TerraCycle and Charles River Laboratories launch international cartridge recycling initiative
TerraCycle and Charles River Laboratories, Inc. announced the international rollout of Charles River’s Endosafe Cartridge Recycling Program, across nine markets: the contiguous United States, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Quality control labs continue to face growing expectations to reduce plastic waste without compromising safety or compliance. Charles River’s Endosafe cartridge technology has aided testing for bacterial endotoxins in the pharmaceutical and sterile drug industry, converting a complex and time-consuming assay into a 15-minute test through the use of a ready-to-use reagent-based plastic cartridge. Because municipal recycling programs cannot process lab-grade plastics, they are usually landfilled or incinerated. The Endosafe Cartridge Recycling Program closes that gap, offering a practical and validated path for labs to recycle Endosafe cartridges used for testing water samples for bacterial endotoxins during their production process.
After completing a 12-site beta, participating customers returned and recycled hundreds of cartridges, confirming that the process works within standard lab workflows. At Charles River’s Charleston site alone, the team recycled more than 788 pounds, illustrating what a fully implemented program can deliver. With the beta complete, more than 40 sites globally are now ready for enrollment as the program expands.
Each participating lab receives a TerraCycle Zero Waste Box, collects used Endosafe cartridges from routine water bacterial endotoxin testing, ships the full box back for processing, and automatically receives a new one. TerraCycle sorts the collected material by type, cleans it, and recycles it into pellets that are used to make new products. These recycled materials are then used by manufacturers to make items such as outdoor furniture, shipping pallets, storage containers, and other durable products. TerraCycle provides documentation that supports audits and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting.
