Cleaner water, brighter future.

Fighting ocean waste at the source - TerraCycle Foundation

The TerraCycle Foundation’s mission is to stop the high-risk litter before it enters our oceans. Through our work, we are now rated as the most cost-effective river cleanup organization in the world. Due to this efficiency, it is now the operational backbone for other river cleanup non-profits.

Cleaning up waterways

As 80% of ocean plastic flows from rivers, we focus on pulling waste from canals and rivers before it can reach the ocean; where it is more expensive to extract. We partner with local communities, governments, and businesses to build, adapt, maintain, and service marine trash capture systems.

The benefits of focusing on collection in canals and rivers (before the ocean)

Such collection is more economically efficient than collecting the same waste in the open ocean.
The waste is captured before it has the chance to break down, (breakdown occurs faster in an ocean environment.)
Capturing waste that is less degraded allows us to recycle it, helping us achieve a higher recycling rate.
Removing waste from water as soon as possible prevents pollutants or chemicals in the waste from leaching into the environment.
Working alongside communities provides the opportunity to educate about effective waste management and the progress is visible!

Creating local jobs

We hire local waste pickers and provide fair wages, tools, supplies, financial literacy, education, care for children, and health and safety training.

“After working with the Foundation for nine months, I saw changes. The waste on the water surface had decreased. The color and smell of the water were noticeably better. The number of villagers who threw trash into the canal started to decrease. I’ve received very good feedback from the community about this project.”

- Samniang Boonlue, Bangkok community leader

Engaging local communities

We educate communities about proper waste management so trash doesn’t get into waterways in the first place. During local outreach activities and cleanup events, community members see how they can take action to stop waterway waste. We see high engagement from community members. One group of kids even returned to school and formed an environmental group, Ecolution, after attending one of our events!

Processing waste

We don’t want the waste we collect to sit in landfills and further pollute our environment, so we develop innovative recycling solutions and create end markets in which to sell the collected materials. We recycle everything that we can locally.

As a way for you to participate, we have created products from the recycled materials we have collected in Thailand. 100% of the proceeds from these products go directly to support the work of the Foundation.

With your support

2,800,490 lbs

of waste have been pulled from waterways, and counting!