Spring cleaning has always been a messy job, and it can produce lots of garbage: plastic air freshener cartridges and the blister packs they come in; trigger heads on spray bottles; screw caps from bathroom and kitchen cleaners; used packages of disposable cleaning wipes, and more.
Now you can drop off your ‘cleaner waste’ at new drop boxes installed at 78 London Drugs stores stores across Western Canada, through a pilot program launched by Febreeze and Terracycle.
The items are technically recyclable, however, the high cost of separating mixed plastics means the infrastructure to recycle them isn’t available across the country.
This prompted Febreze (a Procter & Gamble brand) and TerraCycle to join together with London Drugs in an effort to make recycling easier for consumers.
Residents in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan will find clearly marked drop-off boxes at London Drugs stores, into which they can deposit their home cleaning and air-freshening waste.
Once full, the boxes will be picked up by UPS and shipped to TerraCycle, an independent recycling agency specializing in diverting from landfill what municipalities deem “non-recyclable.”
“We have seen a number of great successes in our partnership with TerraCycle, and we are proud to be able to expand upon the types of items our customers can recycle,” said Maury McCausland, Retail Operations Sustainability Specialist at London Drugs. “This program is a natural extension to our Bring Back the Pack and What’s the Green Deal? programs, so we expect to see great engagement from those who are dedicated to diverting waste from our landfills.”
“We’re thrilled to be working on this new in-store recycling program,” adds TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky. “Diverting home cleaning waste from landfill is a huge job, but with these drop-off boxes, it’s made easy — whenever you’re planning a visit to London Drugs, you bring your used trigger heads along and leave them at the store. We take care of the rest.”
The Air and Home Care Brigade contributes two cents for each item of waste toward a charity – all money raised from customer drop-offs to the London Drugs pilot program will be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society.
Air and Home Care Brigade accepted waste:
- All brands and sizes of plastic air fresheners, plastic electronic (i.e. plug in) air fresheners and plastic air freshener cartridges (including plastic car air freshener products).
- All brands of plastic bottle trigger heads and pumps (used for air care and home cleaning products such as kitchen / bathroom cleaner sprays) and flexible cleaning wipe packaging (intended for home cleaning.
- All related flexible plastic air care and home care product packaging of any brand (please remove any cardboard (usually the back) or other recyclable components first and recycle these with your household collections).
- Please check with your local council to see if plastic bottle caps (for air care products, and washing up liquid bottles) can be recycled locally – where a solution is available please recycle the caps locally – if no local solution is available these can also be sent in for recycling
For more info on the Brigade, see http://www.terracycle.ca/en-CA/brigades/air-care-brigade.html
