TerraCycle collects millions of wrappers, juice pouches, corks, yogurt cups, chip bags and many other waste streams. Each of these waste streams is shipped individually through a specific Brigade – for example, we receive drink pouches only through the Drink Pouch Brigade and yogurt cups only through the Yogurt Brigade.

Most of our Brigades donate to a school or non-profit (of your choice) for the waste collected. In order to keep track of all that waste we count the wrappers/chip bags/yogurt cups/etc by using an average weight. We establish an average weight for each waste stream collected through a Brigade.

The process is very simple: When we receive a shipment from your Brigade collection team, we weigh it and then use the average weight for that Brigade to establish the number of individual pieces of waste in that shipment. This count is then used to calculate the donation earned for each shipment.

Not all average weights are the same – we determine it on a Brigade-by-Brigade basis because each waste stream will have a different average weight. To establish an average weight we use a representative sample of the waste that will be collected for that specific Brigade.