Expanded TerraCycle recycling is here at the Coop!


Where:
Outside of the Coop except during inclement weather when collection will be held inside the Coop

Times:
2nd Wednesday of the month 3:45-6pm
4th Saturday of the month 1:45-4pm
(Please try to come at least 15 minutes before the end of the shift.)

New expanded plastic collection for Coop members only! 
Please be ready to show your membership card. 

New items collected:
  • Plastic bags/wrapping/packaging from most Coop items (both food and non food items.)
  • Plastic roll bags distributed by the Coop.
  • Thin plastic film wrapping from items such as cheese, meat, toilet paper, tea boxes etc. 
NO foil backed packaging is accepted at the moment.

The regular TerraCycle collection is still available to Coop and non-Coop members!

Ongoing community collection items:
  • Toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes, any brand and size.
  • Baby food pouches and caps, any brand
  • Energy bar wrappers (any brand but only energy bars)
  • Brita and other similar water filters
  • Plastic food storage zip loc bags, cling wrap and small bulk bags such as the bags used for spice, nuts and dried fruit.
  • Plastic cereal and cracker bags (no foil packaging)
NO shopping bags
Food residue and paper labels OK
It was a scorching June afternoon that heralded the arrival of the expanded TerraCycle collection here at the Park Slope Food Coop.
ONLY SOFT PLASTIC FROM COOP PURCHASES.  More than one Fresh Direct labeled ziploc bag was handed back to sheepish members.  Why?  The Coop has to pay extra for the items in this expanded collection. 
Donations of any amount are welcome!
Please wash food residue before handing over.  The TerraCycle committee cannot send off plastic with food on it and if your plastic is dirty you will be asked to pop into the Coop to rinse it off.
It is really helpful to try and sort the various types of plastic if possible.  The TerraCycle squad will always help but collections can get busy.  Any extra organizing beforehand is always welcome.
Remember that everything from toothpaste to baby food pouches are collected.
 The youngest member of the TerraCycle squad hits up the plastic sorting.  If a five year old can sort plastic there's hope for all of us.
That's a girl's size amount of plastic waste saved 
from landfills and out of our environment.








Tom, a Coop member for five years says this about the TerraCycle collection. 
"I love it. I wish we could recycle everything. I wish we could do the dry cleaning bags. I wish we could do more. I would be all for that. It sickens me to see the amount of plastic we can't get rid of."
Tom has used roll bags only half a dozen times in five years. We can't all be Tom but we can certainly make sure our roll bags get recycled. Single use plastic is the most commonly used plastic found to affect wildlife.


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