Terracycle Recycling

Who are Terracycle?

Terracycle is a company who provides a service to manufacturers to recycle the single use plastic in their product packaging.  When manufacturers sign up with Terracycle they agree to make a financial contribution to help pay for the scheme to run. 

How do Terracycle schemes work?

As there is very little value in single use packaging and the items are not easy to sort, Councils do not generally accept these items for recycling within the kerbside collections.  Terracycle provides a way for people to reduce the amount of plastic that is being sent for incineration or to landfill.

Volunteers collect packaging accepted under one of the many schemes and box them up to send them off once they have collected a minimum weight of packaging. Each group of volunteers provides all the labour and storage to support the ongoing recycling – no pay or reward is made to individual volunteers.

When Terracycle receives boxes, the contents are weighed and points are credited to the group of volunteers that sent in the box. Twice a year each group can convert the points they have built up into a donation to the volunteers chosen charity.

What do Terracycle do with the waste?

Terracycle combines all the waste for each scheme until they have a large enough quantity to process.  They process it and turn it into pellets. The pellets are sold to companies to be used in the manufacture of picnic benches, fencing, decking and play equipment.

How can I get involved?

The nearest Terracycle scheme is Tadworth Terracycle.

The team at Tadworth Terracycle have provided a wealth of guidance to help you understand what you can divert from your household waste bin and how to prepare your items before you deposit them at a collection point. If you use Facebook the Tadworth volunteers encourage you to follow the Tadworth Terracycle Facebook page where you will find all the latest updates.