Walmart is collaborating with international recycling provider TerraCycle to introduce the Walmart Hub Recycling Program. Through the program, consumers can bring all brands of coffee capsules, water filters, plastic bottles, soft plastic food packaging, and rigid plastic packaging to participating Springdale, Ark. and Broken Arrows, Okla. Walmart supercenter locations, as well as at the Fayetteville, Ark., Sam’s Club store.
Shoppers can bring their accepted waste which is not curbside recyclable to the designated recycling hubs that are positioned outside the participating Walmart and Sam’s Club locations. When the hub station is full, TerraCycle will pick up and transport the waste to regional material recovery facilities where it will be sorted by material type and recycled into raw materials that can be used to make new products, like playgrounds and park benches.
Walmart is intentionally rolling out its new recycling program in time for the holiday season, when TerraCycle data indicates Americans throw away 25% more trash than any other time of year, amounting to nearly 25 million tons of excess waste. “Plastic food and beverage packaging is an often-overlooked waste stream that plays an important role in our daily lives,” said Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle. “Most are not aware that soft plastic food packaging, for instance, is usually multilayered and consists of multiple different materials, excluding it from curbside recycling. That’s why this waste stream, along with water filters, plastic bottles, coffee capsules and rigid plastic packaging, was included in the Walmart Hub Recycling Program— to offer consumers an easy way to celebrate the holidays sustainably, without guilt over the waste that food and beverage products produce.”