You can recycle anything if you try hard enough.

“Back in November of last year, I heard about TerraCycle, who were recycling crisp packets, so I looked them up online, I registered, got an account and became a public drop-off point,” said Soham mother-of-two, Kathy Murray.

TerraCycle is a waste company, who as of the last few months, have started an initiative to collect empty crisp packets.

The mother said she is collecting an increasing amount of hard-to-recycle items like crisp packets, toothbrushes, toothpastes, and pet food containers. She’s been doing it for about five months, and has been making enough waves that the Cambridgeshire news outlet featured Murray in a profile piece about the helpful community work she’s been doing.

Murray says since starting out on this mission in January, she’s helped rid her community of 35 kg (or 77 pounds) of waste by sending it off to TerraCycle. This waste would otherwise go into a landfill.

All three primary schools in Soham are now collecting crisp packets and biscuit wrappers, as well as the Soham Village College. Murray says she visits her recycling containers daily and collects four or five shopping bags’ worth of crisp wrappers for the week.

Another mother in the community says her young children have really gotten into recycling now, too. “They really enjoy saving all their crisp wrappers. They’re bringing them home and they’re putting them in boxes at school,” she said. This Soham mother adds that recycling has become an everyday activity for her family.

Her son says, “Every time when I have packed lunches at school with crisp packets, I always eat crisps inside then put the wrappers in a bag and then give them to my mom at home.”

The mother says she is thrilled with the work Murray is doing, and wants to follow her lead by continuing to recycle and encouraging her kids to do the same.