What do you think of terra cycle?

[DontFundHate]

Just that really. I've seen them mentioned with products a few times. Eg they partner with Garnier and febreeze and recycle all their products, including things which most council recycling won't take. At first I thought it sounded great, but then why are companies signing up to this instead of just reducing their plastic waste? Will this add to the problem? And I don't like Garnier anyway as it's loreal and therefore under nestle. The whole thing makes me think of greenwashing? What do you think?

I’m confused about where you can actually recycle what with them and whether you have to buy one of their expensive boxes to be able to offer the service. I agree that reducing packaging is no. 1 but for some things - like thin biscuit wrappers, where plastic is the thinnest, strongest and lightest material (and hence reduced carbon footprint/food waste) I think it’s a great scheme. They also do pens which I would imagine the average household has hundreds of. I thought about suggesting the Bic scheme for pens to my son’s school. Im a keen recycler but I would imagine it’s all too much effort for your average Joe. I spend a lot of my time frustrated that big firms aren’t doing more (and sending emails!!) There really need to be financial incentives/penalties for them to do so. Amazed we only use a fraction of goods we send for recycling - we send a lot to China where they have insufficient raw materials to meet their demand. Fascinating stuff really.

I’ve just signed up to this as they now do pet food recycling programme. My cats get through a lot of plastic pouches and they don’t like food in tins. I’ve have to put them in a box, print a label off and send them off to them.

Am using Terracycle as much as I can as an interim measure until companies do the right thing and change all packaging to less damaging stuff. What I do is contact every company which signs up to the schemes and encourage them to mend their ways. It does seem to be an uphill fight but at least the stuff I send gets recycled rather than going to landfill. Maybe every little helps?