Prestwick North Early Years Centre is raising money for various charities by recycling the 'unrecyclable'

Prestwick North Early Years Centre has joined several free recycling programmes, enabling them to establish a drop-off point for "hard-to-recycle" items.

The programmes include The Philips Dental Care, The Warburtons Wax Wrap and The Warburtons Bakery Free Recycling Programmes, enabling them to collect items such as toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, plastic bread bags and wax wrappers.

These items are not included in council kerbside recycling collections, so have traditionally been destined for landfill or incineration.

Once dropped off at Prestwick North Early Years Centre the items are sent to TerraCycle, the world leader in recycling hard-to-recycle waste, where they are given a second lease of life.

For every item collected, TerraCycle points are earned. These points are redeemed as monetary donations, which the children at Prestwick North Early Years Centre will donate to a charity of their choice each quarter.

The selected charity will align with the children’s current learning focus. For example, after studying orangutans, the children donated to the WWF.

The drop-off point can be found at Prestwick North Early Years Centre and is open to the community Monday through Friday between 8.00 am and 6.00 pm.

Local Prestwick residents are encouraged to bring their “unrecyclable” items to the location to be recycled and help boost the children's fundraising efforts.

Kirsty Clark, the administrator of the drop-off location commented: “We are very excited to start the new term with our new collection bins from TerraCycle. The donations earned from recycling our waste will be used to support charities chosen by the children each quarter, based on their current learning topics.

"We hope that participating in TerraCycle’s free recycling programmes will teach our children about community involvement, supporting others, and the importance of caring for the environment. We encourage everyone in the Prestwick area to get involved and sort, save, and bring the items we can recycle to our drop-off location. It’s a great way to reduce the amount of waste you send to landfill, whilst helping to raise money for various charities.”

The collected items are sent to TerraCycle and are recycled by shredding, cleaning, and turning them into plastic pellets which are used by manufacturers to create new generic plastic products, such as outdoor equipment – reducing the need to extract new resources from the planet.

Prestwick North Early Years Centre has signed up to several programmes including The Pringles® Tube, The Philips Dental Care, The Warburtons Wax Wrap and The Warburtons Bakery Free Recycling Programmes.