MAY 26th The TerraCycle Vote happens at General Meeting. Come and Vote!

  


What is Terracycle?

TerraCycle is a highly-awarded, international upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products, that would otherwise be destined for landfills, and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products. More than just a recycling company, TerraCycle strives to be a driving force behind increasing environmental awareness and action. Their goal is to be a trusted resource for families, schools, communities, and corporations to find tips, stats, facts. TerraCycle is widely considered the world’s leader in the collection and reuse of non-recyclable, post-consumer waste. You can go to their website at www.terracycle.com to learn more about them.


LEARN MORE ABOUT TERRACYCLE by clicking HERE

On May 26th at The Park Slope Food Coop's General Meeting the vote to bring TerraCycle to the Coop will happen. Show up and make your voice heard.

Here is the report and proposal that will be voted on.

Environmental Committee Report
By Rosemary Calderon
 
The Environmental Committee brings you more opportunities for recycling: PSFC partnering with TerraCycle.

In January, February and March the Environmental Committee held three recycling waste collections to introduce coop members to the TerraCycle program for free collection of waste currently not accepted by New York City recycling.  Over the 3 months, awareness of the collection spread and participation grew larger each time. Members asked for more ongoing collections.  The message is clear: Coop members are committed to recycling! 

The next step is to weave these collections into the fabric of our coop lifestyle by creating ongoing monthly collections by way of instituting a minimum of two work shifts per month; three work shifts if there is enough demand.  Each work shift will have a minimum of 3 work slots.  Advancing these collections to regular monthly work shifts can only happen if coop members vote in favor of creating these monthly work shifts at the upcoming General Meeting. 

How does it work?

The PSFC signs up for what are called TerraCycle “brigades.”   These brigades are non-contractual and free to join. TerraCycle provides free shipping labels for the collected packaging materials to be sent to them. The coop incurs no fees to participate in any of the brigades.

Exactly what sorts of waste are we collecting?

Currently the EC is focusing on the following Brigades: 

1) Cling plastic wrap, plastic sandwich bags and all sizes of zip lock plastic storage bags--This will allow us to recycle not only the regular plastic sandwich and larger storage bags, but more importantly, the small plastic bulk bags (though NOT the larger roll bags or shopping bags) and cling wrap, for example, used on bulk cheese.  The bags and cling wrap do not have to be cleaned and the pricing sticker can remain on the small bulk bags and cling wrap.

2) Baby food pouches and caps—any brand

3) Cereal bag liners—these are the liners that come in cereal boxes, cracker boxes, the larger bulk cereal bags not in boxes, and similar such liners

4) Energy bar wrappers—any brand

5) Toothpaste tubes---any brand

6) Brita water filters and any part having to do with a Brita Water Filter system—other water filter brands are also accepted

How does this benefit coop members?

The benefit to coop members is intrinsic in that it provides us the well-being of keeping more waste out of the landfill. Additionally, once our waste is received and checked in to the TerraCycle facility, the PSFC will be credited with any TerraCycle points we may have earned for our waste. TerraCycle points can be redeemed for a variety of charitable gifts, or a payment of $0.01 per point is made to non-profit organization or school of our choice. We would direct any funds raised to non-profit projects/organizations currently supported by the Coop—the soup kitchen, environmental efforts, and supporting the establishment of more food coops.

We look for your support to establish ongoing work shifts for monthly collections with a vote at the upcoming General Meeting.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NYC Lags Behind Other Cities in Recycling

Image
The October 21 New York Times featured an article titled, Lunch, Landfills, and What I Tossed . Author Mireya Navarro counted up the waste she produced in a week's worth of take out lunches: "Saving all the packaging from a week’s worth of takeout food, I ended up with three plastic yogurt containers, a paper salad box, a paper cereal bowl, two Styrofoam plates, one plastic salad-dressing container and seven plastic food containers — the rigid ones with snap-on lids. Also, five plastic cups (each with a plastic straw), a paper cup with a plastic lid, a plastic water bottle and a plain old paper cup (it held milk for my cereal). Also, one plastic fork, one plastic knife and two compostable plastic spoons, which I threw out rather than composting." Besides the individual trying to brown bag it and otherwise cut down on waste, there is another problem--New York City is lagging behind many others in its recycling: "A survey by the Natural Resources Defense Council this...
Read more

Worried About Climate Change?

Image
Worried about climate change? With the largest climate demonstration in history coming to our town next Sunday it’s a good time to think about how plastic contributes to climate change. Plastic use releases hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year – an amount that could be greatly reduced by recycling more plastic and finding alternatives to everyday plastic items that we really don’t need. Think about it the next time you’re in the coop pulling plastic bags off the roll for your produce or bulk items. Just by getting into the habit of reusing plastic bags or replacing them with cloth bags, each of us can decrease our personal contribution to climate change while we’re lobbying world governments to take the big, urgent actions needed to avert climate disaster. Want to make your own cloth bags? Come to the Coop Environmental Committee's Big Sewing Event, Sunday, November 9, beginning at noon in the community room upstairs at the coop.
Read more

A Banana for Your Thoughts

Image
We're all about reducing waste, and it makes it easier if you have a great new use for would-be waste. Banana peels, for instance. Did you know that a banana peel can be used to remove splinters, polish silverware, polish shoes, reduce the itch of insect bites, and more. Get the details on reusing banana peels . Thanks to Kat G. for passing on this tip! After you're finished using your banana peels and other food waste, you can compost them. If you don't have your own compost, the Grand Army Plaza green market as well as others accepts compostable waste .
Read more