We’re thrilled to announce that Ziploc® Brand Bags are recyclable. Simply visit just about any store that offers a plastic-bag recycling program and place your used Ziploc® Bags (clean and dry) in the same bins as those plastic shopping bags. You can even earn RecycleBank® points (that you can use for rewards) when you recycle bags from specially marked packages of Ziploc® Brand Sandwich and Snack Bags. RecycleBank is a company that rewards people for taking positive actions for the environment.
To start earning points, visit www.recyclebank.com/ziploc and enter the points code from inside the packaging of the Ziploc® Brand Bags you’re pledging to recycle. As you earn more points, you can use them for rewards, including coupons, gift cards and more. You’ll be doing your part in creating a more sustainable future and getting rewarded—all at the same time.
“Recycling” is a word that gets thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean? Well, recycling is the process of turning materials that would otherwise become waste into valuable raw materials that can be used to manufacture new products. It’s an important step in creating a more sustainable future.
Why is recycling important? Well, in most cases, the recycling process uses far less energy than manufacturing a product from brand new raw materials, which means you’re saving energy when you recycle. Plus, recycling:
All in all, recycling helps protect the environment for future generations.
There’s a reason why you can’t place Ziploc® Bags and other plastic bags in your recycling bin at home. When you put all of your recycling into your household recycling bin, it’s called Single Stream Recycling—and it’s a pretty high-tech operation. Trucks carry your recycling to a Material Recovery Facility (MRF) where all those plastic bottles and metals get separated so they can be processed and re-made into new products. The items are placed on a conveyor belt, where different materials get separated in different ways.
First, paper and cardboard get separated out by a machine with fast, rotating wheels. Then huge magnets pull out some of the metals. Other metals that a magnet won’t grab, like aluminum, are pulled out by a machine called an “Eddy Current Rotor.” Plastic and glass move on down the line to an Optical Scanning System, which recognizes the plastics and blows them away with a blast of air. The heavier glass moves on to the end of the line where it falls into its own glass bins.
Since plastic bags (like Ziploc® Bags) and wrappers are lightweight and flexible and come in a lot of different sizes and shapes, they can get tangled up in the machines that sort all the other recyclables and force the whole line to shut down. That’s why certain locations, like recycling centers and retail stores, have made themselves available as drop-offs for these unique recyclables. Here’s a list of items you can recycle at these locations:
So even though you can’t place Ziploc® Bags in your recycling bin at home, it’s still easy to recycle them. Just visit a store or recycling center that offers a plastic-bag recycling program and place your used Ziploc® Bags (clean and dry) in the same bins as those plastic shopping bags.
To learn more about recycling plastic bags, visit www.plasticbagrecycling.org. Also, a few of the key organizations in the plastic film recycling industry include TREX, Hilex, AERT and Mountain Valley Recycling.
RecycleBank is a company that rewards people for taking positive environmental actions. They work with local and national business partners to provide these rewards. RecycleBank encourages people to take simple steps toward greener lifestyles like residential recycling, electronic-waste recycling, home energy conservation and more. RecycleBank members earn points for each action, and those points can be used for valuable rewards.
As the makers of Ziploc® Brand products, we’ve added RecycleBank point codes to the packaging of Ziploc® Brand Sandwich and Snack Bags to help encourage everyone to recycle our products.