Plastic bags are deposited into a store drop-off recycling bin. Thousands of retail locations and consumer brands in the US participate in the How2Recycle program.
Photographer: Hannah Beier/BloombergDon’t Trust Plastic Snack Wrappers With Recycling Instructions
A plastic drop-off program embraced by 12,000 retail locations and more than 500 brands in the US has been putting packaging into landfills.
The former teen idol Zac Efron is riding a skateboard, and then he’s dressed for some reason in a bee-keeper’s uniform. He’s talking about the “pretty freaking cool” second life of recycled plastics, including the wrappers of Nature Valley granola bars, that have been ground down to make park benches and picnic tables. “The planet deserves better,” Efron says, “and in-store recycling is an easy first step.”
This 2021 video posted to Efron’s Instagram account received nearly 7 million likes. The sponsor, food giant General Mills Inc., worked with the High School Musical star in an effort to spread the word about a recycling program that uses “store drop-off” labeling. It’s become a last line of defense against landfills for companies that sell plastic-wrapped consumer products. Municipal recycling programs almost always reject flimsy, low-value packaging materials.