How is your summer going? Ours is go, go, go! All year long we are super active here in Telluride, Colorado. What changes in the summer when the snow is not dumping down? Oh lots! We hike, mountain bike, fish, play in the park, swim, go on Jeep tours… and more! Where are you gonna find us? OUTSIDE! So what do we bring on our outdoor adventures? A whole lot of simple, healthy & delicious snacks. We also pack lots to drink. It’s so easy to get dehydrated in the high altitude sun & we need to make sure we are as hydrated as possible. Capri Sun juice drinks are an awesome way to drink up, besides they taste awesome! Did you know:

• Capri Sun juice drinks has no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives and has a new clear bottom pouch to show off the purity.
• Don’t be shy… this drink is a great for you as it is for your kiddos!
• Since 2008, more than 200 million Capri Sun juice drink pouches have been collected through Capri Sun’s partnership with TerraCycle and recycled and upcycled into durable goods.
• Capri Sun juice drink pouches now have clear bottoms because Capri Sun consumers expressed the desire for this innovation.
• In 2012, Capri Sun invested in creating a new box for Capri Sun pouches, remaking the iconic box with paperboard instead of cardboard – a change that resulted in a 30 million pound reduction in packaging in 2012. Capri Sun is always looking for ways to improve their packaging while providing consumers with the great-tasting juice drink they’ve come to expect from Capri Sun.

TerraCycle is a company that allows our community to recycle and upcycle items that would otherwise be added to landfills. Through this program we not only help the environment, but TerraCycle also donates money back into our community To help keep this program alive at RES, please consider volunteering for about an hour every month or every other month to sort through TerraCycle items brought in by students. You can make the experience more fun by signing up with a friend and having your children help! If you are interested, or just want to learn more, please contact Katie LeFrancois at 434-3159 or kblefrancois@gmavt.net. Thank you!

With your very next purchase, consider how long you will have that item. Until you finish drinking it? Till it's no longer fashionable? Until the next version is released? Then, what? In a nation founded on democratic freedoms with a capitalist core, we have the privilege of choosing from hundreds of brands for everything from our beverages to what we drive and how we desire to dress. With those privileges come responsibilities. "Conscious consumerism is a reminder that consuming affects humanity and the world at large. We need to remember our purchases have power to express our beliefs," said Julie Gilhart, one of fashion industry's most influential consultants. Fashion may be one of the simplest ways to express our beliefs. What does your shirt say about you? Coyote Howling features Feed My Starving Children T-shirts for $16.50. The full 100 percent of purchase price is dedicated to FMSC MobilePack events hosted in Lincoln County. Each shirt funds a nutritious, life-sustaining meal for 75 children. Each MobiePack prepares a minimum of 100,000 meals for $22,000. Coyote Howling allies with SustainU to feature T-shirts made in the USA from 100 percent recycled cotton/poly materials. The newest is "Turn Hunger into HOPE" featuring the TerraCycle logo. Looking for a competitive advantage in an industry increasingly affected by outsourcing, American textiles companies pioneered work with recycled fibers. The result was a ground-breaking fabric that may change the trajectory of clothing and apparel. Determined to regrow American manufacturing after many companies started to offshore in the mid '90s, American cut and sew factories are creating quality garments and employment opportunities. Coyote Howling is proud to work with SustainU and its offices and factories in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina and Tennessee. Coyote Howling has combined energy with Sevenly, another for-profit social good company. Sevenly gives $7 of each purchase to the mission of the week and regularly features FMSC. Sevenly shirts and prints feature reminders such as "Together, we can feed a nation," and Nelson Mandela's message, "There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." Sevenly declares on their website, "We have found that there is no greater calling than to provide, heal, rescue, and serve others. Ultimately, our desire is to move a generation toward generosity and an intentional love for others." Like Coyote Howling, Sevenly is a purchase with purpose business that turns to Matthew 22:36-40 for its mission, The Greatest Commandment. Coyote Howling continues to expand its SERRV international fair-trade selections. Artists from around the globe make handcraft ranging from carved marble elephants to re-purposed paper jewelry. Artists participate with SERRV, a non-profit organization, to earn sustainable incomes for food, medical care, and education for their families. When we need or desire to buy something, we can make an effort to be the most "conscious" consumers possible, taking into account the broad impacts that our purchases have on people and the environment. Part of being a conscious consumer is thinking about what we buy and why we buy it. Another part is considering what it is made of/from and who was involved in the making. Next week, we'll consider yet another aspect of how to become more conscious consumers by asking what we do with things we buy after we buy them. Tonya Huber, PhD, is founder and owner of Coyote Howling Shop for a Cause Contact her at CoyoteHowlingNM@gmail.com 575-808-8320.

