Zero Waste Bags to the Rescue
You may have already seen our announcement on social media, or perused the new page on our website but here’s a little more info on our new collaboration with TerraCycle: Zero Waste Bags.
It’s a service to help you recycle hard-to-recycle items from your doorstep, on your time frame. We are adding this service onto our other offerings of container-swap composting and zero waste event consulting and management.
How it works
You buy a zero waste bag from us. (If you’re using a credit card, you can do that on our website. If you want to use another form of payment, please contact customer service.) We sell 3 different sizes: small, large and extra-large. You choose which bag size to purchase based on the waste stream you want to divert. There are 24 to choose from! You choose one waste stream for each bag. When the bag is full and ready for pickup, you go back to the page on our website where you bought the bag and request a bag pickup. If you're already composting with us, there’s no fee for the pickup. We’ll pick it up with your next swapout. If you’re not yet a customer, the pickup is $15 for as many bags as you need picked up.
Why are we doing this?
We see such a need for this in our community. Though we’re all striving for zero waste, some compromises need to be made. Some communities offer special collection events, but what if you’re not available to attend? Can you realistically hang onto it all another year or until the next collection event? What if you’re downsizing and need to clean out an entire house?
Building community around sustainability is part of our mission statement. We see this collaboration as a way for us to build a bigger community but also for members of our community to build their own communities around sustainability. I like the idea of friends and neighbors sharing these bags. For instance, I knew that I had some Brita water filters to recycle but not enough to fill even the small bag. So I posted on a few local Facebook groups. It turned out, a lot of people had a few stashed in a closet, just like me.
Make good choices
We realize that you are going to make your own choices. But, we don’t want you to add these hard-to-recycle items to your households just because we’re offering this service. For example, we don’t want you to start using coffee capsules just because you have a way to recycle them easily. Reduce, reuse, recycle is still the hierarchy we encourage.
Local
There may be ways for you to redistribute some of these items to directly benefit your communities. Please explore those first, if possible. For example, fabric could be offered to local makers. Clothing could be donated to rummage sales or refugee organizations. But for things that would otherwise end up in the landfill, zero waste bags might be the perfect solution.
All Bag Pickups Need to be Scheduled
When your bags are full, please go to the TerraCycle Recycling page on our website. Click the orange bar that says Request Bag Pickup. That takes you to the store where you can let us know how many bags you have ready for pickup and where you can also buy more bags. If you’re one of our composting customers, the bag pickup fee is waived and you can have as many bags as you have filled picked up. If you’d like the bag or bags picked up sooner than your next compost swapout, the $15 pickup fee would apply. Talk to customer service and they will let you know if they can arrange a quicker pickup.
Spring Cleaning
These bags have helped me to take a look around my apartment to see what has just been sitting here, taking up space while I figured out a solution. And it’s here!
