Every year we celebrate Earth Day on April 22, but there are many daily efforts we can participate in year-round to promote more sustainable, Earth-saving behaviors. It can often feel like an impossible and heavy burden to make instant changes and to save the Earth right this moment. Just as in transitioning personal habits towards using healthier, cleaner products or food takes time, so do our efforts in contributing to a healthier Earth.
For Earth Month, I’m highlighting some innovative organizations with missions and services that allow you to easily contribute to saving the Earth and help in positively changing your own daily behaviors.
TerraCycle has been leading the charge for many years in “recycling the ‘non-recyclable’”. The organization makes it easier to recycle virtually anything and reduces confusion about waste by offering easy services for consumers and businesses to use.
Did you know that most of our waste isn’t recycled, but rather sent to landfills and incinerators? Why? Simply because it’s more expensive to collect and recycle most things, and it’s cheaper to send waste to a landfill or incinerator.
The problem with incineration and landfills is that it is a linear solution to waste—the materials are destroyed and cannot be reused—it has one life of use. TerraCycle employs circular solutions to waste through simple waste collection and recycling. These solutions ensures that your waste never reaches a landfill and completes the loop of recycling and reusing.
In addition to improving the impact of waste on the environment, when you recycle with TerraCycle, you earn points that you can redeem to give as donations to charitable organizations or to earn special TerraCycle products. Find out more here.
The innovative recycling company offers a range of free recycling programs, as well as solutions available for purchase, that make recycling a no-brainer activity. Most of the programs lesson the burden on the consumer, and are as easy as printing a label, packaging, and sending in waste, while TerraCycle takes care of the rest. TerraCycle’s easy online search option, allows you to see what types of products can be recycled for free or through paid programs, and which simple TerraCycle program to use.
In addition to recycling an endless variety of products, TerraCycle also collects and gives new life to waste in the form of affordable, high-quality upcycled products or materials available for purchase.
Many well-known brands (both green and not-so-green) partner with TerraCycle to provide their free, national recycling programs for typically hard-to-recycle waste streams. Bausch + Lomb (I need to recycle my contact lenses!), Febreeze, Solo Cup, Tide, and Tom’s of Maine are just some examples of brands that work with TerraCycle to ensure consumers easily and correctly recycle specific products.
While you may scorn the use of Febreeze products in your home, at least TerraCycle is there to ensure these products are being recycled properly and not adding to landfills or further harming the environment. I know many of my friends and family probably would not know how to discard a Febreeze bottle properly—note: this type of product needs to be recycled properly, it can’t be thrown in with regular waste. Check out all the free, national recycling solutions here.
Another option is TerraCycle’s Zero Waste Box programs, which provide solutions for difficult-to-recycle waste that cannot be recycled through one of the free programs or through regular municipal recycling. These boxes range in collecting products such as incandescent light bulbs, batteries, office supplies, coffee bags, or power strips/cords. You’ll have to pay for these boxes but this is a great option for any out-of-the-ordinary recycling needs, and for offices.
TerraCycle also offers custom recycling and waste solutions for large-scale and smaller sized facilities or offices, as well as TerraCycle’s own team of scientists working to develop closed-loop solutions for many types of waste. TerraCycle helps manufacturing facilities recycle large quantities of hard to recycle waste, and small, unusual waste like personal protective equipment. Learn more here.
While innovative waste collection and recycling is a crucial step in improving the health of the Earth, everything ties back to our thought process, decisions, and actions to avoid waste in the first place. Put more thought into the products you buy: the type of materials used, the value and use of your possessions, and the goals of the companies you buy from. If more companies like TerraCycle, provide more attractive and innovative processes to make it easier to encourage eco-friendly, earth-benefiting practices, perhaps we’ll move towards a cleaner Earth in no time.
TerraCycle puts it best:
When looking at the root cause of garbage, we as consumers bear a large part of the responsibility. Garbage is predicated on our individual consumption. If we don’t buy something, it can never become garbage.
When we buy something, we are actively voting for more of that particular product to be made. On the other hand, when we don’t buy something, we are voting for less of that good to be produced, and the vote we cast is exceptionally powerful.
If we all changed our daily vote (our daily purchases), within a very short time we could solve the global garbage crisis, along with many other environmental problems. Let’s start buying stuff that results in useful outputs rather than useless ones, let’s buy durable and used objects, and before buying anything at all, perhaps the first question is, “do I even need this?”
