Where it Goes: TerraCycle

Do you ever wonder what happens to the items you drop off at Cincinnati Recycling & Reuse Hub? This series of mini blogs will help shine some light on our various pathways for recycling and reuse for different materials. Let’s start with TerraCycle!

If you’ve dropped off GoGo squeeZ® pouches, oral care products or flexible plastic Kroger packaging (among many other items) at the Hub, you’ve participated in TerraCycle. So, what is TerraCycle and what happens to those items after you drop them off?

TerraCycle is a business that was founded in New Jersey in 2001 with the mission to prevent difficult-to-recycle materials from being landfilled or incinerated. Focused on sustainability from the start, it actually began as a small-scale vermicomposting effort to create fertilizer, which was packaged in reused bottles. Since those early days, TerraCycle has expanded, boasting various programs all across the globe. These days, the company partners with brands, manufacturers, and retailers that are looking to go green to create innovative solutions for recycling their products and/or packaging. In addition to its cutting-edge work in landfill diversion, TerraCycle is committed to transparency and partners with a third-party auditor, Bureau Veritas, to ensure traceability.

When you drop off your TerraCycle items at the Hub, they are sent upstairs for processing. The items are verified and placed into cardboard boxes to await shipping. Some brigades, or individual collections, are sent out more frequently than others, depending on incoming volume. At the Hub, the Kroger brigade is, by far, the most frequently shipped, with several boxes going out per week (totaling about 4,905 pounds in 2024!). Some of the other large collections include the Bausch & Lomb brigade for contact lenses and blister packs and Gold Toe’s brigade for unwearable socks.

One particularly interesting brigade is for cigarette waste. TerraCycle collaborated with Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company to create this collection for cigarettes and their packaging. Through this collaboration, TerraCycle is able to separate the material components of the cigarettes and their packaging, recycling the plastics and even composting the organics (tobacco and ash residue). The Hub has a special collection each month for cigarette waste. Check out our calendar for the date of our next cigarette waste collection.

In 2024, Cincinnati Recycling & Reuse Hub sent nearly 14,000 lbs of materials to TerraCycle.

When TerraCycle receives the shipments at one of its various Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), each package is scanned and checked-in to ensure traceability. From there, it is sorted using various methods. This may look like manual sortation, or may involve the use of screens, magnets, sink-float tanks, air density separators, or optical sorters. The sorted items are aggregated for efficient transportation, then sent for cleaning and further processing based on material type. Notably, TerraCycle does not use incineration (or waste to energy), instead relying on circular solutions to landfill diversion such as reuse, upcycling, and recycling.

As proudly stated on their website, products made from your TerraCycle waste may include “outdoor furniture and decking, plastic shipping pallets, watering cans, storage containers and bins, tubes for construction applications, flooring tiles, playground surface covers, athletic fields, and more”.

TerraCycle® Made products available on their website.

From Kroger packaging to cigarette waste, the partnership with TerraCycle also acts as a small revenue source for the Hub. Each pound of qualifying materials sent to TerraCycle accrues “points” which can be redeemed by the Hub as a cash donation that amounts to approximately $1 per pound. In this way, the Hub is able to expand the list of hard-to-recycle items that it can accept while bringing in a small amount of funding. It’s a win-win! If you’d like to help the Hub earn points, click here for a comprehensive list of our current TerraCycle brigades.

If you’re interested in seeing actual video footage of some of TerraCycle’s recycling processes, click here to visit their YouTube channel.

Thanks for reading! Be sure to stay tuned for our next post in our Where it Goes mini blog series which will explore the Hub’s outlets for various foams (Styrofoam coolers, food foam, etc.)!