How to send your rubbish to TerraCycle

If you’ve signed up to our free recycling programs in Australia or New Zealand, you’ve already taken a sustainable step. Bravo!

Here at TerraCycle, we recycle the rubbish your kerbside recycling services don’t accept. The different kinds of hard-to-recycle waste TerraCycle accepts each need to be recycled using different technologies.

That’s why it’s so important to ship rubbish via each program separately.

Follow the steps below to make it easy to collect, pack, and send your waste to TerraCycle!

1. Sign up to become a TerraCycler

You can sign up for as many TerraCycle programs as you like. If a program of your choice is full, you’ll be waitlisted and notified when the next available spot opens up. In the meantime, you can collect the items you wish to recycle and either drop them off at your nearest public drop-off point or wait until you’ve been accepted into the program. 

2. Collect and store your rubbish

Collecting and storing items for recycling is easy. Set up a recycling station for each program in an accessible place in your house (an old cardboard box or upcycled shelving will do fine). If you’re collecting items like beauty products, oral care, hair care products, and razors, it may be useful to keep a box in your bathroom for convenience.

3. Make sure you’ve collected enough to ship

Hold your horses! Before you mail your rubbish to TerraCycle, check the program page for the recommended minimum shipment. We ask you to do this because transporting one larger package is better for the environment than dozens of lightweight packages. As a bonus, when you send over the minimum shipment limit for many programs, you earn TerraCycle points, which can be redeemed and donated to a charity or school of your choice. 

4. Box up your rubbish

When you box up your rubbish for shipping, you need to make sure you separate the waste for each program. For instance, if you’re collecting dental hygiene equipment through the Colgate program and beauty empties through the Garnier program, these can’t be sent together. They must be sent in two different packages, as they’re made from different materials which require different recycling solutions. 

You can use any old box to pack up your waste. We recommend keeping any delivery boxes aside to be re-used for your recycling shipments.

5. Print out a TerraCycle shipping label and send us your rubbish!

All you need to do to get a free shipping label for your parcel is:

1. Log in to your TerraCycle account at www.terracycle.com.
2. Go to your profile and under the ‘My programs’ tab, click the green button that says ‘Get shipping label’ for the program you’d like to ship your waste through.
3. The label will then be sent to your email address as a PDF. Print it out and attach it to your box of recycling. 
4. To send us your shipment, simply drop it off at your nearest post office.

We hope this helps you understand the process of collecting and sending hard-to-recycle rubbish to TerraCycle. If you have any more questions, please feel free to reach out to our customer service team in Australia at customersupport@terracycle.com.au and in New Zealand at customersupport@terracycle.co.nz.