Posted at 12:00 a.m.
New doubts are emerging about TerraCycle, the American company that prides itself on recycling what is not recyclable, whose recycling boxes abound in Quebec.
Plastic materials collected in England by TerraCycle for recycling were instead sent to a cement works in Bulgaria to be burned, the documentary reveals The Recycling Myth (The Myth of Recycling), from award-winning German production house a&o buero.
Des images tournées secrètement montrent notamment 30 ballots de sachets de gâteries pour chats, de grignotines et d’autres emballages plastiques empilés dans une zone industrielle ; un courtier filmé à son insu explique que ces matières ne sont pas recyclables et sont destinées à une cimenterie voisine, pour être incinérées.
Une étiquette postale révèle qu’il s’agit en fait de matières provenant des « boîtes zéro déchet » préaffranchies que TerraCycle vend sur son site internet afin de lui envoyer par la poste différentes matières qu’elle prétend recycler.
IMAGE TIRÉE DU SITE DE TERRACYCLE
Boîtes zéro déchet de TerraCycle
L’équipe de tournage retrouve dans une petite ville anglaise la femme dont le nom figure sur l’étiquette postale ; elle raconte avec fierté récupérer bénévolement les emballages du voisinage pour les envoyer à TerraCycle, « parce que chaque geste compte », dit-elle, mais elle est atterrée quand l’équipe de tournage lui apprend où ses matières ont été trouvées et à quoi elles étaient destinées.
« C’est censé être recyclé au Royaume-Uni ! », s’exclame-t-elle.
Une « grande opacité »
Ces nouvelles révélations au sujet de TerraCycle alimentent également les soupçons au Québec, où l’entreprise a fait la manchette pour ses prétentions à l’égard du recyclage des masques et pour son programme de récupération des contenants de cannabis.
« On est demeurés très, très suspicieux », a affirmé à La Presse Marc Olivier, professeur-chercheur au Centre de transfert technologique en écologie industrielle de Sorel et professeur à l’Université de Sherbrooke.
Il constate une « grande opacité » dans les pratiques de l’entreprise, qui vend ses boîtes de récupération « à un prix fort » – au Canada, le prix oscille entre 55 $ et 325 $ par boîte – sans offrir de garanties sur ce qu’il advient des matières qui y sont placées.
« Il y a quelque chose de phénoménalement rentable dans les opérations de cette entreprise, [qui] seems to be developing supposedly enhancement programs on demand, but it’s not always very clear,” he says.
It takes audits or a chance discovery to find out what’s going on.
Marc Olivier, from the Sorel Industrial Ecology Technology Transfer Center
The documentary “proves that consumers should question the claims of companies” regarding the recycling of their products, believes Jan Dell, an American chemical engineer who has a keen interest in the world of recycling.
In her retirement, she founded the non-governmental organization The Last Beach Cleanup, which aims to “exposing the facts about the issues surrounding plastic” and the pollution it causes.
“Producers would have to change the design of their packaging to be reusable or recyclable, but instead they pay TerraCycle to say they take it back,” she told The Press.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JAN DELL
Jan Dell, chemical engineer
The industry promotes a fiction.
Jan Dell, chemical engineer
Companies from here
Recyc-Québec has not been able to independently verify TerraCycle’s claims; she says “encourage organizations that set up this type of private recovery service to be well informed about recycling methods and the destination of recovered materials”, indicated to The Press its spokesperson, Daphnée Champagne.
Hydro-Québec, which had purchased $80,500 worth of “zero waste boxes” from TerraCycle in 2020, used its services more in 2021 for the recovery of masks and other protective equipment related to COVID-19, with purchases totaling $155,000.
“TerraCycle has improved the traceability mechanism of its value chain, which better meets our expectations”, indicated to The Press Cendrix Bouchard, spokesperson for the Crown corporation.
Environment and Climate Change Canada, which bought more than $16,700 worth of recycling boxes from TerraCycle in 2020, says it has stopped using the company’s services.
” Human error ”
TerraCycle’s lawyers replied to the documentary’s authors that sending bales of waste materials to Bulgaria was due to a “single human error by a subcontractor”, explained to The Press director Tristan Chytroschek; that’s also what TerraCycle said to The Press.
But Jan Dell doesn’t believe it.
Thirty bales is 30 tons, she exclaims. It’s not a mistake of a nerd!
If this plastic really didn’t end up where it was supposed to, “why didn’t the company inquire about its fate?” she asks.
TerraCycle says it has since stopped doing business with the subcontractor responsible for sending a “small amount” of its plastics to Bulgaria and denies that they were burned.
“At no time was TerraCycle material sent or ended up in an incineration facility,” said company spokeswoman Sue Kauffman, saying the bundles in question had been repatriated to the UK for recycling.
The Recycling Myth aired on CBC in early February, but no French translation is planned at this time.
Lawsuit against TerraCycle
A lawsuit filed in the United States against TerraCycle and eight companies using its services, including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, L’Oréal and Tom’s of Maine, ended in an out-of-court settlement last November. The Last Beach Cleanup, run by chemical engineer Jan Dell, who initiated the lawsuit, accused the companies of making illegal and misleading claims about recycling their products. “I consider that I won, because they will have to change [ce qu’elles affirment sur] their tags and pay my legal costs,” he told The Press Jan Dell. The agreement notably provides that companies cannot claim that their packaging is “100% recyclable” and must indicate that participation in recovery programs is limited. TerraCycle will have to produce an annual report proving that the recovered materials have been recycled. “I don’t know if it really will, but my goal was to expose to the public what these brands do, says Jan Dell. They cannot base their actions on greenwashing. »
Learn more
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- 202.8 million
- Number of people participating in TerraCycle recycling programs worldwide, by company
SOURCE: TERRACYCLE