TerraCycle them! TerraCycle makes consumer products from pre-consumer and post-consumer waste and by reusing other waste materials. It's free, simply join a baby food pouch brigade, collect your pouches in a box, print their free shipping label and mail them your waste. It's actually quite easy.

Dixon Elementary hopes to win a playground in the Drink Pouch Brigade Milestone program with TerraCycle. To win they just need 200,000 more pouches and they have collected 110,000 pouches so far.

An Eastern Carolina elementary school is in the running to win a brand new playground. Dixon Elementary School in Onslow County is now ranked fifth in the country for the TerraCycle Milestone Program. If Dixon collects 200,000 recycled juice pouches, they will win the playground.

The Sea Otter Foundation and Trust, a nonprofit based in Westminster, is dedicated to recycling. Established in 2013, the organization raises funds for sea otter researchers, biologists and conservation initiatives while raising awareness in Colorado. This summer, the foundation won an award from TerraCycle for recycling efforts, specifically in the beauty care items category. To get involved, visit www.SeaOtterFoundationTrust.org.

Whether it is a large notebook for writing assignments in or little notebooks to write notes to friends, keep track of assignments or little reminders, having a note book is important. These cute note books are from Terracycle and they are made from recycled juice pouches.

School is just around the corner and it’s time to load up on all those back to school supplies. I used to love getting new supplies, my mom would have everything laid out in the living room and we would collect what we needed.

Drink up: What can you do with all of those empty juice drink pouches after the kids have sucked them dry? You can recycle them for big bucks for charity or fundraising. That's what students at Kammann school in Salinas did recently.

David D. Simons is the global digital media marketing manager for TerraCycle in Trenton, New Jersey. It’s a private small business that recycles hard-to-recycle waste into a variety of affordable, sustainable consumer products and industrial applications. The practice of using materials that would normally wind up in the landfill to become raw materials for a second, third or more generation of saleable goods is known as ‘upcycling.’

Sometime in 2005, I was approached by a colleague to start a recycling program for yogurt cups. She could not remember the name of the company and told me to just google "worm poop."  This is how I was first introduced to TerraCycle.

As we all know, Summer has to come to end at some point. With that comes the start of a new school year. To help make things a bit easier when shopping and preparing for back to school, I have created this Back to School Guide.