Time to TerraCycle your blister packs at Superdrug
From pain killers to multivitamins, all our bathroom cabinets will be stuffed full of the blister packs that most tablets now come in. And according to research by pharma business Sanofi, 49% of us will be using these on a daily basis.
But as convenient as these packs may be, their complex construction means they can't be recycled, making them the worst kind of straight-to-landfill plastic. So it's encouraging to see Sanofi building on their research learnings, and forming a new partnership with Terracycle to do something about this problem in the form of the Little Packs Big Impact campaign. And importantly for effectiveness, Superdrug are on board as a 'post box' location.
If Terracycle are new to you, then I'd encourage you to find out more. Rather than seeing landfill or litter as the only option for unrecyclable materials, they actually take a positive step back up the 6 Rs and look to repurpose instead. Thinking sustainability first, they turn our unwanted waste into something useful and long-lasting, such as garden furniture or playground equipment.
The only problem with Terracycle programmes is that it can sometimes be difficult to find a drop-off point, as they are generally local, grassroots initiatives. That's why corporate involvement is so important as it can help to close the circle.
And retailers in particular have an important role to play here. As in this case with Superdrug, they provide a much needed, easily accessible physical location that makes behaviour change simple to enact. When it's on our highstreets we have no excuses.
And given that this is where most of our destructive packaging is coming from in the first place, it would be great to see more retailers getting directly involved and setting up their own TerraCycling initiatives