What happens with my recycling after it is sent to TerraCycle?

TerraCycle’s mission is to Eliminate the Idea of Waste, we guarantee that we recycle all of the compliant waste sent to us.

TerraCycle weighs all materials upon receipt to monitor volumes collected. Once the shipments we receive are checked in, the contents are visually inspected for compliance against the accepted waste intended to be collected by that Zero Waste Box or free recycling programme. We sort the boxes into individual material streams, consolidate the material into bulk bags and prepare them for processing.

Compliant waste is manually and mechanically sorted by material type such as plastics, rubber, paper, metals etc.  Once sorted, materials are cleaned, size reduced and converted into new usable commodity materials such as plastic pellets and regrind, paper pulp and metal alloys. Materials are then used to manufacture new products such as outdoor furniture and decking, community garden beds, plastic shipping pallets, watering cans, storage containers and bins, among other things. You can watch a behind the scenes video here and read more on our website here about the different material streams that we process.

We also work with brands to create exciting products. For example, we worked with Head & Shoulders to produce the world’s first shampoo bottle made with ocean plastics collected by clean-up organisations around the world.