Introducing our new Terracycling Station

Bradford on Avon Town Council is always looking for innovative ways to improve our environment, reduce the town’s carbon footprint and support community initiatives.

So when Ruth Walton, local blogger from The Green Shopper and member of Plastic Free Bradford on Avon and the Climate Friendly BoA Zero Waste Group approached the Environment & Planning Committee at the end of 2020 with an idea to create a central Terracycling Station for the town, members supported the idea, in line with the Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy and instructed officers to forge ahead with the idea.

What is Terracycle?

According to their website https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB

‘TerraCycle is Eliminating the Idea of Waste® by recycling the “non-recyclable.” Whether it’s coffee capsules from your home, pens from a school, or plastic gloves from a manufacturing facility, TerraCycle can collect and recycle almost any form of waste.

We partner with individual collectors, as well as major consumer product companies, retailers, manufacturers, municipalities, and small businesses across 20 different countries. With your help, we are able to divert millions of pounds of waste from landfills and incinerators each month.’

On their website, you can find locations to where various items can be taken via an interactive map, and some of these are already at locations around Bradford on Avon – crisp packets, for example, are collected at the Co-op in the centre of town.

Ruth Walton explained why she approached the Town Council with the idea:

“Terracycle is a great way to increase the local recycling facilities. It’s really hard to avoid plastics and packaging altogether – but recycling is always better than putting them in the bin.
It’s an easy way to reduce black-bin waste and stop plastics from being incinerated in ‘energy from waste’ schemes. It also raises money for charity!

In the future I hope that there will be even more options for zero waste and plastic-free shopping, and more people will switch to eco-friendly options like toothpaste tabs, bamboo toothbrushes and refillable printer inks, so there won’t be a need for this kind of scheme! “

Following the E&P Committee’s decision, officers selected the Youth & Community Centre (see location HERE) as our Terracycling Station location, repairing and renovating a previously unused external store which will be open from 10am – 4pm on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

We hope to add more schemes over the coming weeks/months, so keep an eye on our website and social media for updates.

Find out more about what you can recycle and what happens to your packaging for each of the schemes we are participating in below: