Ever wonder how you can wear your cereal? That’s right.
Wear. You have a perfectly good bag when you finish your Malt-O-Meal cereal, so do something cool with it!
Our friends at
TerraCycle think this way every day of their lives. That’s why we love them. They take what most people think of as trash and make them into treasures.
The TerraCycle team has come up with some pretty neat DIY project ideas using empty Malt-O-Meal bags, like this bracelet. It doesn’t take long to make, and your friends will be green with envy (literally!) when they see the end result of some good ‘ol sustainable living.
It’s no secret I like to recycle the unrecyclable. I always strive to find new and innovative ways to turn garbage into something new. That’s why I wanted to share some easy DIYs I found that repurpose household items and give them new life. The possibilities are endless when you look at trash in a new light.
1) Bottle caps are a huge source of waste. If you look at it from a new angle, the potential to reuse them is also huge. Most of the time, I see belts or jewelry made out of bottle caps. I thought a bottle cap lightshade was even cooler.
By Cap City
You’ve probably seen them in the cereal aisle at the grocery store: bags of bargain cereal with one-off names like Cinnamon Toasters, Apple Zings and Honey Nut Scooters. The titan of bagged cereals, the Minneapolis, Minn.-based Malt-O-Meal, has found a niche in offering cereals almost identical to name-brand products from General Mills, Kellogg’s, Post and Quaker Oats at a reduced price. But where do all those cereal bags go once their sweet contents are consumed?
As it turns out, nine Springfield schools collect the bags for recycling – and they make a little cash for their efforts. The Malt-O-Meal Cereal Bag Brigade is a schools-only program sponsored by Malt-O-Meal and run by TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based start-up that pays a pittance for recyclable trash and makes it into new products like kites, durable totes and even fences.
So far this school year, Springfield’s Lee Elementary School has sent 7,000 pieces of waste to TerraCycle, earning the school $140. Trinity Lutheran School in Springfield has collected 9,000 pieces of waste and earned $180. In total, TerraCycle has recycled about 1.3 million pieces of waste from Illinois, and more than $25,234 has been paid to Illinois schools and other charities. For more information, visit
www.TerraCycle.net.
Looking for a recycled craft to do this week during Spring Break? Malt-O-Meal cereals and TerraCycle have a fun – and environmentally-friendly – DIY project the kids will love. All you need are food wrappers, scissors, and a few other items to make your very own Easter basket to fill with sweets.
The project is easy to make with an adult's supervision. For complete project details,
click here.
Easter baskets not your thing? How about a Lunchables Woven Bracelet, or a Yogurt Cup Herb Garden? You can find these and other great project ideas over on the
Terracycle Do-It-Yourself Projects page.
Speaking of Terracycle, to keep those candy wrappers in your Easter baskets out of a landfill, TerraCycle and the M&M’s Candy Wrapper Brigade offers an easy alternative. Simply collect those empty candy wrappers from the Easter baskets and send them to TerraCycle. You'll receive two points per item collected that can be used for charity gifts or converted to cash and donated to any school or charity. TerraCycle even covers the shipping cost! TerraCycle also collects Malt-O-Meal bags through its Cereal Bag Brigade, if you choose not to turn them into Easter baskets, as well as many other wrappers and packaging you normally think wouldn't be recyclable! Visit
www.terracycle.com to sign up for the Brigade programs and view the full list of items TerraCycle accepts.
On Easter morning children will wake to find that the Easter Bunny has filled their Easter baskets with lots of sweet treats. TerraCycle is offering consumers an environmentally-conscious alternative to filling trashcans with all of those candy wrappers. In addition, their fun DIY projects include instructions to get the whole family involved in having an Eco-Easter.
Celebrate the Pink, Yellow, and “Green” Hues of Easter
TerraCycle®Provides Easter DIY Project and Free Collection Program for Candy Wrappers
Spring is in the air, and the Easter bunny is just a hop, skip and a jump away. This year, make sure to fill your Easter baskets, but not your garbage cans, with sweet treats. TerraCycle offers an environmentally-conscious alternative for all those leftover candy wrappers as well as fun DIY projects to get the whole family excited about an Eco-Easter. With the help of partners MOM Brands™and M&Ms, TerraCycle hopes to make this springtime holiday greener than the newly-grown grass.
Spring has sprung early here in the Milwaukee area, and with that comes the opportunities to “green” your Easter crafts! Recycler and up-cycler, TerraCycle has a new, do-it-yourself Easter basket project made from MOM Brands Malt-O-Meal cereal bags or other candy and food wrappers.
Any consumer who tries to make responsible purchases knows the challenges. Disposable bags at the grocery store are still free in most states, but reusable bags are not. Most natural beauty products are more expensive. Grass fed, hormone-free beef is more expensive. It’s not surprising that a common perception of “eco-friendly” is “more expensive.”
Still, cost is one of the most frequent barriers to moving towards more sustainable habits or programs. Other concerns include difficulty of program implementation, low interest of the consumer, or a lack of understanding. In all of these cases, there are solutions, and the benefits of implementing a program far outweigh the costs, including time and energy.
“If you just leave your bag of garbage by your front door I’ll stop by and grab it on my way to work.”
This probably isn’t something most people Facebook message their friends about at 10:00 at night. But, not only is this really a message sent to me from a friend a few nights ago, but I also really did run and, excitedly, pull a bag of garbage I’d been saving for her out of the closet and set it by my front door.
Two of the reasons for the superior taste in their cereal is they use all natural ingredients as well as packaging every cereal in a “freshness saver” bag. There are no artificial preservatives, colors or flavors and no hydrogenated oils or high fructose corn syrup. With their clever “freshness saver” bags the cereal’s quality is kept intact and there is no need for a box. This less packaging saves natural resources. Here are some stats from their packaging:
