The COVID-19 pandemic has made the use of disposable masks a necessity in our daily lives, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary to send them to the landfill, too! Disposable face masks, like KN95s, N95s, and single-use surgical masks, are made of a paper-plastic combination of material that cannot be recycled in a standard blue recycling bin. An estimated 1.5 billion disposable face masks entered our oceans over 2020 alone, endangering the environment and marine life with plastic pollution.

To do our part in contributing to global sustainability, and in the spirit of Seattle U’s Zero Waste mission, Facilities Services is placing a TerraCycle box on the first floor of the Student Center (right near the Hub Desk) in order to collect used KN95s, N95s, surgical and other disposable masks for recycling. TerraCycle is a specialty recycling company that will collect these used masks and send them to a third party where they will be processed into other materials, such as plastic lumber.

If you have any questions about this service, please contact ehs@seattleu.edu.