by Michael Smith (Veshengro) Scotch Brand transparent tape, has teamed up with TerraCycle, Inc., the upcycling company, and have created a program to recover and reuse clear plastic tape dispensers and cores. The test program will begin later in 2009 and will involve the collection of more than 25,000 dispensers through 1,000 TerraCycle collection programs, called "Brigades."
The Scotch Tape Brigades will collect empty clear plastic tape dispensers and cores and pay two cents per dispenser to a charity of the collector's choice. The Scotch Brand will then take the items and reuse them for their original purpose.
"We are thrilled to be working with a company such as 3M and their Scotch Brand," said TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky. "Traditionally, we have taken packaging and turned it into other products, so to take the original product and continue its traditional life cycle is an exciting new opportunity for us and them."
TerraCycle's Brigades divert packaging waste from landfills and help raise consumer awareness about reducing, reusing and recycling. By encouraging people to rethink 'what is waste,' TerraCycle is making it simple for consumers to have a positive impact on the environment.
I must say that to me it has never made sense that Scotch tape came in those “one time use” dispensers and now it is good too see that, together with TerraCycle, those dispensers will be collected, as well as the cores, and put back to use.
Being from old Gypsy stock the mindset of waste management has been with me since childhood and we have been recycling and upcycling before either word was invented.
The cores of such sticky tapes, whether Scotch 3M or Cellotape or Tesa, always were something that I looked at as to how they could be reused but often never found an answer to that.
The best way is the way that Scotch 3M is now going in conjunction with TerraCycle by bringing the dispensers and cores back into use for the very purpose they were initially intended. It can't get much better.
© 2009
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