Pass Us the Baton…We’ll Run the Anchor Leg!
NOTE: We ended our lease at 123 Narragansett Avenue. We are arranging our new drop-off locations for your recycle and upcycle items. In the mean time, we will happily pick them up from you! Just arrange a date by emailing info@liveandlearnri.com. And stay tuned as we share our new drop-off locations.
If you have items that require payment, you can do that online with a donation. Scroll down to see our list of free items to recycle!
New!! We have started Textile Upcycling, collecting donations of unwearable textiles (shirts etc.) to be turned into shop rags for painters and mechanics. We call them Re-Rags! Until we relocate our donation boxes in town, you can arrange for a pick-up of your donated items by emailing info@liveandlearnri.com.
How Does Relay Recycling Help?
Like us, you may be paying attention to the world of recycling and see that it is not a well-functioning system and the items we send to be recycled are frequently thrown away in the end. So why bother trying to recycle more? Many companies partner with recycling companies like Terracycle, but only pay for the recycling when people actually box up their product packaging and send it off. The company can set the amount they’re willing to pay Terracycle (cutting off recycling after that point) and still advertise their packaging is recyclable. It is very possible that companies set up an account with Terracycle sufficient to offset a measure of recycling and then never think further about improving their packaging from the beginning. The onus shouldn’t be on the consumer to expand viable recycling, but change is often driven by the consumer. Help us send the message that we want companies to recycle their packaging, and make better packaging, less packaging. The more we send their stuff in to be recycled, the more they know we want them to create less wasteful packaging.
We’ve done an audit of all of our vendors and the real-time success of our recycling efforts in the complicated, and not always honest, world of recycling. After a thorough review, we have decided to partner almost exclusively with Terracycle, based in New Jersey, which does in-house recycling and has more1 transparent processes and programs for recycling. They in turn partner with many name-brands to offer members free recycling. Check out our free recycling options!
We also offer several recycling streams through Terracycle that require payment (see the list below). Unfortunately, we no longer offer styrofoam recycling. It is too expensive and untenable to recycle. We hate it!
1 Recent investigations into Terracycle’s exact data on items fully recycled have yielded unclear information. We are watching, fingers crossed, to see how Terracycle is ultimately graded on its recycling processes.
Pay to Recycle These Items:
1. Snack Bags, Candy Wrappers (check the free list for specific brands that are free to recycle)
2. Plastic Packaging (the plastic all of our random stuff comes wrapped up in)
3. Anything plastic that isn’t on our free list.
We charge $25 per grocery bag amount. You can give us smaller amounts of stuff and divide up the price accordingly. Honor system rules!
Free to Recycle Through Live & Learn!
ALL Food Storage Containers
ALL Brands Razors, Blades, Packaging
ALL Electronic Devices and Accessories
Arm & Hammer Pouches
Babybel packaging
Bags, like grocery bags
Batteries
Bimbo Bakery Bags
Black + Decker Small Appliances
Brita filters and pitchers
Bubble wrap
Burt’s Bees Products
Carter’s Baby & Kid Clothing
Colgate Brushes & Packaging
Earthborn Packaging
Eos Products
Eukanuba packaging
Garnier containers, packaging
Gerber containers & packaging
Gillette Razors
GoGo squeezZ pouches
Hasbro toys
Halogen Light Bulbs
Head & Shoulders Containers
Herbal Essences Containers
Honest Kids Drink Pouches
I and Love and You packaging
Late July Packaging
Lundberg Family Farms Packaging
Open Farm Packaging
Oxyclean pouches
Royal Canin packaging
Socks, worn out but clean, any brand
Stasher Bags
Takis Bags
Tom’s of Maine Products
Vtech Toys
Weleda Packaging
Wellness Pet Food Bags
Why are we doing this? Well, our motto is Do What We Can Now and Adapt As We Learn More. Recycling is a complicated and vexed issue with cost and viability at the forefront of discussions. Certainly, it would be vastly better if there were one centralized system for recycling everything that can be recycled, but alas. Recycling has developed in a piecemeal fashion and has relied heavily on shipping our waste to other countries to be “recycled”. Our society will always be throwing things away, though hopefully more responsibly. Live & Learn is all in on reducing the contents of our landfills and the overflow that ends up in our rivers and oceans. Will recycling change significantly in the next decade? Almost certainly. But rather than do nothing and wait, we’ll do what we can now and adapt as we learn more.
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