Get paid to recycle. Start a drive at your school to collect yogurt containers, drink pouches, chip, cookie and candy packages, plus Scott and Huggies wrappers and Elmer’s glue sticks and bottles. The school can earn 2 cents per piece of packaging (terracycle.net/brigades).

Sharpie, Paper Mate and EXPO have partnered with TerraCycle to collect and reuse pens, markers and other writing instruments in a way that helps schools, charities, and non-profits to raise funds. Groups that want to participate can print pre-paid shipping labels from TerraCycle’s website. The collected writing instruments are then shipped to TerraCycle. Once received, TerraCycle upcycles trashed pens into new products.