Green happenings Friday, April 22, 2011 Here's a sampling of activities planned to celebrate Earth Day and green living. • Flip-Flop Replay. Starting today, Old Navy will collect used flip-flops in special store bins to recycle the materials into foundations for four public playgrounds around the country. The store is doing this in partnership with TerraCycle Inc., an international company that takes difficult-to-recycle packaging and turns it into eco-friendly products. The flip-flops will be collected through May 21.

TerraCycle transforms trash into everyday products. Worm poop. Those two words mark the beginning of Tom Szaky’s ten-year-and-running quest to found and champion TerraCycle, a company that uses upcycling techniques to turn garbage that is usually difficult to recycle, such as packaging, into other, functional items. It all started after high school graduation, right before he entered Princeton University. “My friends started growing pot in their basement at the end of senior year,” said Szaky. “When I went to Princeton, they went to Canada and started using worm poop in compost to grow the marijuana, and they got amazing results.” Szaky was sold. He drew up a business plan and six months later dropped out of Princeton and dedicated himself to running his new business full time. ‘We spent the first few months just shoveling organic waste,” said Szaky. “Before we knew it, the company just got bigger and bigger.”

Flip-Flop Replay. Starting today, Old Navy will collect used flip-flops in special store bins to recycle the materials into foundations for four public playgrounds around the country. The store is doing this in partnership with TerraCycle Inc., an international company that takes difficult-to-recycle packaging and turns it into eco-friendly products. The flip-flops will be collected through May 21.

TerraCycle transforms trash into everyday products. Worm poop. Those two words mark the beginning of Tom Szaky’s ten-year-and-running quest to found and champion TerraCycle, a company that uses upcycling techniques to turn garbage that is usually difficult to recycle, such as packaging, into other, functional items. It all started after high school graduation, right before he entered Princeton University. “My friends started growing pot in their basement at the end of senior year,” said Szaky. “When I went to Princeton, they went to Canada and started using worm poop in compost to grow the marijuana, and they got amazing results.” Szaky was sold. He drew up a business plan and six months later dropped out of Princeton and dedicated himself to running his new business full time. ‘We spent the first few months just shoveling organic waste,” said Szaky. “Before we knew it, the company just got bigger and bigger.”

11-04-22-- Leominster C#D5C

To keep garbage out of landfills, you can also visit Terracycle (www.terracycle.net). This Trenton-based company works with companies and consumers to recycle certain products. Like Gazelle, it pays people to do it. For example, the site now has an offer to collect Solo disposable cups. People who collect them will get two cents per cup. You can also get three cents each for yogurt containers and $2 each for old digital cameras. The site currently has 43 such offers. Besides collecting recyclables, Terracycle also creates new products out of used packaging. It sells fencing made out of drink pouches, recycling bins made out of recycled plastic, and picture frames made from bicycle chains. The site currently sells 206 products and they all look pretty nice. The insulated cooler made from Starburst wrappers is especially eye-catching. If you want to help the Earth and a local company at the same time, give Terracycle a try.

Total Wine & More has teamed up with TerraCycle, the world’s leader in the collection and reuse of nonrecyclable post-consumer waste. Partnering additionally with Nomacorc, the global leader in alternative wine closures, Total Wine & More will place collection bins in select stores where customers can drop off wine closures to be “upcycled” into eco-friendly cork boards, all produced via low-energy-consumption means by the TerraCycle Cork Brigade program. Beginning in California, Total Wine & More hopes to expand the program throughout many of its 73 wine superstores across 11 states.

If you don’t want to take on DIY projects yourself, you can start a “brigade” and earn points for your group. A school, for example can collect foil juice containers (like Capri Sun packets), ship them to TerraCycle, which will make them into backpacks. Plastic pellets can be reformulated to become lunchbox/coolers, Frito Lay chip bags make the inner lining of a cooler, composite wood can be made from everyday trash, etc. In return, the brigade will earn points and pick a charity for which TerraCycle will translate the points into a contribution. Charities include Covenant House, which provides services to homeless and at-risk youth; Feeding America, a hunger-relief organization; National Wildlife Federation, dedicated to conserving wildlife habitat; Charity: water, which provides safe drinking water to developing countries; and many others. (Details, charities and donations are detailed at www.terracycle.net/points).

Though recycling is not a new trend, many people are unaware that most objects are un-recyclable. This means that the traditional recycling method is too costly and inefficient to properly break down items such as chip bags, juice boxes, shampoo bottles, yogurt containers, candy wrappers, pens, butter tubs, and more. TerraCycle is a breakthrough company that intends to recycle the formerly un-recyclable. Now, anyone can sign up for the TerraCycle campaigns and send in their trash to be converted into new products. The best part, besides doing something good for Mother Nature, is the money anyone can receive from TerraCycle for donating their trash. The company reports to collect one million juice pouches every two to three days and returns $0.02 per pouch to the donator. By collecting and sending items that would normally end up in the trash, sewer, or ocean, they are able to help create products such as park benches, messenger bags and backpacks, fences, picture frames, just to name a few of more than 260 products feature on their website. TerraCycle does not actually make new products, but instead acts as a supplier to manufacturing companies that would normally use virgin material.