Recycle Preserve Products

All Preserve plastic products* are recyclable in any community
that recycles #5 plastics.

Please check with your local recycling facility to be sure. Except for the toothbrush, all of our plastic products are made of 100% polypropylene (#5 plastic). *Our toothbrush is not recyclable in municipal recycling because it contains mixed materials (nylon and polypropylene). See below for recycling options.

If your community doesn’t accept #5, go to Earth911.org to find out where you can recycle them and then make sure to call your town hall and ask them why they don’t offer #5 recycling.

All Preserve products and packaging can also be recycled through any Preserve Gimme 5 location. Click here to learn more about the Preserve Gimme 5 program.

Other options to recycle your Preserve Toothbrush When you buy your next toothbrush, simply use the package it comes in as the return mailer for the toothbrush you’re ready to retire. The Mail Back Pack is available at Whole Foods, Target and increasingly in many other locations. Pop it in a Postage Paid Mailer available at Trader Joe's and many coops and natural food stores. Recycle it in our Preserve Gimme 5 bins (along with all other Preserve products). Click here for a list of locations.

Looking for the Downloadable Postage Paid Mailer?

At first, you may be perplexed that the downloadable mailer is nowhere to be found. But read on, hopefully it will all make sense soon.

At Preserve we’re all about sustainable actions. When we take a new step we ask ourselves questions like: How do we know this change is better for the earth? To get answers we conduct Life Cycle Assessments, a tool that takes a look at the environmental impact in every phase of the system, including transportation and any materials used in mailing the toothbrush back to us. This is how we know that when you return your toothbrush, there is a net gain in overall environmental impact over throwing your toothbrush in the landfill. To make this assessment, we consider the big picture and take a systems level view, including everything from human health and environmental impact, energy and water usage, and resource depletion.

We also have to consider whether a system can be sustained financially. In redesigning our toothbrush package, we sought to increase rates of recycling (better for the earth) and allow us to continue to reprocess (it's expensive) the plastics to give them a third life.

Did you know that USPS charges Preserve $1.40 for each return through the postage paid program?. Yet, for 44 cents you can send it back to us for recycling via first class mail. This got us thinking, what if we ask you to pay the postage, but then give you rewards worth more than a stamp (through product discounts, coupons, access to product samples and other offers). When we asked you about this change, you gave us your resounding support. To make the transition easier, we're continuing to pay the postage for the first 250,000 Mail Back Packs. After that, we'll have a rewards system in place.

If you have questions or comments (or a stockpile of Preserve toothbrushes that you still need to recycle) feel free to contact us at info@preserveproducts.com and we’ll be happy to help you out.

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