As you know, TerraCycle specializes in recycling your hard-to-recycle trash. From toothbrushes, to contact lenses, water filters and toys—we recycle items you can’t recycle curbside.
After we recycle your trash into raw material, it’s sold to manufacturing companies who produce the end product and complete the recycling journey. But the story doesn’t end there…
From trash to cash
For most of our free recycling programs, every time you send us your shipments of trash, you’ll earn TerraCycle Recycling Rewards. These reward points (100 points per pound) can then be redeemed for donations to the school, charity, or nonprofit of your choice. Some brand-sponsored free recycling programs require that shipments reach a minimum weight to qualify for rewards, some give brand-specific rewards, and others don’t participate.
Check the ‘Rewards’ section on the program pages
Please note, you can only earn TerraCycle points if you collect through the ‘recycle from anywhere’ option, or if you run a public drop-off point. If you recycle your trash at a public drop-off point, the administrator of the collection point will receive the points. See program-specific detail highlighted on each program page on terracycle.com.
Choose a school, charity, or nonprofit
Once you’ve accumulated a minimum of 2,500 TerraCycle points in your account, you can redeem your points for monetary donations to the charity, school, or nonprofit of your choice. You can donate a charitable gift to one of our featured charity partner organizations – check them out here. Or pick the school, charity or nonprofit of your choice – please note that you must donate at least 2,500 TerraCycle points (equates to a donation of $25). Your chosen organization may already be in our system – scroll down the page to check our database. If not, all you need to do is fill out the registration form and send your chosen organization’s bank details to our Customer Care team. We’ll then review and approve your request.
A time to redeem
You can redeem your TerraCycle points at any time, but we only have two payment periods per year, in January and June. Any points redeemed by the end of October will be paid out in January, and any points redeemed by the end of April will be paid out in June.
It’s easy to redeem your points. Follow these simple steps:
- Sign in to your TerraCycle account and click on the ‘My Points’ drop-down.
- Click ‘Redeem my points’, select the organization you wish to donate to, and enter how many points you’d like to redeem.
- That’s it! You’ll receive an email to confirm it was a success.
Bonus points!
Getting rewards for your trash is good—but what’s even better is that there are many opportunities throughout the year to earn extra points. Check out our contests page or follow us on social media to make sure you don’t miss an update.
P.s. We’ve got a contest running right now… click here for more info, and sign up today.