Candy wrapper drive helps prevent litter
JUNO BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — Loggerhead Marinelife Center's "Unwrap the Waves" program is back for its fifth Halloween season.
The center and several other organizations in the area collect candy wrappers to 100 percent recycled.
"We work with both the schools and community partners to do this," said Lindsay French, the education coordinator for Loggerhead.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, plastic packaging accounts for 30 percent of the U.S.’s solid waste every year.
"During the holiday season, Americans produce more trash than any other time in the year, and a lot of these wrappers will not only clog our landfills, but some of them will also end up in our environment, especially our ocean," said French.
READ: Loggerhead MarineLife Center collects enough fishing line to stretch from Juno to Georgia
The center will collect candy wrappers and send them to TerraCycle, who will recycle the wrappers since a majority of recycling centers don't accept candy wrappers.
"So although candy wrappers here might be done, there are other ways where we're going to be promoting how to be sustainable this whole holiday season," said French.
Last year, the multicounty initiative collected 272,595 candy wrappers with Terracycle with H.L. Johnson Elementary School as the recycling champion.
This year, the winning school will have the opportunity to name a sea turtle patient at LMC.