Taco Bell wants you to return your used sauce pouches so that they can reuse them.

Taco Bell has a plan in place to recycle some of the 8 billion pounds of used sauce pouches that go to landfills in the United States each year.

The fast food chain is rolling out a nationwide pilot program for customers to return used sauce packages by mail. The program, originally announced as a trial in April, was created with recycling company TerraCycle to “divert as many used sauce pouches from landfills as possible” and reuse them.

Here’s how it works: Customers create a TerraCycle account, collect empty sauce pouches in a recyclable container, print a free shipping label on the TerraCycle website, and return the box via UPS. Taco Bell will display QR codes and other signs in various parts of the restaurants to promote the program and encourage registrations.

Rather than dropping off used sachets of sauce at a restaurant, Taco Bell uses the mail, as a “majority” of transactions take place at its drive-thru and are consumed outside the restaurant. He also found that it was the preferred way for customers when it was pilot launched and that the courier helps them “reduce their transport footprint and ship their box of sauce bags when full.”

The massive number of sachets of sauce thrown away each year is potentially damaging to the environment. About 710 million tonnes of plastic will pollute the environment by 2040 if no action is taken, according to a study published in “Science.”

Taco Bell is one of the first food brands to use TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based company that helps large businesses go greener. He worked with Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Nestlé to help make reusable packaging instead of single-use packaging that ends up in landfills.

The taco chain hopes that by 2025, the packaging used by its customers will be fully “recyclable, compostable or reusable” at all of its 7,000 locations around the world. He said this program is the “first step, but not the last step” to becoming a more sustainable brand.

Last year, Taco Bell claimed it had abandoned its popular Mexican pizza because of its packaging, which equated to the use of over 7 million pounds of cardboard per year.

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