Taco Bell wants customers to collect its sauce packets so they recycled

Taco Bell wants customers to collect its sauce packets so they can be turned into other products rather than sent to the landfill

A sauce packet from a fast-food restaurant might seem like the ultimate throwaway item. But Taco Bell is telling its customers to hold on to those packets, so they can be recycled and reused. Hot, mild, diablo — whatever sauce they contain, more than 8 billion of the packets wind up in landfills each year, the company says.

The new campaign is part of an effort to cut down on waste and find a future for single-use food packaging, the restaurant chain says. Taco Bell is teaming up with recycling firm TerraCycle, which has carved out a niche by converting non-recyclable products and waste into raw materials that can then be used in new products.