9. Companies learn to close the loop. Starbucks announced it’s made considerable progress toward turning used coffee cups into new cups, and five Walmart stores began testing a collection system for 28 types of trash (candy wrappers, yogurt tubs, pens, coffee bags) that TerraCycle can convert into tote bags, plant pots, backpacks and portable speakers. Hasbro is increasing the recycled content of its packaging and paper materials to 75 percent this year, and Pepsi-owned Naked Juice is converting all of its bottles to 100 percent post-consumer content.

“TerraCycle’s purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste. We do this by creating a national recycling systems for the previously non-recyclable. The process starts by offering collect programs (many of them free) to collect your waste and then convert the collected waste into a wide range of products and materials. With over 14 million people collecting waste in 11 countries together we have diverted billions of pieces of waste that are either upcycled or recycled into over 1,500 various products available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods Market. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that today ends up in our trash.

“TerraCycle’s purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste. We do this by creating a national recycling systems for the previously non-recyclable. The process starts by offering collect programs (many of them free) to collect your waste and then convert the collected waste into a wide range of products and materials. With over 14 million people collecting waste in 11 countries together we have diverted billions of pieces of waste that are either upcycled or recycled into over 1,500 various products available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods Market. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that today ends up in our trash. Founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, then a 20-year-old Princeton University freshman, TerraCycle began by producing organic fertilizer, packaging liquid worm poop in used soda bottles. Since then TerraCycle has grown into one of the fastest growing green companies in the world.”

From its humble beginnings selling worm-poop fertilizer, this New Jersey product manufacturer upcycles retail trash into retail treasure. Each and every product on this earth has a life span,” said Tom Szaky, CEO and vice president of licensing and product development at TerraCycle, Inc. “The end-of-life reality of a bag of potato chips is that the food ends up in the toilet and the bag ends up in the garbage. Same with a pen; you buy a pen, the ink runs out. The only difference is, some products can be recycled easily and others not so easily.”

While many companies boast of using 100% recycled materials for their paper or cardboard products, there are not many companies who take the extra step in saving the earth by "upcycling" previously non reusable products. TerraCyle is one company that is seeking to change that. TerraCycle's slogan is "outsmart waste" and this is exactly that this company has been doing since its inception nine years ago. Founded by a 19 year old Princeton student <http://www.terracycle.net/about_us> , TerraCycle has been focused on finding ways to upcycle everything from Capri Sun packages to Frito Lay chip bags. Because TerraCycle is an upcycling company, and not a recycling <http://www.associatedcontent.com/theme/607/recycling.html>  plant, the company does not turn juice packages into more juice packages. Instead, old "trash" finds a new life as it is changed into fashion bags, backpacks, fences, and more for a total of 186 upcycled products to date <http://www.terracycle.net/products> . Many of these products can be found for sale in stores such as Wal-Mart, Target, The Home Depot, Office Max, Petco, and Whole Foods Market.  The purpose of upcycling, overall, is to reduce landfill waste by producing products that are even better than the original item; in fact, most of the items used in TerraCycle's upcycling program would normally be considered non-recyclable.

MEXICO CITY, Aug 2, 2010  (IPS) - Women's laughter fills the rectangular room on the ground floor of a building that houses a school for 250 local children, on the southern edge of Mexico City's sprawling metropolitan area. The room seems too small to contain the two dozen women busy cutting and folding strips of plastic laminated paper recovered from discarded food wrappers. The strips will later be plaited using a traditional palm-leaf weaving technique passed down by the Nahua people. The women run a craft centre that is part of the local cooperative "Mitz" (a Nahuatl word that means "For you"), where they use recycled material to make bags, coin purses, date books, picture frames, Christmas decorations and accessories, having achieved a monthly production of about 3,000 craft items.