Don't throw out your empty baby food pouches and used mascara; upcycle it! So far, upcycling from Sustainable Westford has raised about $11,759.80 for Westford schools and has saved 6,649 pounds of trash from entering the waste stream, according to the Sustainable Westford website. Sustainable Westford's upcycle program can accept: foil drink pouches and their straws; energy and granola bar wrappers; chip bags; oral care products including toothbrushes and toothpaste containers (the heads of electrical toothbrushes cannot be accepted); and writing instruments excluding wooden pencils.

To prevent the pileup of empty bottles in landfills from the fallout of the city’s drinking water crisis, officials announced Thursday that residents will immediately have biweekly curbside pickup service.With thousands of water bottle donations coming in by the hour to assist residents dealing with unusable tap water from corroded lead pipes, recycling companies have stepped up to keep Flint from becoming blighted by plastic.

A plan to recycle the thousands of plastic bottles being distributed to Flint residents during the water emergency was announced today by a coalition of state, Genesee County and City of Flint partners. Lt. Gov. Brian Calley said the goal is to provide residents with several convenient options. “While bottled water has been key to making sure residents have safe drinking water, it’s important to make sure we’re not harming our environment as a result,” Calley said. “The new recycling initiative brings together state, county and city partners to make sure we are keeping plastic bottles from entering landfills or littering Flint streets.”

Using a water filter, whether to improve the taste of your water or to filter out contaminants, isn't that hard to do. What has been difficult, though, is trying to justify throwing out all of the filters into the trash. And, according to The Washington Post, 40% of Americans use a home water-treatment unit.

If you don’t like the taste of tap water, grab a water filtration product for your home. Brita and PUR are two great brands to choose from, and you can even recycle their filtration products by sending them into my company, TerraCycle. By collecting and sending us your PUR or Brita dispensers, pitchers, faucet mounts, and other filtration products, you can even earn money for a local school or charity of your choosing.

Thanks to a Hilton Travel with a Purpose grant, Keep Golden Isles Beautiful now can store and ship designated non-traditional recyclables to TerraCycle for recycling. Items now accepted by appointment at the Keep Golden Isles Beautiful offices include, oral care products, beauty/personal care products, chip/snack bags, tape dispensers, cereal bags, solo cups, pens/markers/highlighters, drink pouches, Brita/PUR products and cigarettes.

While Whirlpool does not recycle its products personally, it recently partnered up with TerraCycle. Oh wow, this is a cool organization. According to its website, “TerraCycle can recycle all PUR and Brita products, including pitchers, faucet mount systems, all types of water filters, and even the packaging.”

Brita and PUR have partnered with TerraCycle to create recycling programs for their pitchers, bottles, filters, dispensers, faucet mounts and all packaging, effectively making the water filtration products 100% waste-free. For every recyclable Brita water filter used, 300 plastic bottles are saved. Not only is water filtering a more sustainable choice than the use of bottled water, it is more cost effective for consumers as well.

If you are one of the many people who use PUR or Brita filters for your water, there is exciting news! Both companies have partnered with TerraCycle to create recycling programs

MADISON – The Madison Area YMCA is inviting everyone to recycle with the YMCA, which is working to help keep the planet “green” with the help of TerraCycle.