Have you heard of Terracycle yet? This company is so COOL! They take used trash in the form of drink pouches, toothpaste tubes, and sunscreen tubes and recycle them into great products like tote bags, cork boards and laptop cases. Isn't this a basic idea of going green???? There is a 2nd (or 3rd, 4th or 5th) life in almost everything we use! This company is such an awesome way to introduce this process to kids too! They drink a juice pouch and then use a tote bag made from juice pouches to go to school, the pool or where ever!

Terracycle products are already sold in stores such as The Home Depot, Target, and even some Whole Foods, but this “trash-to-treasure” company has teamed up with Walmart to sell over 60 products in every Walmart store across the country for the month of April (from the 5th to the 29th). In order to boost consumers’ awareness of environmental issues, TerraCycle products are being sold right next to the items from which they were made. So that means tote bags made out of candy wrappers will be sold right next to the candy, and the backpack made out of drink pouches will be sold right next to the drinks themselves.

A few months back here at Bay Area Bags, I featured billboard bags from terracyle.net and I bet most of us were amazed of how creative these people are. And for the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, again they are here to surprises us with a lot of new releases that people from all ages would enjoy. all products will be co-displayed with the original products from which they are made. So notebooks, pencil cases and lunch boxes made from Mars candy wrappers will be displayed with bars of the popular candies and backpacks made from Capri Sun drink pouches will be displayed with boxes of Capri Sun juice! The items are made from the same wrappers that will cover the very food they may hold. All come with trim and handles which match the original logos product. These bags are absolutely as fun and fashionable as they are eco-friendly! Walmart has agreed to carry TerraCycle products in their seasonal section ONLY for the month of April. So we got to hurry and check them out. Visit terracycle.net for complete details.

If you have been a reader of mine since the early days you may remember my love ofTerraCycle.  If not, feel free to read some of my past posts about this great company.  And despite the foul associations that are sometimes given to Wal-Mart it is our closest store for those quick items that we all need.  Now if you mix TerraCycle and Wal-Mart together and what do you get? Great NEW TerraCycle products that can ONLY be found at EVERY Wal-Mart in the United States ONLY in April in honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day!  Can you hear me screaming here people?  This is fabulous!

Starting April 5th, and for a limited time only during April, nearly 60 TerraCycle products will be available in every Walmart across the country in honor of the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day. Snazzy bags, totes, folders, books, even kites!

Starting April 5th, and for a limited time only during the month of April, about 60 TerraCycle items, including a bunch of brand new things never seen before, will be available in every single Wal-Mart across the country (3,500 locations) in honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day this year. The products will be sold right next to the original items they are made from. Kites made from Cheetos wrappers will be sold with bags of Frito-Lay chips and backpacks made from drink pouches will be sold next to boxes of Capri Sun. This will help educate consumers about resource conservation and give millions of students who participate in TerraCycle’s Brigades, an opportunity to see their collection efforts come to life!

Starting April 5th, and for a limited time only during April, nearly 60 TerraCycle products will be available in every Walmart across the country in honor of the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day.  This will include lots of brand new items, which you can look at right now by reading this blog post.

TerraCycle has tons of different brigades for all types of “garbage”. They collect juice pouches, candy wrappers, chips bags, yogurt cups and wine corks just to name a very few. All you have to do is go to their web site and sign-up for one of the brigades and you’re on your way. But what’s great is that it doesn’t just benefit TerraCycle (lots of free materials) it also benefits you, or more specifically, your organization. TerraCycle donates 2 cents per item back to the non-profit or school of your choice.

In more efforts to divert trash from Conway’s city landfill, Julia Lee Moore elementary has enrolled in a program to reuse non-recyclables to create new, functional products — and make a little money while they are at it. Brigades, a nationwide program, pays schools and non-profit organizations 2 cents per juice pouch, which parents opt for in convenience, and turns them into a range of upcycled products. Upcycling is the process in which disposable or discarded items are repurposed to make them valuable or useful. TerraCycle’s hope is that with the program, waste will be eliminated and according to their Web site, used to create innovative products from “materials others deem garbage.”

During the StartingBloc Institute, one of the speakers we had the privilege of listening to was Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle. TerraCycle is a company that collects traditionally non-recyclable waste from people all across the country by paying a non-profit of the collecting person’s choice, 2 cents for each piece they collect and mail to the company. TerraCycle then uses the waste it receives from its Brigade members to make hundreds of eco-friendly products, i.e. “upcycling” the collected trash. Starting today, and until April 29th, about 60 “upcycled” TerraCycle items, including a bunch of brand new things never seen before, will be available in every single Wal-Mart across the country (3,500 locations) in honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day this year. The TerraCycle products will be sold right next to the original items they are made from. Kites made from Cheetos wrappers will be sold with bags of Frito-Lay chips and backpacks made from drink pouches will be sold next to boxes of Capri Sun, with the goal of helping educate consumers about resource conservation.