Leave No Footprint owner Christina Haas, pictured here after a pickup, wants to help New Yorkers properly dispose of items such as batteries and old electronics. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Lindsay Armstrong WASHINGTON HEIGHTS — Christina Haas wants to help uptown residents clean up their acts. The Washington Heights resident recently launched Leave No Footprint, a business dedicated to helping northern Manhattanites recycle hard-to-get-rid-of items such as batteries, leftover paint and old electronics. Like many entrepreneurs, Haas, 41, drew inspiration from her own life to come up with the idea for her business. “I was at home looking at piles and bags of what many would consider trash, but they were things I didn’t want to put into the regular trash stream,” she said. “I thought, I can’t be the only person who has this problem — a house full of stuff but no time to take everything to the proper recycling places.” Haas currently works as a broadcast standards manager at ABC but has a longtime interest in environmentalism. She has a master’s degree in environmental sciences and hopes to use it to reduce waste and divert materials from landfills. She thinks that other New Yorkers want to do the same, but aren’t sure of how to accomplish that goal. “I believe people want to do the right thing in terms of recycling, but it’s hard, especially in New York City where the program is limited,” Haas explained. The city does provide curbside recycling pickup for common items such as cardboard boxes, soda cans and milk cartons. However, many items are not accepted by the program and have to be taken to special drop-off centers in hard-to-reach corners of the city or dumped during special e-recycling events. Haas hopes to act as a middleman in order to get other people’s stuff where it needs to go. When she picks up an order from a customer, she takes it to a storage place that she rents and sorts through the load. Her first priority is to donate materials whenever possible to nonprofit organizations and schools. For items that are no longer usable, she determines the best way to recycle them, whether that’s through the city or through private companies that offer free recycling programs, such as Best Buy. Haas also plans to work with companies such as TerraCycle, which collects difficult-to-recycle packaging materials and turns them into new products — such as a shoulder bag made from soda pull tabs or a picture frame made from a bike chain. “We’re very lucky in New York because there are so many organizations that recycle just about anything you could think of,” she said. Haas came up with the idea for Leave No Footprint about two months ago. Before opening for business, she floated the idea on several local listservs to see if people were interested in such a service. The positive response convinced her to try the idea out on a part-time basis. She also researched other waste-removal services like 1-800-JUNK, but found that no one else was approaching the business with a specific focus on upcycling and recycling. Leave No Footprint has only been in operation for about a week, but Haas has already done two pickups and has three more scheduled. She said that most popular items people have by far are old electronics. Bruce Jaffe, who runs his own computer repair business Computer Tutor/Computer Doctor, recently hired Haas to remove several pieces of equipment that had been crowding his apartment for years. It is illegal to throw computer equipment away rather than recycle it, and he said the biggest factor in his decision to use the service was time. "To me, with the time I'd spend doing that, I could be serving more customers, which is a much better use of my time," said Jaffe, 64. Haas picked up nine hard drives and a few laptops from him on Wednesday. "It’s such a good feeling to have those objects out of here," he said. "I’m starting to think about what else I can get rid of." In order to generate interest in the fledgling business, Haas is offering an introductory price of $20 for any size collection. As the business grows, she may change the pricing model based on the size of the items and the difficulty associated with recycling them. Haas hopes to someday make Leave No Footprint her full-time job. But either way, it is her passion. “My focus is to get as much waste as possible diverted from the landfills,” she said. “I really believe that you can recycle most of your trash if you just know how to do it.”

