Millions of plastic gloves end up in the trash every year, which has a serious impact on the environment. At fast-casual dining chain Chipotle, workers are required to swap gloves hourly, plus any time they switch tasks. That piles up quickly: Each location goes through around 150,000 gloves per year, 95 percent of which end up in landfills.
Traditional recycling facilities can’t process polyethylene gloves, so they’re usually thrown out and end up in landfills. For Chipotle, that comes out to a staggering 375 million gloves per year across all its locations.
Under the pilot program, which has rolled out at eateries in Portland, Oregon and Sacramento, California, employees drop their used gloves into a cardboard box. Once the box fills up, it’s sealed and shipped to Revolution’s plant in Salinas, California. The gloves then are cleaned, shredded, and turned into tiny pellets that are melted down to form the bags.