The Flip Flop Replay program facilitates the recycling of old flip flops to build community playgrounds. It’s all part of a national recycling program.  Now through May 21, Old Navy shoppers can participate in Flip Flop Replay by depositing used flip flops in collection bins at local Old Navy stores.  TerraCycle, an international upcycling and recycling company that encourages consumers to rethink waste, will recycle the flip-flops and used them to construct playgrounds to be donated to communities around the United States. It’s the first time a national retailer has initiated this kind of effort to collect and recycle flip flops.

What’s going on? Consultants and and pioneers like Terracycle’s Tom Szaky and Method’s Eric Ryan have been quick to seize on the "authenticity gap." Only inauthentic ecofriendly cleaning products are failing; their "Light Green" consumers are more fickle, more price sensitive, not truly committed to the sustainability movement. By contrast, "Dark Green" consumers are more educated, more committed, more affluent and thus more inclined to stick with “pure play” brands that deliver both value and values.

Morton suggested going through the national TerraCycle recycling program, which diverts billions of pieces of garbage from landfills and incinerators by either recycling or “upcycling” them into new products. For example, juice pouches can be turned into pencil cases and potato chip bags can be made into trash cans.

We can't stop working to turn the Earth's health around. We have to continue recycling, reducing and reusing. We have to find new ways every day to minimize our carbon footprint. There are opportunities everywhere. Take, for example, the Clif Bar you're currently munching. TerraCycle [1] is now offering 2 cents for every Clif Bar wrapper you collect (you have to sign up first), so that they can turn them into funky eco-cessories, reducing the amount of wrappers that end up in landfills each year. And they aren't stopping at Clif Bars; Nature Valley and PowerBar wrappers are accepted as well. If you don't eat energy bars but gobble up tubs of yogurt and gallons of juice, TerraCycle is collecting yogurt containers and drinkpouches. Sounds good, and easy, to me.

Here’s one way.  Two companies have teamed up to launch the “Protecting the Planet for Baby Contest,” which will offer funding for green projects to its contest winners.  Sprout, the organic baby food brand co-founded and created by Executive Chef and father, Tyler Florence, and TerraCycle, the world’s leader in the collection of non-recyclable and difficult-to-recycle packaging, are collaborating in this campaign to encourage families to protect the planet for the sake of their children.

Over at Terracycle, “Sprout and TerraCycle are asking parents WHY they are protecting the planet for the sake of their children.  Maybe Mom was really inspired by a trip to Yellowstone and wants her baby to have the same experience?  Maybe Dad struggles with asthma and is wants his daughter to have cleaner air to breathe?  The reasons and ways parents are going green are wide and varied, but TerraCycle and Sprout want to hear about them all!  Email contest@teams.terracycle.net and tell us about it, in 250 words or less, for the chance to win a month’s supply of Sprout Organic Baby Food, a TerraCycle bag, and $100 for a green project.  Three runner-ups will receive prize packs, too!  For more info, please see http://www.terracycle.net/Protecting-the-Planet-for-Baby-Contest.” If you use Sprout, you can also sign up for a Sprout brigade on Terracycle and send in your pouches to be recycled or upcycled into new products.

Southern Seasons Magazine

Visitors who bring specially marked Polly-O String Cheese packaging to the Six Flags Over Georgia Park in Atlanta will receive $15 off general admission any day of the week or a free kid’s ticket with purchase of general admission ticket on weekdays, now through Aug. 31. TerraCycle will recycle the packaging. www.terracycle.net

Os novos copos de plástico transparente são totalmente recicláveis, incluindo um copo de PET contendo 20% de material reciclado pós-consumo, bem como copos de papel compostáveis e copos de cera feita com materiais de origem vegetal proveniente de florestas geridas de forma sustentável.

No Brasil, aPepsiCo também há muito tempo tem dedicado esforços para tratar os resíduos. Em2009, a empresa assinou acordo com a TerraCycle, empresa especializada na transformação de resíduos em bolsas, estojos e lancheiras. Além disso, a companhia também produziu mais de 20 mil displays reciclados de BOPP em 2010 para os pontos de venda. Para 2011 a meta é conquistar esse mesmo número de displays BOPP.

Brazil, beyond Carnaval and its taste for open source software, is doing something we should all pay attention to: Its National Policy on Solid Waste was passed last year, and has laid out an extensive range of measures to better address the disposal, recycling and reuse of waste material. Of most interest to the Packaging Digest community is this paragraph: “The National Solid Waste Policy provides for Reverse Logistics, a set of actions, procedures, and means aimed at facilitating the collection and return of solid wastes to their original producers, so that they can be treated and reused in new products–in the form of new inputs–either in their cycle or in new production cycles, so as to prevent the generation of rejects, i.e., the return of wastes (pesticides, batteries, tires, lubricating oils, and plastic bags, among others) in the post-sale and post-consumption phases.” From what I gather, this program looks to meet or exceed other similar private/public waste reduction efforts like in Europe, encompassing everything from individuals to the largest companies. These country’s examples got me thinking: What if we began taxing all use of virgin material in products as a way to increase the pace of upping the percentage of recycled and reused materials faster? It could be on the producer, the retailer or the consumer. Aside from the sky falling, as I’m sure many businesses would cry, this would encourage a broader based use of existing recycled, upcycled and directly reused components happening, and fast. Or would it?