Observances like World Environment Day are great for raising awareness about climate change and plastic pollution, but you don’t need a hashtag to come together, step up, and make a pledge to recycle more and help the environment!
It can be easy and fun to recycle more. Our amazing collectors have shared with us their best tips for making recycling easy and rewarding to do. We round some of them up here, along with our tricks for making recycling a habit of a lifetime…
But first, how does recycling help the environment?
When you throw your trash away, it doesn’t disappear; the amount of waste produced in the world could fill 1 million Olympic-sized swimming pools every year – that’s around 2.1 billion metric tons of trash! Worse yet, 359 million metric tons of new, virgin plastic is produced – 60 times the weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza – while less than 9% is recycled.
Recycling not only prevents all of that material from entering landfills, littering streets, and polluting oceans — all of which has proven negative effects on wildlife (i.e. birds mistaking cigarettes for food), natural ecosystems, as well as public health — but offsets the need to pull more resources out of the Earth to make new products, so the effort is worth it.
Your recycling has a huge impact.
Remember: small, daily actions add up! Recycling can sometimes seem like a minefield of different bins, packaging labels, and fancy buzzwords. So, we recommend first being sure of what your local recycling program accepts — call, email, or do a quick search to find out.
What about the items local programs don’t accept? That’s where we step in! With our National Recycling Programs – free to use, and with mail-in and drop-off options – you can recycle more of the many, common things from your everyday life (like razors, coffee capsules or contact lenses) that aren’t accepted through your curbside recycling program.
Rally your communities (plus friends and families) to take the #PledgetoRecycle alongside you. The more people that take action, the greater the impact.
TerraCycle’s #PledgetoRecycle Pro Tips:
- Make it easy for your household or business to take part and stay organized by creating your own customer collection boxes or bins to place wherever there’s a potential to collect waste, such as in the bathroom for personal care and beauty #empties.
- Print out the program fliers at the bottom of our recycling program pages for a clear reference for what is accepted, and place them where you collect.
- Stockpile and store as much as you can before shipping. This reduces the transportation carbon footprint of your recyclables, AND earns you more TerraCycle points to redeem for your favorite schools and charities.
Looking to recycle something we don’t currently have a program for? Perhaps you’d prefer a convenient, one-and-done option. Enter: Zero Waste Box™!
These all-in-one recycling solutions are your answer to recycling pretty much everything. Go as specific as disposable masks and PPE, to the entire contents of your bathroom – Zero Waste Box has a solution for everyone. Unsure? Browse our list of bestsellers to see what other recyclers are rocking with.
Join the global effort to help the environment through recycling.
If you took the #PledgetoRecycle earlier this year, thank you, and keep it up. If not, then start today – we’re with you every step of the way. With easy-to-understand recycling hacks and articles like this one, our recycling programs and Zero Waste Box™ system are here to help you reach your recycling goals. We’re all in this together!