TerraCycle is an innovative recycling company that has become a global leader in recycling hard-to-recycle waste. TerraCycle reuses, upcycles and recycles waste instead of incinerating or landfilling it. This moves waste from a linear system to a circular one, enabling us to prolong it's useful life in and contnue cycling through our economy.
TerraCycle is Eliminating the Idea of Waste® by recycling the "non-recyclable." Whether it's coffee capsules from your home, pens from a school, or plastic gloves from a manufacturing facility, TerraCycle can collect and recycle almost any form of waste. They partner with individual collectors as well as major consumer product companies, retailers, manufacturers, municipalities, and small businesses across 20 different countries. With our help, Terracycle are able to divert millions of pounds of waste from landfills and incinerators each month.
Abernethy Owens joined the Bausch + Lomb Recycling Programme in 2017 to help Australians keep all brands of contact lenses, lens cases and blister packs out of landfill. The program enables Australians to collect contact lens waste and ship it free of charge to TerraCycle, who will shred, wash and melt it down into a sustainable raw material to use in manufacturing as an alternative to virgin plastic. Additionally, for each kilogram of contact lens waste sent to TerraCycle, Bausch + Lomb donates $1 to the Optometry Giving Sight foundation. All five of our Abernethy Owens practices are registered collection points and regularly send through boxes of used contact lens watse that would have otherwise gone into landfill or down the drain! Through the Bausch & Lomb program, over 100,000 pieces of contact lens waste has been diverted from global landfill since July 2017 — a milestone the Bausch + Lomb Recycling Programme is celebrating soon after its one-year anniversary in Australia.
Everyone in Australia can recycle contact lens waste in the Bausch + Lomb Recycling Programme. Simply visit www.terracycle.com.au/bauschrecycling to create an account, then collect your contact lenses, lens cases and blister packs in any old cardboard box or container. Once full, log onto your TerraCycle account, download a free Australia Post shipping label, stick it on the box and drop it at your nearest Australia Post Office.