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Things You Might NOT Know You Can Be Recycling

From LOL Doll Surprise packaging to used razer blades, lets keep more out of our landfills!

By Carmen Kaethler, Macaroni Kid Winnipeg April 22, 2021

While we strive for less waste to end up in Winnipeg's landfill and teach our children the importance of reducing our waste by reusing, repurposing and reducing product usage, some things are still need to be 'thrown out' but hopefully into the blue bin and not the garbage bin! 

To find out what you can put in your Winnipeg blue bin go to the winnipeg.ca. The City of Winnipeg also has the 4R Winnipeg Depots that accept a wide range of items that can't go into your blue bin, including things like electronic waste, batteries, household hazardous waste and more.


You will see that not everything we'd like to stick in our blue boxes are accepted through the local recycling programs but did you know that in Canada there are national recycling programs like Terra Cycle that offers FREE shipping for some specific waste streams? Specifically of interest to me are the free recycling programs for some of the waste I accumulate with my children. 


Terra Cycle partners with brands to accept the packaging and other waste that would normally end up in the land fill. All you have to do is request and download a free UPS shipping label to stick on the box you've packaged the waste into and ship it off to Terra Cycle for processing. 


One tip to consider if you want to take part in one of more of these programs is to partner up with some friends and family to COMBINE your waste for one program so you can ship larger amounts and more frequently, so things don't pile up in your home and you also are more ecofriendly with fuel.


Some of the programs they have running with brands your children might use are:

Not to mention a bunch of household brands you might also use:


I will definitely be collecting my daughters' toy waste to send in for some of these programs and let friends know so that they can combine theirs with mine for shipments.