2023 was TerraCycle’s 20th year of pioneering innovative solutions to address the waste crisis. I take great pride in the positive change we’ve created over the past two decades, all centered around our mission of Eliminating the Idea of Waste®. As we look ahead to 2024, I wanted to take a moment and share highlights of what we’ve accomplished together this past year:
Increasing access
We’re dedicated to providing comprehensive recycling and reuse solutions that seamlessly fit into your everyday lives. Through new partnerships and program expansions, we continue to put free recycling for hard-to-recycle rubbish within easy reach. To name just a few new recycling options: We debuted flexible film pet food packaging recycling with Pet Supplies Plus and Wag N’ Wash in the US and a medicine blister pack recycling program with Aldi in the UK. We also unveiled new Community Recycling Hubs—one-stop-shops for recycling many waste streams—at major retailers from Carrefour in France to Aeon in Japan.
We also continue to create recycling solutions for waste streams that have never been recycled before. This year we launched recycling platforms for pool floats with Funsicle, orthodontic aligners with Clear Blue Smiles, and work gloves with Industree Group. We even entered the financial industry, recycling credit cards for Mastercard in the UK.
We’ve also expanded TerraCycle Pickup, our home recycling service, to Japan and the UK. TerraCyclers can now drop off Zero Waste Bags full of hard-to-recycle rubbish at any of over 5,000 InPost lockers in the UK. In partnership with a number of waste management companies in the US, from Casella to Black Earth Compost, TerraCycle Pickup’s service geography is constantly growing, providing more convenient ways for customers to reduce waste.
In June, we acquired Complete Recycling Solutions (CRS), expanding our capabilities to recycle universal waste. TerraCycle remains one of the only solar panel recyclers in the US.
Recognizing the unique waste challenges faced by different industries, we also added to our industry-specific recycling solutions with ScienceCycle, VetCycle, and OfficeCycle, and will continue to expand to new industries throughout 2024.
Sharing behind-the-scenes
Our ongoing dedication to transparency is reflected in our efforts to share what’s happening behind the scenes at TerraCycle. Explore a wealth of new videos and additional content highlighting how our recycling process works. Read all about what sets TerraCycle apart from a typical recycling company, and watch how we recycle hard-to-recycle rubbish like cigarettes, beauty waste, and coffee capsules.
We guarantee to recycle all accepted waste sent to us and invest in internal audits and third-party accreditation of our supply chains.
Innovating with waste
Loop, our global reuse platform, reached major milestones in 2023, including over 100,000 reusable products sold. We expanded our presence with key partners, including Carrefour in France (120+ stores) and Aeon in Japan (100+ stores).
As a leader in waste innovation, we continue to push the boundaries, like delivering baby wellness insights from poopy diapers through TerraCycle Discovery or creating the world’s first cradle-to-cradle (closed loop) pen in partnership with Pilot in Japan.
What’s next
TerraCycle continuously advocates and works to advance the circular economy, always focused on our mission of Eliminating the Idea of Waste®. This year:
- TerraCycle and Loop were early signatories of the Global Plastics Treaty in development by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC). TerraCycle sent a delegation to participate in the INC-2 and INC-3 Treaty negotiations.
- We submitted commentary on the need to update the US Federal Trade Commission Green Guides to clarify claims surrounding recycling.
- TerraCycle/Loop was invited to provide public testimony at a US subcommittee hearing on “Solutions for Single-Use Waste: Expanding Refill and Reuse Infrastructure.”
- The TerraCycle Global Foundation reached 2 million pounds of waste removed from waterways, keeping rubbish from reaching our oceans.
TerraCycle’s core purpose is to combat the global waste crisis, and we’ve been working for two decades as a mission-driven company to address it. We’ll continue to be at the forefront of new and innovative solutions to eliminate the idea of waste, and we thank you for being an important part of our journey to move from a linear economy to a circular one.
Tom Szaky
CEO and founder of TerraCycle and Loop
P.s. We’re always listening and learning. If you have comments, questions, or ideas you’d like to share, send me an email.
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