Have a bunch of used razors lying around your bathroom? Well, forget throwing them in the trash where they’d usually land—now, you can recycle all your disposable razors, hairs and all, and all it takes is a simple package in the mail.
This week, Gillette announced it’s partnering with TerraCycle, an online recycling program, to collect razors and blades of all kinds and brands. What types, exactly? Think of any plastic disposable type, as well as any replaceable-blade cartridges. The program will even accept all the rigid or flexible plastic packaging that comes with your razors.
According to the program’s website, your razors won’t be re-used to shave another stranger’s legs or neck. Instead, any plastic material will be cleaned and recycled into new products like picnic tables, benches, and even pet food bowls. Meanwhile, the metal from the razors will be smelted for re-use by manufacturers.
While the exact impact of disposable razors isn’t known, an EPA statistic back from the 90s estimated that Americans throw away some 2 billion razors each year. And think about how that number has probably changed dramatically, given that so many gym and spas now stock locker rooms with a near limitless supply of disposable razors (not to mention the rise of buzzy, low-cost brands like Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club, which promote re-usable razors with disposable blades).
So give your old razors a quick rinse and pat dry (though the program’s website doesn’t explicitly require it, it’s just good etiquette, in our opinion) and ship ‘em off! It’s safe to say they’ll serve a much better purpose by helping improve our public spaces as benches than in our landfills.