Pass Us the Baton…We’ll Run the Anchor Leg!
Drop off your items in our recycle box at your convenience. If you have items that require payment, you can do that online with a donation.
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. Then they can set the amount they’re willing to pay and still say their packaging is recyclable, even if only two people choose to do it. 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 greater is the pressure 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 Brands Writing Instruments
ALL Food Storage Containers
ALL Brands Razors, Blades, Packaging
ALL Electronic Devices and Accessories
Arm & Hammer Pouches
Bags, like grocery bags
Ballpark packaging
Batteries, only re-usable
Bic pens
Bubble wrap
Burts Bees Products
Eos Products
Garnier containers, packaging
Gilette Razors
Hasbro toys
hello containers, packaging
Halogen Light Bulbs
Late July Packaging
Leapfrog Toys
Open Farm Packaging
Oxyclean pouches
Rubbermaid food storage containers
Saralee packaging
Solo Cups (all #6 plastic cups)
Thomas Bread, Baked Goods Packaging
Tom’s of Maine Products
Vtech Toys
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 we aren’t there. Recycling has developed in a piecemeal fashion and is still trying to adapt from the loss of the Chinese market. Our society will always be throwing things away, though hopefully less and less. 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.
liveandlearnri.com 