TerraCycle, Thomas Scientific program recycles used gloves

TRENTON, N.J.—All of the disposable PPE stacking up in rubber industry clean rooms and laboratories could end up somewhere other than landfills.

In flooring, for instance. Or even athletic fields.

And it's all possible because of a partnership, one that brought recycler TerraCycle together with lab equipment and chemical provider Thomas Scientific L.L.C.

The mission—or challenge—they chose to accept was to find an efficient method and sustainable solution to recycle the 12 billion pounds of waste, or the equivalent weight of 400 Brooklyn Bridges, every year produced by research labs.

"While even complex trash is technically recyclable, most materials are not profitable to recycle through local recycling companies," Kyle Riggs, TerraCycle North American director for Zero Waste, wrote in an email to Rubber News. "As a result, waste piles up in landfills while virgin materials are extracted from the earth to create new products."

Single-use personal protective equipment (from masks to gloves) is one kind of material that is hard to recycle in traditional recycling systems. It costs so much more for local recyclers to collect and process than the resulting materials are worth in the end.

TerraCycle is able to recycle such waste streams through its Zero Waste Boxes, paid recycling services where interested locations can fund the actual cost of collecting and recycling this waste stream minus what the resulting recycled materials are worth.

It's a concept that translates to PPE.

"TerraCycle works with its partners to expand its services to recycle additional waste streams and to grow the number of participating locations in the program. For example, we are working with Thomas Scientific to address additional waste streams, such as rigid plastics and other types of PPE," Riggs said.

Thomas Scientific is partnering with TerraCycle to offer companies that purchase single-use disposable gloves from Thomas Scientific a sustainable recycling solution for the gloves after they have been used.

Single-use lab gloves can be made out of plastic, nitrile, vinyl and latex. All types of gloves can be recycled through the TerraCycle and Thomas Scientific partnership regardless of brand.

Disposable gloves are integral for protection in any laboratory setting, and Thomas Scientific is offering its customers a turnkey recycling solution through the use of TerraCycle's Disposable Gloves Zero Waste Pallet program.

"Thomas Scientific has distributed TerraCycle's Zero Waste Boxes since 2016," Diane Skala, vice president of corporate and supplier marketing services at Thomas Scientific, told Rubber News. "Thomas' interest in the zero-waste pallets came about from a Thomas Scientific customer's desire to have the ability to recycle nitrile examination gloves. Their current recycling provider only offered to recycle one brand of gloves. Thomas' customer wanted the capabilities to recycle across various brands, but more importantly, looked for a better service solution from a reputable organization that provided full transparency and certification on recycled materials."

So Thomas Scientific partnered with TerraCycle to launch the Zero Waste Pallet program on Oct. 20. It started with the one customer, but interest in the program is growing, particularly across the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico.

There are just a few steps to using the Zero Waste Pallet Program, starting with ordering and implementing the program. It is open to anyone using gloves in clean rooms, research laboratories and more applications.

In accordance with legal guidelines, TerraCycle cannot accept medical waste, such as material contaminated with blood or bodily fluids or wastes from health care facilities, hospitals, home care, doctors' offices, dental offices, blood banks, veterinary clinics or research laboratories.

Customers who purchase and use single-use disposable gloves can order a pallet from Thomas Scientific. The order is shipped directly to the lab placing the order.

Upon receipt of the Zero Waste Pallet, employees set up the collection station in a high-traffic location in the laboratory. The PPE (such as disposable face masks, visors, disposable gloves, ear plugs, beard nets, hair nets, safety glasses or disposable garments) are collected in the Zero Waste Box. Once the box is full, it gets sealed and sent back to TerraCycle using the prepaid return label that is located on the back of each box.

When the pallet is full, customers submit a Ready to Ship form to their Thomas Scientific Representative for approval before shipping to TerraCycle for recycling. Freight shipments have to be approved before shipping because the company's material recovery facility (MRF) requires notice before receiving bulk shipments of materials.

When the shipment arrives at a dedicated TerraCycle MRF, always in the country of collection, it is checked in and weighed. All Zero Waste Boxes are quarantined on arrival for a minimum of 72 hours to protect team members handling the waste.

The TerraCylce team visually inspects the waste for visible contamination and consolidates it into a bulk format to be transported for processing at our various third-party facilities that specialize in processing the waste into recycled materials.

TerraCycle stores and aggregates the collected PPE waste until the necessary volumes for processing have been achieved. The waste is then sorted into categories based on material composition (rubbers, metals, non-woven plastic, elastane, etc.) by utilizing a wide array of sorting technologies, including manual sorting, size separation, sink/float, optical, air density, gravity, magnetic and others.

The different material types are then sent to third-party processing partners that recycle the materials into usable forms (i.e., non-woven plastics are recycled into plastic pellets and granules). Gloves are processed into a rubberized powder that is used for flooring tiles, playground surface covers and even athletic fields.

The resulting recycled material is used by third parties to manufacture a variety of new products, including outdoor furniture, plastic shipping pallets, outdoor decking, watering cans, storage containers, bins, and tubes for construction applications, among other goods.