How to Recycle Candy Wrappers
The wrapper from a piece of candy may seem so insignificant an amount of waste that you need not worry about recycling it. But millions of candy wrappers, along with the inner foil sleeves found in candy bar packaging, end up in landfills every year, according to Terracycle. Even though these wrappers contain such materials as paper and aluminum that can be recycled, their light weight, texture and small size give waste management companies little incentive to handle them.
Instructions
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Ways to Recycle Candy Wrappers
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Run a candy wrapper collection drive at your school and donate the wrappers to Terracycle, a company that works with such manufacturers as candy-maker M&M Mars to recycle the waste that their products create. In exchange, Terracycle will donate 2 cents per approved wrapper to the school or nonprofit organization of your choice.
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Use the foil wrappers found inside of candy bars to wrap up homemade baked goods such as small cookies, pieces of fudge, chocolate-covered cherries and gumdrops. Enclosing the treat in the packaging will let you store the food either on the counter or in the refrigerator.
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Decorate household items like picture frames, light switchplates and storage containers by cutting the wrappers into strips and neatly taping or gluing the pieces around the object of your choice. This is also a clever way to dress up the appearance of items that are old, but still have a lot of use left to them (like table lamps and computer monitors), and to hide small cracks or chips (such as on coffee mugs and serving trays).
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Make clothing and accessories out of them. Artists have crafted such items as belts, dresses, purses and bracelets from candy wrappers since their plastic content enhances their durability. You can either hire an artist to design clothing for you or donate wrappers to designers who work with the medium.
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References
- Photo Credit chocolate bar image by terex from Fotolia.com
