TerraCycle: We’ve already mentioned TerraCycle–a company that collects potato chip bags and food wrappers to make useful products. Join their Candy Wrapper Brigade to turn in your wrappers for some cash! Just sign-up and they’ll send you prepaid postage labels–for each wrapper you send it, TerraCycle will donate $0.02 to your favorite charity or school.

.”  After the students empty the pouches and remove the straw, Mrs. Janis slits the bottom, rinses them out with water (to discourage “critters” while the pouches await shipment) and dries them, usually on her clothesline.  “I am old-school enough to have two at my home.” Then they are sorted, counted and packaged in boxes for free shipment to TerraCycle in New Jersey. This upstart company, founded by a Princeton graduate, takes this waste and “upcyles” them into cool new products, like juice pouch pencil bags, tote bags, backpacks, and lunchboxes. More importantly, they reward nonprofits with approximately two cents for each pouch they collect.

The Evening Star 4-H Club is currently part of the Capri Sun Drink Pouch Brigade, a program that pays schools and non-profit organizations to collect otherwise-non-recyclable waste that would normally go to a landfill. Working with a recycle company called TerraCycle, the 4-H members have been collecting Capri Sun pouches, gum and candy wrappers, toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, tape dispensers, and glue bottles, which they then send in for recycling.

TerraCycle has a more unusual model. It collects all kinds of hard-to-recycle stuff by mail — drink pouches, candy wrappers, plastic bags, wine corks, toothpaste containers — and then turns them into other things. “In 2011, you’ll see a playground made out Capri Sun and Honest Kids drink pouches,” said Jo Opot, TerraCycle’s vice president of business development. Consumers who send trash get rewarded with donations to schools or charities, and they get the psychic satisfaction of knowing that something useful was made out of their garbage. You’d think that  few people would bother to send their trash in the mail to New Jersey–Terracyle’s home base–but the company says 12 million people have participated, returning 1.8 billion items. The company gets paid by brands whose products it recovers, by manufacturers who buy its materials and by marketers who use its logo on finished products. There’s lots more about this all works at the TerraCycle website, here.

Kids and faculty over at Old Pueblo Children's Academy have taken to recycling all of their used-up Capri Sun pouches through a company called TerraCycle. As of Oct. 21, the students have helped to keep 8,221 pouches out of landfills, and raised $164 for their school.  Nationwide, 50 million drink pouches have been recycled so far. That's the weight of 20 school buses, and the length of 480 football fields.

Students at Liberty Elementary School are receiving classroom instruction at all levels, including art, which are based on the United States Environmental Protection Agency's guidelines to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. In fact, the top three Recycle ART projects will be presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Artr in Spring. Every Friday, between 8 a.m. and 8:35 a.m.., studens, parents, staff and community members bring their recyclable items to teh school. Students are learning to recycle  beyond the usual plastic bottle or can. They bring in all plastics, metals, cardboard, newspaper, and more.

Walmart and TerraCycle are sponsoring the Trash to Cash Collection Contest, a program that will reward the top-collecting New Jersey public schools with $125,000 in grants. The contest is open to any public school in the state. The schools that collect the most used packaging and products through TerraCycle's free Brigade programs will receive grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000. The contest runs through Dec. 15, and the winners will be announced in early January.

RUMSON, NJ - New Jersey based TerraCycle manufactures more than fifty products made from non-recyclable waste materials. Affordable, eco-friendly items such as shower curtains, purses and kites made from juice drink pouches and bulletin boards made from wine corks are sold in major retailers such as Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Office Max, Petco and Whole Foods Markets. The company has been featured on a National Geographic television program, (Garbage Moguls) won national awards and obtained high praise for its environmentally friendly products and for keeping hundreds of tons of garbage out of landfills. But, how do they amass the huge amount of materials needed to make their products? This is where the TerraCycle Brigades come in. The Brigades are part of a national program that pays school groups and non-profits to collect the items needed by TerraCycle to make its products.

SOUTHBOROUGH, MA, October 20 – The teachers at the Woodward Memorial School used to see a lot of Capri Sun drink pouches get thrown away.  Once they signed up to recycle them through a company called TerraCycle, the school began earning two cents for every one of those pouches and became part of a nationwide effort that has just reached an impressive milestone of keeping 50 million pouches out of landfills.  In addition, TerraCycle, which makes affordable, eco-friendly products from packaging waste, and Capri Sun have paid one million dollars to schools and non-profits in return for the recycled drink pouches.

TerraCycle have just joined forces with Danone to help reduce landfill.  What’s more you can raise money for charity or for a school by collecting Danone yoghurt pots. Terracycle will upcycle and recycle your collected waste materials into new products.  Take a look at the TerraCycle site to see the range of products you can buy.