The Bergen Times  published the following article on April 29, 2013. To read the full article, click here.

Hackensack hospital teams up with Trenton recycling company

By Myles Ma/NJ.com on April 29, 2013 at 2:55 PM, updated April 29, 2013 at 3:03 PM

HACKENSACK — Diaper packaging, shoes and writing utensils don’t go into the garbage at Hackensack University Medical Center—not anymore.

Now, they and other difficult-to-recycle items will be recycled.

That’s because Hackensack University Medical Center has partnered withTerraCycle, a Trenton company that takes such items and turns them into picture frames, pots, backpacks and other products. HUMC is the first hospital to work with Terracycle.

The hospital had committed to recycle more as part of a memorandum of understanding it signed with the Environmental Protection Agency in February 2012. But there were still many items that typical waste haulers and recycling firms didn’t want.

Kyle Tafuri, sustainability coordinator for HUMC, said nurses from the neo-natal intensive care unit asked why they couldn’t recycle diaper packaging. So he went in seach of a company that could help, eventually finding TerraCycle.

TerraCycle offers programs, called “brigades,” to collect specific difficult-to-recycle items, including diaper packaging. Each department at the hospital collects these items—keyboards and mouses, chip packaging from the break room, shoes—and Tafuri ships them to TerraCycle.

“It’s offered us a way to get a lot more people involved in the recycling,” Tafuri said.

Once the hospital ships enough items, TerraCycle donates 2 cents per item to the hospital.

“Those materials otherwise would have been an expense to dispose of,” Mark Sparta, vice president and senior operations officer for HUMC, said.

TerraCycle mostly works with schools—60 percent of its brigades, to be exact. But the company has started looking for larger collection opportunities.

Unlike schools, hospitals never close and have a much larger population.

“We really think that hospitals will end up being, on average, among our larger collection types,” Albe Zakes, global vice president of communication for TerraCycle, said.