Kerrod Trott 
Students at St. Peters Catholic Primary School in Rochedale, Brisbane, will soon be enjoying fresh vegetables from their own garden after winning a community garden set made with recycled oral care waste in a national competition.
The school was the top collector in the Colgate Community Garden Challenge, saving an astonishing 3,840 units of oral care waste weighing 35kg from landfill.
Run through a partnership between Colgate, Chemist Warehouse and global recycling innovators TerraCycle, the Colgate Community Garden Challenge invited all pre, primary, intermediate, special and secondary schools in Australia to register, collect and ship all their oral care waste to TerraCycle who will turn it into new products.
In the three years that the Challenge has run, more than 500,000 toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes and dental floss containers have been diverted from landfill (equivalent to nearly five tonnes of oral care).
Seven schools across the country won prizes; the top three collectors and four drawn at random. The prize includes a garden bed, bench with planter boxes, and picnic table all made with recycled oral care waste, plus a $200 Bunnings Warehouse voucher, bringing each school’s prize value to just over $5000.
Principal of St. Peters Catholic Primary School, Bronwyn Buckley said the school was excited to have won the competition, which has been a great way to bring sustainability into the classroom.
“Our students have loved participating in the Colgate Community Garden Challenge. It’s a great learning experience for our students, who can see the full circle of their recycling efforts with the arrival of the garden bed, planter boxes and picnic table all made from the oral care waste collected.”
Throughout this year’s competition, more than 72,000 votes were cast online for the participating schools and more than 82,000 pieces of oral care waste were shipped to TerraCycle. TerraCycle will sort, shred, wash and melt the waste down into plastic pellets to be used in the manufacture of new products such as garden beds, park benches and playgrounds.
Colgate Palmolive Vice President and General Manager of South Pacific, Julie Dillon said she was impressed by how much was collected by schools during a challenging year.
“When COVID hit, and schools closed we were unsure how this would affect the competition. However, we ended up with more community votes than last year, reflecting the potential of an initiative like this o pull a community together in tough times.”
Chemist Warehouse Group COO, Mario Tascone congratulated the students at St. Peters Catholic Primary School on their amazing efforts in recycling oral care waste and winning garden equipment for their school.
“We are thrilled to have partnered with Colgate and TerraCycle on this exciting initiative which diverted 82,000 pieces of oral care waste from landfill, while encouraging and engaging students in the practice of recycling and sustainability,” he said.
General Manager of TerraCycle Australia & New Zealand, Jean Bailliard, said that in addition to showing how recycled materials can be used as a sustainable alternative to virgin plastic, he hopes the community garden sets will promote healthy living at the winning schools.
“We’ve been very encouraged by the increasing number of requests from schools for information about recycling and sustainability. This popularity of this competition shows that, with the support of conscientious companies such as Colgate, bringing the community together to care for our planet can be rewarding not only for our environment but also for the schools involved.”
The Colgate Community Garden Challenge is part of a broader Oral Care Recycling Program, which has now diverted more than 1.3 million pieces of oral care waste from landfill in Australia.
The Oral Care Recycling Program
The Colgate Community Garden Challenge is part of the broader Oral Care Recycling Program sponsored by Colgate. Accepted in this program are any brand of post-consumed toothpaste tubes and caps, toothbrushes (including electric toothbrush heads) and packaging, toothbrush and toothpaste tube outer packaging and floss containers. Since its launch in 2014, the Oral Care Recycling Program has enabled Australians to divert 1.3 million pieces of oral care waste from landfill and raise over $100,000 in donations and prizes for schools and charities. To find out how to get involved in the program head to
www.terracycle.com/en-AU/oral-care-brigade to sign up to recycle oral care waste from home or in your community.
About TerraCycle
TerraCycle is an innovative waste management company that operates in 22 countries with a mission to eliminate the idea of waste. It is a global leader that partners with businesses, communities and individuals to move from a linear, disposable economy to a circular one.
TerraCycle creates new solutions for waste, from first-of-its-kind collection programs for locally unrecyclable materials, to reimagining single-use package as durable, refillable containers that can be used again and again, to addressing the complex challenges of waste in emerging countries through the non-profit TerraCycle Global Foundation. It is the parent company to four different business units:
TerraCycle National Recycling Programs, the circular reuse platform Loop, all-in-one recycling solutions through Zero Waste Box, and large-scale recycling and compliance services through Regulated Waste.
TerraCycle and its CEO have won hundreds of awards for sustainability, innovation, and leadership including being named to Fortune Magazine’s Change the World list and TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies 2021, which called its business model a potential “key to unlocking recycling’s full potential at scale.”
To learn more about TerraCycle, its programs, and how to get involved, please visit: www.terracycle.com.au
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