Terracycle: A Plastic Pollution Solution
Stop food packaging entering the ocean or being sent to landfill or incineration
Common sense for your non-recyclables!
Terracycle is a scheme which reduces the amount of ‘hard-to-recycle’ items ending up in landfill, or worse, or the ocean. The plastic pollution crisis is now so extensive that International Coastal Clean Up volunteers across the planet litter-picked a whopping 943,195 volunteers removing a record 4,771,602 food wrappers in a single day from beaches across the world in 2019.
Everything collected by Terracycle is recyclable - it's just not commonly recycled by local authorities. And in Guildford, nearly 5 tonnes of plastic waste have been prevented from meeting the same fate by the efforts of local Terracyclers! For the last few years our partner Cheryl has been operating the Terracycle streams from Bellfields, saving 4,891 tonnes of waste from going to landfill, and raising £6,105 for her chosen charity Kicks Count
So communities can partner with Terracycle to create a collection point for these items, which then get turned into something else, like playground flooring or benches, instead of ocean trash.
The process still involves energy and transport, so it's better to not create the waste in the first place! However, where that's unavoidable either due to no zero waste items of the product (eg contact lenses) or the cost is prohibitively expensive compared to the regular version (eg speciality cheese), Terracycle is a decent option.
What can you recycle through Terracycle?
Infrequently recycled items which Terracycle collects include biscuit packets, bread wrappers, cheese packaging, and loads more.
The full list of everything that we accept at our Terracycle station is listed on this page. Just click the button above labelled 'What We Collect'. If it's not on the list, we're afraid we can't take it.
There are other Terracycle streams that we can't accept for which there are alternative drop off points in the town centre:
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Contact Lenses - Specsavers (Friary Street)
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Brita Water Filters - Robert Dyas (North Street) /Waitrose (York Road)
