If you have a cereal killer in the house, you can definitely take advantage of it this month. Through the end of October, a joint promotion between TerraCycle and the MOM Brands Cereal Bag Brigade will let you turn those empty cereal bags and cereal bag liners into a cool gift.

MOM Brands (formerly Malt-O-Meal) and recycling waste-management giant TerraCycle are offering an upcycled lunch bag or shopping bag to individuals or organizations that send in their used cereal bags.

Beyond great taste and affordability, Sally’s is also a smart cereal choice that’s more sustainable for the environment, packaged in bags instead of boxes – which means 75 percent less consumer packaging waste compared to comparably sized bag-in-box cereals. In addition, Sally’spartners with TerraCycle Canada^®, an international recycling company, to turn cereal bags into useful products and support schools in the process. For every Sally’s bag collected by Sally’s Cereal Bag Brigade, TerraCycle and Sally’s will contribute $.02 to the designated charity or school of choice.

Jenny Bruno’s fifth-graders at Oak Grove Primary School were challenged to reduce their carbon footprint after studying the human impact on the environment. Students wore crazy hair and hats to help raise nearly $500 to begin an upcycling or recycling program at Oak Grove Primary. Using the Web-based Terracycle program, which turns trash into other products, students set up an upcycling center in the school’s cafeteria and in hallways to help with the collection of items. Terracycle upcycles items such as lunch kits, chip bags, drink pouches and cereal bags. “Not only does this program help reduce our carbon footprint, the program in turn for the goods sends funds to the school,” Bruno said. The funds will be used to purchase new library books. “The students are very excited about reducing their carbon footprint and keeping these items out of our local landfills,” Bruno said. After a month of collection, the students collected 573 lunch kits, 1,216 chip bags, 1,835 drink pouches and eight cereal bags.

The Terra Stone Plant Caddy is made from drink pouches recycled into TerraCycle plastic. The caddy can be found in Target stores. The saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. For TerraCycle, an upcycling and recycling company in Trenton, N.J., trash from schools in Knoxville and surrounding areas has become its treasure. Items that are traditionally non-recyclable — such as Frito-Lay chip bags, Capri Sun drink pouches, MOM Brands cereal bags and Colgate oral care products — are collected to make products sold in stores such as Target. The company recycles — or upcycles — trash into backpacks, tote bags, pencil cases, notebooks, messenger bags, and binders as well as watering cans and plant caddies. The schools and community groups around the country who send their trash to TerraCycle don't do so without reward. The items collected accumulate points which can be converted to cash or gifts.

As an environmental company, TerraCycle has a unique relationship with Earth Day. Celebrating our environment and spreading awareness and activism is wonderful, but we also like to remind people that the Earth needs to be taken care of every day. For the past few years, we’ve had an array of special events around Earth Day. In 2009, we launched our mini-series on National Geographic – Garbage Moguls – and in 2010, we had a Walmart Hotspot with sixty TerraCycle products were displayed in Walmart stores, right next to the products that they used to be! Think, drink pouch backpacks next to boxes of Capri Sun. Last year, 2011, we had the Old Navy Flip-Flop Replay in which we collected used flip flops at Old Navy stores across the country during the Earth Month. That same month, in partnership with Office Depot, we collected used pens and writing instruments at their retail locations.