Waste management company TerraCycle’s Zero Waste Box hopes to provide a ‘recycling solution’ for single-use PPE items, such as gloves and face masks.
Zero Waste BoxThe system will offer individuals, households, schools, businesses, manufacturing facilities and events an opportunity to recycle single-use PPE, material considered ‘non-recyclable’ in traditional recycling systems.
According to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), from 25 February 2020 to 30 June 2022, it ‘distributed 21.5 billion items of PPE, predominantly for use by health and social care services in England’.
As a result, the recycling company has highlighted a need to ‘rethink our attitude to recycling and find a sustainable solution for this kind of waste’.
Julien Tremblin, General Manager of TerraCycle, told Resource that so far, ‘3,705 boxes for gloves, masks and other personal protective equipment’ have been sold, resulting in ‘9,449.92kg of waste’ being returned by customers.
It is hoped that Zero Waste Boxes, placed in various public spaces, will prevent PPE waste from ending up in landfill, contaminating waterways, becoming litter on the street and being incinerated.
Waste is sent to TerraCycle by customers using the ‘pre-paid and pre-attached shipping label which comes with each Zero Waste Box’, Julien Tremblin explained to Resource. When the boxes are full, customers can schedule a collection with UPS and the box will be delivered to the company’s ‘Materials Recovery FAcility’ in Darwen, Lancashire. Here, it will be weighed upon receipt.
TerraCycle will then store and aggregate the collected PPE waste ‘until the necessary volumes of processing have been achieved’, Julien Tremblin said. Following this, waste is sorted into categories based on material composition, done ‘using a wide array of sorting technologies including manual sortation, size separation, sink/float, optical, air density, gravity and magnetic’.
Source: Resource
Date: 10 August