An Isle of Wight fancy dress and film collectable shop has raised more than £1,500 for local charities including The Footprint Trust by collecting ‘unrecyclable’ waste from the community to be recycled.
The waste collected by Master of Disguise in Newport ranges from writing instruments to confectionery and cheese wrappers, plastic toys and much more. This waste is not included in council kerbside recycling collections so has traditionally been destined for landfill or incineration.
Once dropped off at the shop, the waste is recycled by TerraCycle, the world leader in recycling hard-to-recycle waste.
For every unit of waste collected TerraCycle points are earned which are redeemed as monetary donations to The Footprint Trust, a charity that specialises in helping the Isle of Wight community reduce their energy consumption, cutting emissions whilst helping those in fuel poverty to stay warm.
The drop-off point was set up by the owners of Master of Disguise Lorraine and Robin Flux after they signed up for a number of TerraCycle’s free recycling programmes. These include the Pladis Biscuits and Snacks Recycling Programme, The Cathedral City Cheese Packaging Recycling Programme, the Hasbro Toy and Games Recycling Programme and the Air, Home and Laundry care Recycling Programme.
Thousands of units of waste have been collected so far, and local residents are encouraged to continue to drop off their waste at Master of Disguise in St Thomas’ Square, Newport to ensure it is recycled and to boost the fundraising efforts. The drop off point is open from Monday to Saturday, 10:00-17:00.
Lorraine explains:
“As a business serving the community, we feel we have a responsibility to give everyone access to resources that help protect the planet and our island. TerraCycle’s programmes play an important role in this as they allow the community to recycle the items that the council doesn’t collect.
Article continues below this advertisement “We’re a local business helping a local charity, and we rely on the support of the community to make the drop-off location a success. We’ve already raised a great amount of money for the Footprint Trust and collected a lot of waste, but we can collect more. We’d encourage everyone to get involved and come into the shop or take a look at our website to learn more about the programmes we collect on and start dropping off their waste.
The collected waste is sent to TerraCycle and is recycled by shredding, cleaning and turning into plastic pellets which can then be used by manufacturers to create new generic plastic products, such as outdoor equipment – reducing the need to extract new resources from the planet.
An excellent initiative – well done!