Bring TerraCycle Boxes to Your Community
Making recycling easier at home, school or work is always a good idea. TerraCycle offers a simple way to handle “hard-to-recycle” waste like crisp packets, pens and toothbrushes. These bright, well-marked boxes turn clutter into resources, helping to move more rubbish out of bins and into new products.
Every community needs better recycling options, and TerraCycle can help fill that gap. If you want to get started, here are the steps to bring TerraCycle boxes into your local area.
Learn What TerraCycle Accepts
Get familiar with the types of rubbish TerraCycle collects. They offer different boxes for items like snack wrappers, beauty products, coffee pods and office supplies. Look up their website or request a brochure.
Having a clear sense of which items can go in each box will save time and help you explain the scheme to others. Knowing what goes where makes the process smooth from the start.
Research Local Needs
Think about the kinds of rubbish people struggle to recycle where you live. Schools often have mountains of pens and crisp bags, while offices end up with lots of toner cartridges or plastic packaging.
Take a walk around the area or chat with neighbours, schools and shopkeepers. A bit of local knowledge will help you choose the right boxes and find the best locations for them.
Pick Your TerraCycle Boxes
Once you know what your community needs, you can choose which boxes to order. TerraCycle provides single-stream boxes for specific waste and all-in-one boxes for mixed rubbish.
Consider size, too – large boxes suit busy places, while smaller ones work for homes or small shops. Matching box types to real waste streams is key to success.
Fund Your First Boxes
A few TerraCycle boxes are free (sponsored by industry), the rest do charge (around £100 to £200 depending on sizes). So plan how to cover costs (you may only need a one-off box to get a particular kind of litter out of your town for good).
Some people use school fundraising, local business sponsors or community grants. Passing a collection jar at events or teaming up for a sponsored walk can also work. Many hands make lighter work, and it feels good to support recycling as a group.
Spread the Word
Once the boxes arrive, tell everyone! Post clear flyers, email community groups and use local social media. Explain what TerraCycle does, what goes in each box and where they’re located. A cheerful sign works wonders.
If people know the boxes are there and what to put in them, they’ll use them.
Place Boxes in High-Traffic Spots
Location is everything. Put boxes in spots people visit daily, like school entrances, community centres, offices or busy shops. Make sure they’re visible.
Keep the area tidy so people feel comfortable using the boxes. Easy access means more rubbish gets recycled and less ends up as litter.
Organise Collections and Returns
Set up a routine for checking and emptying the boxes. Most TerraCycle boxes have prepaid return shipping, but someone needs to seal and post them when they’re full.
Rotate duties among volunteers, or arrange for staff or students to help. Staying organised keeps the project running smoothly.
Share Success Stories
When you send off your first full boxes, let everyone know how much has been collected. Share updates on local noticeboards, newsletters or online.
Celebrate milestones, like “500 crisp packets recycled.” These updates boost morale and encourage more people to join in.
TerraCycle Zero Waste Bags
Once the first boxes are running well, consider adding more. Check if other community groups want to join. Maybe the school wants a box for pens, or the local café needs one for coffee pods. The more people involved, the more you can recycle.
TerraCycle Zero Waste Bag was recently launched, to recycle most things that you can’t recycle from home (27 categories including flexible plastic packaging, fabrics and Styrofoam™).
Just choose a subscription then seal the full bag and scan the QR code (or log into your account) to schedule doorstep pick-up. If many of you do this together, the new items made (like park benches) are donated back to your community!
Free Terracycle Boxes
The free programmes are sponsored by industry, so it won’t cost you anything to order a box for your office or community. You then spend days, weeks or months filling the box up, send it off. Obviously some of these items are best avoided in the first place.
But if you have a big office or government building filled with them (because they are no longer used or you can’t recycle them), now you can! And you can even earn rewards for each valid shipment, to earn stuff for your community or school.
Some people have earned thousands of pounds/dollars for their local area. Shops and other places can also sign up to become public drop-off points, to help quickly fill the boxes for collection:
- Contact lenses & plastic toothbrushes
- Water filter cartridges
- Sweet, crisps & cheese wrappers
- Pringles containers & bread bags
- Hand soap packaging
- Foil balloons
- ‘Flash’ floor wipes & rubber gloves
- Plastic shampoo bottles & toothbrushes
- Disposable plastic razors & make-up pots
- Plastic pens
Paid Terracycle Boxes
The paid boxes cost a few hundred pounds/dollars and are intended as one-off community recycling initiatives.
For example, if everyone in a town or village paid a pound or dollar for a box, you can then collectively gather together all the waste for that box, it’s collected and sent off to be recycled, then hopefully you never have to buy one again, as your town will be litter-free! Example boxes are for:
- Office & e-waste
- Plastic cups & straws
- Hair & beauty salon waste
- Alkaline batteries & small car parts
- Aluminium cans, pots & pans
- Art supplies & paintbrushes
- Baby gear & food pouches
- Plastic bath accessories
- Cigarette waste & chewing gum
- Nappy waste
- Garage products & glue waste
- Holiday & party decorations
- Hotel bottles & waste
- Incandescent light bulbs
- Luggage & travel tags
- Pet food packaging
- Safety equipment & PPE
- Plant pots & garden waste
- Shoes & flip-flops
- Sporting goods
- Styrofoam & office waste
- Cassette tapes
Does TerraCycle Encourage Consumerism?
Some people are critics of Terracycle, saying that by making money from communities purchasing big boxes to recycle cigarette butts and crisp packets and sweet wrappers, it’s just encouraging consumerism. That would be true if everyone tomorrow is suddenly gong to become eco-minimalists.
But let’s face it, we’re a long way off. And most of the goods they can recycle cannot be recycled anywhere else. So they will just clutter up homes, offices and garages – or languish in landfills giving off toxic gases. Or worse, get littered on the streets or thrown in the oceans.
The reason why some boxes are paid-for is because the company does need to pay to get the items recycled, if industry is not sponsoring it. It’s true that Colgate and Bic are probably ‘greenwashing’ themselves to be eco-friendly by sponsoring the free boxes.
But at end of the day, they are sponsoring them. So you can now deposit your plastic toothbrushes and ballpoint pens in boxes without cost to you, instead of them throwing them in the bin.
Co-founder Tom Szaky does seem genuine in his aim to reduce trash and pollution worldwide. The son of medical doctors, he and his family fled to Canada from their Hungarian home after the Chernobyl disaster, and grew up amid a strong conservation and environmentalist movement.
He astounded coming from a poorer background how people around him were just ‘throwing everything away’.
He actively encourages everyone to campaign for tougher laws on waste in their communities.
We need to eliminate the idea of waste. And that’s why recycling (and I say this as as recycling company) is only a temporary solution. Tom Szaky