The sustainability-minded company will host a course showing food firms, packaging producers, and other stakeholders how to craft effective, sustainable packaging.

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — A new show wants to redefine the meaning of trashy television. "Human Resources," which debuts Friday on the Pivot network, will focus not on hard-partying beachgoers but on a socially conscious recycling company. The "reality docu-drama" chronicles what it is like to work at the Trenton-based company TerraCycle Inc. Founded in 2001 by then-20-year-old Princeton University student Tom Szaky, TerraCycle collects hard-to-recycle items, from potato chip bags to cigarette butts, and transforms them into colorful consumer products. It donates a portion of its proceeds to charity. Szaky hopes the show will inspire a new generation to become socially conscious business entrepreneurs. "A lot of people have said the show is like a 20-something socially conscious reality version of 'The Office,'" Szaky said, referring to the long-running mockumentary-style comedy that had British and American versions. "I'm a big fan of content with a purpose; there isn't that much TV out there like this." Szaky is confident the show will have wide appeal, and he sees it as part of "trying to accomplish different ways of getting our message out." A trailer for the premiere episode features quick-cut edits of droll and jokey asides from employees who both embrace and mockingly disdain TerraCycle's workplace culture. The indefatigable, Budapest-born Szaky, now 32, is a main draw, as he offers a frenetic tour of the graffiti-walled, recyclables-filled office and evangelizes about a trash-less future and his goal to "eliminate the concept of waste." With its "superhero socks" theme days, Nerf gun fights, dogs wandering the office and yoga breaks, a green company that is both successful and socially conscious can be a lot of fun, he says. "The main point is to get more people to know about TerraCycle," Szaky said. "The second is to really inspire young people to look at becoming entrepreneurs for socially responsible reasons." The company is committed to remaining in Trenton, Szaky said, bringing what he describes as a "Silicon Valley vibe" to the city that once boasted "Trenton Makes, The World Takes" — words that still appear on the Lower Trenton Bridge spanning the Delaware River — but has since fallen on hard times with the large-scale flight of manufacturing. Szaky said the company's 22 other offices around the world are located in similarly economically depressed areas. Szaky says he wants people to feel inspired when they watch the show and to realize they can make a difference, one cigarette butt or discarded juice box at a time. "If people like the show, send us your garbage — totally free," he added, pointing out that TerraCycle's website offers free pre-paid shipping labels for people to mail in their trash. Belisa Balaban, executive vice president of original programming at Pivot, said the network was immediately impressed by TerraCycle's employees and mission. "We knew they were a perfect fit for Pivot, perfectly aligned with everything we want to do, to create positive social change through entertainment," Balaban said. "TerraCycle is an amazing company that's doing amazing things," she added. "It's a funny place to spend time at, a place with great bold characters who are unique individuals and extremely passionate about what they do." The network plans to air 10 episodes of the show in its first season.

This weekend is Jersey Fresh Jam, New Jersey’s premier Hip Hop and graffiti festival. Aerosol artists from far and wide will converge to adorn the walls of Terracycle INC, in Trenton, with their signature masterpieces while local and regionally known emcees, bands and DJs provide the soundtrack. Jersey Fresh Jam is free and open to the public, so come out this Saturday, from noon-6 p.m. to see public art in the making! On August 15 the Stampede will join these great works of public art. Visit hvartscouncil.org to learn more.

TerraCycle will collect accepted waste items from 5 to 7 p.m. July 17 at Heath Brook School, 165 Shawsheen St., and from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Aug. 20 at Trahan School, 12 Salem Road, Tewksbury. Accepted waste items include food pouches, bottles, filters, phones, toothpaste tubes, diaper packaging, glue sticks, inkjet cartridges, jewelry, cameras and laptops. For information: terracycle.com.