A free recycling programme for any brand of food storage containers and reusable plastic water bottles has been launched.
Designed to allow households to recycle hard-to-recycle items, anyone can sign up to the programme and be awarded points for each item they send in for recycling. The points are redeemable as monetary donations to fund good causes including charities, community initiatives, and schools.
The recycling programme has been set up by TerraCycle in collaboration with manufacturer Sistema.
Food storage containers and reusable plastic water bottles are said to be considered ‘hard-to-recycle’ due to the high quality food grade BPA free materials they are made of. Whilst some councils collect and recycle some food storage containers, there are a number that don’t collect or recycle any. This means they are often destined for landfill or incineration.
As well as collecting these items from home, there’s an option to create a public drop-off location where the wider community can drop the items at one central point.
You can sign up on the programme page on TerraCycle’s website to start collecting. It’s free to send the items to TerraCycle where they will be recycled into raw materials.
TerraCycle recycles these items by shredding, washing and sorting the materials by type. The material is then dried, compounded and pelletised into hard-granulated plastic granules, which can be incorporated into the production of different plastic products.
Julien Tremblin, general manager for TerraCycle Europe, said, “This is a first-of-its-kind recycling programme for the UK so we’d urge everyone to get involved and start collecting as much as possible, either from home or from the community. It couldn’t be easier to collect and send us these items, and it’s a great way to help your home or community go greener.”
