Reviewing the residual stream!

At The Norfolk Wave Recycling Centre, we have been achieving a consistent 75% recycling rate for many months now! This is a testament to the community’s great efforts, and the teams' hard work and commitment to resource recovery. Sitting on a steady rate like this indicates to us that improvements are likely to come about by scrutinising the 25% residual stream. In doing so we can identify materials that we can work to reduce, or perhaps find third-party programs that will recycle products that we don’t. Just because WE can’t recycle them, does not mean they aren’t recyclable!

One such initiative that we have been using is Terracycle! Terracycle specialises in recycling the difficult-to-recycle! They do so by partnering with big brands that sponsor the end-of-life of their products. We signed up for three Terracycle programs and have been using them consistently. To date, we have collected and sent off: 11kg of disposable razors; 40kg of dental hygiene products; and 86kg of spray bottle tops!

The “collection point’ for these items is a filing cabinet situated at the drop-off roller doors at The Norfolk Wave. By placing your items into these drawers, we can keep them out of the residual waste stream that is exported to landfill.

We had a community member ask about the best way to utilise the Colgate Dental Hygiene program, because in our five-stream system, things like dental floss and old toothbrushes should belong in the sanitary stream. You are not incorrect if you put these items into the sanitary stream. However now that we have this wonderful program, it would help us to help you if any oral hygiene products are kept separate and placed into the filing cabinet! This program accepts toothbrushes, denture brushes, electric toothbrush heads, dental floss and packaging, toothpaste tubes, and dental picks. Anything that keeps your pearly whites pearly white!

So if you’re keen to jump on the Terracycle train with us, and reduce our outfall to landfill, please use the filing cabinet out front for your items! (There is additional information about the individual programs on each drawer).

We’ve got our sights set on 80% diversion from landfill!

Thaenks f aklan

The Norfolk Wave team