TerraCycle Recycling Models for Beauty, Personal Care Packaging Outperform Municipal Waste Options

TerraCycle has released new findings of a third-party verified life cycle assessment (LCA) that evaluates the environmental effectiveness of four different TerraCycle collection and recycling models for post-consumer beauty and personal care packaging recycling in the US. 

According to TerraCycle, the LCA showed that across the eight key impact categories considered, including global warming potential, human carcinogenic toxicity, and fossil resource scarcity, all of the TerraCycle collection and recycling models outperformed traditional municipal waste management options by a collective average of 74% compared to local municipal landfilling, and by an average of 67% compared to incineration for waste to energy models.

“On average, TerraCycle’s beauty recycling programs create 70% less carbon emissions than incineration for waste-to-energy and 55% less than municipal landfill models,” said Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle. “This LCA quantifies the significant environmental benefits of choosing recycling over standard waste management methods. Our specialized recycling solutions not only tackle the global warming potential (carbon emissions) but also address other critical impact categories, showing that recycling is a best-in-class approach to managing post-consumer beauty and personal care packaging waste.”

The goal of the LCA was to evaluate, quantify and compare the environmental impacts of TerraCycle’s four core recycling models against the municipal waste management scenarios in the uS.  The impact of all six models was assessed against the categories of Global Warming Potential (carbon emissions), Ozone Formation – Human Health, Freshwater Eutrophication, Freshwater Ecotoxicity, Human Carcinogenic Toxicity, Human Non-Carcinogenic Toxicity, Fossil Resource Scarcity and Water Consumption.

The results, say the Trenton, NJ-based organization, show that the TerraCycle recycling models have lower environmental impacts than the local municipal waste management models across all categories considered in this study.

Here are results shared by TerraCycle:

Getting to a Circular Economy

“We’re really happy with the study results and plan to continue conducting more LCAs,” stated Szaky. “But we also recognize TerraCycle’s recycling solutions aren’t the sole fix for the world’s waste crisis. To achieve a truly circular economy, we need to buy less and embrace reuse on a large scale, along with strong global legislation such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Deposit Return Schemes (DRS). In the meantime, TerraCycle will continue to offer recycling solutions to keep waste out of  landfills and incinerators.”