After the “Recycling Refresher” at the Burton Headquarters, I was telling some of my co-workers about a company that can recycle the additional materials that cannot go into our Single Stream Recycling (SSR) bins at work. Items such as chips bags, e-waste, corks, plastic tupperware, and even toothbrushes! We already have one employee composting the coffee grinds from K-Cups (which we discussed in this previous article), but expanding the awareness of zero waste is always fun!
TerraCycle is a company that offers unique recycling solutions to help achieve zero waste-turning waste into usable products such as park benches, recycled fences, messenger bags, and more!
We got started with an Energy Bar Brigade and collected the used wrappers from energy bar and chip bags.
William collected these items in his desk drawer…we could probably improve our collection strategies on the next one.
We sorted the wrappers. And sent in our first package!
Seeing the excitement from the wrapper brigade, I signed us up for another brigade called the “Personal Care Brigade.” This brigade allowed us to collect personal care items that are difficult to recycle (if recyclable at all). These items include: skin care packaging, hair care packaging, and cosmetics packaging.
Using the downloadable print outs from the Terracycle website, I made a special box just for the Personal Care items and placed it in the break room for the collection to begin 🙂
In all, TerraCycle is a pretty neat company that shows us how “waste” can actually be transformed into another useful product!
This is Part 4 of our Green Around the Office Series! Stay tuned for more posts related to sustainable actions Burton employees are taking to reduce their impact on the environment!