This eco-friendly app plants trees

Happy Wednesday!

It's the beginning of Volunteers' Week today – running until 7 June – which is a great reminder that many companies offer their employees a set number of days off each year to volunteer with charitable projects. Does that happen where you work? Let us know.

This week, we're highlighting a great move from a supermarket chain, a company who helps recycle the "unrecyclable" – and an innovative new eco-friendly app.

We publish a daily source of positive news on?Smiley News?– featuring companies, organisations, as well as individuals who are going above and beyond to support others in our world. You can?sign up to our weekly newsletter here.

These groups recycle the "unrecyclable"

You might know the best way to recycle your household waste – but what happens when you come across packaging that is destined for the landfill? TerraCycle?helps groups and communities recycle "unrecyclable" products and packaging – the things councils don't collect to be recycled.?And, for each parcel of waste these drop-off points sent in, TerraCycle awards a monetary donation to the charities, schools or non-profits of their choice. "Some members of the public have raised tens of thousands of pounds by sending their waste to us," they say.?Read two success stories from TerraCycle.

Eco-friendly contact sharing app plants trees

A new, eco-friendly contact sharing app that also plants trees has been launched to help tackle deforestation.?The?mYcard?is an app where subscribers can design an infinite number of contactless business cards to send to friends and colleagues. But it also directly leads to the planting of trees – as 50% of the profits go into planting and rewilding projects. “We are living in the midst of an ecological disaster and we need to make change happen," says Malachy Dunne, who founded the app. "It is really easy to talk about an idea but it is not so easy to act on it." Read more about the app and how it works.

Tesco first to ban all plastic baby wipes

Tesco says it has become the first major UK retailer to ban plastic-based baby wipes from its stores. The supermarket stopped using plastic in its own label baby wipes two years ago, and now the entire range will be plastic-free.?The move is significant as Tesco sells more than 75 million packs or 4.8 billion individual baby wipes each year.??And it’s not just baby wipes that have been reformulated,?all?branded and own-label?wipes?in UK stores?–?bar one –are?now?plastic free.?Find out about what else the supermarket chain is doing.

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