Cytiva and TerraCycle expand 'first-of-its-kind' recycling program

Cytiva, a life sciences company with offices in Boston, and TerraCycle, Trenton, New Jersey, have expanded their filtration device recycling program globally.    

Customers in the pharmaceutical, food and beverage, municipal water and bioethanol industries in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom can now recycle their Whatman and Pall Life Sciences filtration devices.    

“The global expansion of our collaboration with TerraCycle demonstrates our commitment to recycling single-use plastics across industries and regions,” says Ryan Walker, program director of sustainability for Cytiva. “It’s part of how we are adding circularity into our product life cycle. We will continue looking for ways to offer our customers sustainable business solutions.”   

While syringe filters are indispensable to modern labs, the amount of waste they produce is not. Cytiva says hundreds of millions are landfilled every year. Like many single-use laboratory supplies, their convenience comes at a cost to the environment as they are not reusable or recyclable by traditional means.    

That’s why Cytiva, which manufactures syringe filters, and TerraCycle introduced syringe filter recycling to eco-conscious labs throughout the U.S. in 2021.   

TerraCycle created the Zero Waste Box to provide solutions for difficult-to-recycle materials not accepted by standard curbside recycling programs. Each Zero Waste Box holds up to 70 pounds of waste or about 10,000 syringe filters.    

Customers can also recycle a mixture of capsule filters, transfer pipettes or polypropylene syringes. Once collected, the used filtration devices are processed into recycled material suitable for composite decking, shipping pallets and compression molding.   

“As a first-of-its-kind initiative, Cytiva’s customers now have the opportunity to not only take care of others but the planet as well,” says Tom Szaky, CEO and founder of TerraCycle.