Also, Green Team worked with TerraCycle — a company that makes eco-friendly products from non-recyclable materials — so they could recycle materials that normally can’t be reused, like chip bags. “[TerraCycle] accepts products that can’t be composted, like bags, and turns them into other products,” Fleming said.

Northfield, Ill.-based Kraft has also revisited packaging and advertising. Kraft ditched movie tie-ins on packaging, and nutritional information is more prominent. Most Lunchables trays are now clear, because moms said they wanted to be able to see the food inside. Because the plastic trays aren't recyclable, Kraft moved to avoid "green" criticism by partnering with TerraCycle to convert used Lunchables containers into lunch boxes and pencil cases.

Congratulations to TerraCycle Drink Pouch Brigrade Progam they have save 50 million pouches from being put in landfills and contributed a MILLION dollars to schools and non-profits!! The Capri Sun beverage brand was one of the earliest supporters of TerraCycle, a company that collects would-be trash and turns it into useful items. The collection program, called the Drink Pouch Brigade, takes place mostly in schools, where children choose to deposit used pouches in special receptacles rather than throw them away. In participating schools, each used drink pouch collected and sent to TerraCycle earns two cents, with the funds going toward needed educational programs and resources. Does your school participate in this program, let us know? Together, students and teachers at over 30,000 schools nation wide have collected 50 million drink pouches for the program over the past two years resulting in the 1 million dollars milestone donation! AMAZING!!!

Have you heard of TERRACYCLE? If not you need to check them out. They take trash and Terracycle it into really cool items TerraCycle runs national programs called Brigades, each of which is for a specific waste stream (like the Drink Pouch Brigade, or the Cookie Wrapper Brigade). TerraCycle Brigades are national programs where you can earn cash for your trash (all money is paid to schools and non profits) TerraCycle is excited to celebrate the Drink Pouch Brigade hitting the $1 million mark for schools. That means 50 million drink pouches have been redeemed through TerraCycle fund local school programs nationwide.

Jackie Fashjian became very passionate about spreading awareness to future generations on this very serious environmental issue.  She began working with a company called Terracycle.  Terracycle creates new products from non-recyclable trash that would otherwise end up in the landfills.  They resell these innovative products to major retailers like Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Home Depot just to name a few.  The best part about this program is Terracycle donates 2 cents to a school or charity for every piece of trash sent in.  So far The Dumpster Divers have diverted thousands of pieces of trash from the landfills and raised well over $100 for Floral Street School.  They have also opened a new account to raise $$ for a local Girl Scout troop.  Their hope in the future is to spread this program throughout Central MA and raise a lot more money for local schools and other non profit charities.

Just about every school - public or private - needs money. And I'm not against it by any means. This year I'm chairing the fund raising committee for my younger son's school. My goal is to incorporate projects that teach as well as bring in money. But In my quest, I've found another that I must share. The company is called TerraCycle, and its aim is to make eco-friendly, affordable consumer products from waste.

That’s where TerraCycle comes into play. The goal of TerraCycle is to prevent snack and drink containers from ending up in landfills or being incinerated. TerraCycle helps band consumers together into groups — called “Brigades” — to return used packaging in bulk to TerraCycle. Returned goods are then cleaned out and transformed into new products including bags, coolers, clip boards, picture frames and kites. In addition, for every package returned the brigade earns money to put towards a charity of their choice or, if the team is from a school or non-profit organization, they can keep the money to further their mission.  It is a win-win program: people can reduce their waste while raising money for a good cause. As word spreads about TerraCycle more and more snack and beverage companies are joining the program, meaning even more packaging can be returned and re-purposed. Some major companies whose wrappers can be sent back to TerraCycle include: Stonyfield, Capri Sun, Frito Lay, Kraft, Mars Wrigley, Kashi, Aveeno, Colgate, and Ziploc. The recycled products that TerraCycle produces are then sold at major retailers, including Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and K-Mart. The end products are labeled as TerraCycle products, so consumers know they are supporting a good cause and creating demand for the program. According to the TerraCycle website, there are 11,597,783 people collecting trash with TerraCycle brigades, and over one billion units of waste have already been collected and re-purposed into 186 different products. If that doesn’t already sound good enough, these efforts also helped raise $1.2 Million for various schools, non profits, and charities across the country.

Do you remember our last post about TerraCycle called Making Trash Green? You should definitely check it out if you didn't already read it. Basically, schools, churches and groups of all kinds form a brigade and start collecting! There are brigades for drink pouches, Bear Naked, Huggies, and Ziploc bags- to name a few. You simply collect and send- then TerraCycle makes a donation to your non-profit or a charity of your choice. TerraCycle then takes the trash and makes it into something not-so-trashy.

As you may know, TerraCycle partners with the public in what we call Brigades to collect everything from wine corks to Sharpie pens, and most famously, Capri Sun juice packs. Each piece collected earns 2 cents donated to the charitable organization or school of people's choice. Astoundingly, we just reached $1 million paid to Drink Pouch brigaders! That's 50 million pouches. To put that in perspective, those pouches collectively weigh as much as 75 Hummers, stacked they'd be as tall as 807 Mount Everests, and laid out would cover 2x the size of our home state of New Jersey. All of that, not going to landfills, but instead being made into products whose useful life will last much longer than how long it took to drink the juice out of those pouches. And that's just 1 of 26 things we collect, making 186 products out of them. But what's even more amazing is the speed of which collection is happening is increasing.