Trashie offers toy waste recycling for 35 dollars

By Lauren Mitchell 25/06/2026 3 min read 7 views

Trashie, a service that gives customers rewards in exchange for paying for proper recycling and reuse, is looking to tackle a new waste stream.

The new Toy Take Back Box service launched this summer as a way to let users properly dispose of unwanted, good-condition toys. Kristy Caylor, CEO and founder of Trashie, said the new vertical was a natural fit after launching a tech take-back box in December 2024. Currently, about 80% of toys wind up in landfills or the ocean, according to resale platform Toycycle.

Trashie was fielding requests to help parents clean out toy chests as well as their own closets, since about half of its current user base are parents. “There was just a real opportunity to apply the same philosophy to a category that’s been relatively untouched,” she said.

The company has sold more than 1 million apparel take-back bags and diverted 3.5 million pounds of clothing from landfills. Users can pay $20 to get a single bag to fill with unwanted textiles, about 95% of which is reused, recycled or repurposed.

Caylor said the customer base is willing to pay for a new method of getting rid of unwanted items. “We’re trying to

Take-back and trade-in recycling programs are becoming increasingly popular options to stimulate the circular economy. Models like these can help reduce waste and promote sustainability, as seen in the brand partnerships that inspire new methods of recycling.

Part of the problem is a lack of infrastructure to properly break down textiles, non-recyclable plastic and multi-layered packaging. The result is that most waste doesn’t end up getting recycled.

Take-back programs can also face an uphill battle around adoption. Many consumers are used to dropping unwanted items off at donation shops, but Trashie’s Caylor said such shops can’t always resell items for hygiene or safety reasons and aren’t set up to be waste management companies. Donations tend to be the word that people almost synonymously use for getting rid of stuff.

One of the most common questions Trashie gets is why it charges people to get rid of things. But Caylor said the costs are there to cover the shipping and processing of items.

While there was interest, brands didn’t align with charging the customers, Caylor said. They were like, ‘We’ll do it with you, but can it be free?’ And Trashie said ‘Well, waste management isn’t actually free. We pay in some way, shape or form for the world to process our trash.

Beyond broader education, building scale is one of the ways it is able to keep costs down, she said. To incentivize repeat usage, users earn multipliers on their marketplace rewards the more times they use the service.

Members can add the toy service for $15 a shipment. They are not trying to make it out of reach, but they just have to be realistic about what it costs.

To get the new toy vertical off the ground, Trashie has partnered with a sorting facility in the United States that specializes in toys. It has also developed customer-facing materials that give explicit guidelines on what can and can’t be processed, such as stuffed animals and action figures in good condition.

Once received, the sorting facility reviews items to determine which can be donated to programs, domestically and abroad, that provide toys to kids in need. Trashie estimates that about 90% will be given new life, with the rest sent for responsible breakdown.

It all starts with the consumer user experience, and how they can make sure to get the right products back so they know they can do something with them.