The message that the planet may be in peril is a big pill to swallow, especially when you're a kid. When trying to get your youngsters interested in becoming eco-friendly kids when heading back to the classroom, keep the lesson both simple and relatable. "Too often environmental education is all 'doom and gloom' — melting ice caps, disappearing honey bees, dying polar bears — but this only works to scare kids, not inspire or motivate them to make a difference," shares Albe Zakes, global vice president, media relations for TerraCycle, Inc. "Instead, making environmental responsibility fun, engaging, interactive — even a 'game' — is a far more effective way to get kids interested and motivated to do their part."

Engage kids with results they can see

According to treehugger.com, each student generates 240 pounds of waste and 18,760 pounds of lunch waste each year. But, how do you translate that into something tangible kids can understand? "Kids like to be able to see the impact of their actions," says Zakes. "Like all humans, they have relatively short attention spans and memories. Cleaning up a local water way or park allows them to take personal pride in the outcome, even doing a DIY or art project with recycled materials allows them to show off their work to family or friends. This personal connection will help drive more responsible behavior in the future."

Tom Szaky’s infectious passion has propelled TerraCycle, a multinational recycling and upcycling company, to be among the fastest-growing corporations in the nation. He will share more about his business from 9 to 10 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 20, in room 308/309 at Natural Products Expo East.   Natural Foods Merchandiser: How do you describe your business for those who don’t know about it? Tom Szaky: TerraCycle’s business revolves around the simple idea of making things recyclable that are not recyclable. Today, we are in 22 countries around the world where you can sign up to collect waste. You simply take a cardboard box and fill it up. Each waste stream goes into its own box, such as pens in one box, chip bags in another. Once the box is full, you download a free shipping label and send it to us. We typically credit your account 2 cents for every piece of waste you collect to allocate to any school or charity in the country. Then we take the waste and we do one of three things to it: reuse it, if it’s possible, we do that for example in our shoe program; upcycle it, for example juice packs into backpacks; or recycle it, where, for example, we melt chip bags into trash cans.