TerraCycle and Colgate are both offering their own FREE curriculums; Colgate seeking to teach kids how to keep their mouths clean and TerraCycle seeking to teach kids how to Outsmart Waste! Both curriculums can be used at school or in the home and both meet national education standards. TerraCycle’s brand new curriculum series, which will be released three times a year, was developed by the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education and the first release focuses on teaching kids of all ages groups, from K-12, about Natural Laws & Principals of the Materials Cycle. TerraCycle loves us to recycle, no matter how we do it! We can join their brigades and mail our trash to them to be upcycled into products or we can use our trash to make new products of our own!

The project partners the school with a company called TerraCycle, which pays the school 2 cents for commonly-disposed wrappers for candy bars, potato chips and other items. TerraCycle then turns the garbage into accessories such as backpacks and purse, according to fifth grade teacher Diane Roethler. “These aren’t things that can go in curbside recycling,” Roethler said. “This company has found a specific use for these items and a specific product that they can make from it.” Roethler hopes to use the money earned through the TerraCycle program to raise extra money for the school to purchase supplies. During the three weeks she collected material during the last school year, Roethler collected 2,200 items for more than $44. She expects to earn even more this year now that the parents and students are more familiar with the program.

Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer were on the scene with their worm-based invention in 2001.  They fed organic waste from the dining hall to worms, then liquefied the excrement to make compost tea that was stored in used soda bottles [2].  Those bottles were collected on campus.  In 2002, they planned on expanding their work to other businesses by collecting their waste.  Szaky discovered that they had created the world's largest continuous flow reactor [3]. I was watching Garbage Moguls one night on National Geographic channel. They were featuring an all-weekend marathon on TerraCycle. The first night I watched, I was hooked. Their crew went all out! At the time of viewing, they were expanding into retailing after years of working with other companies to sell their products. The crew was having a small difficulty adapting to the new expansion and Tom Szaky brought them into his office. In particular, he spoke to two girls whom he delegated the responsibility to run the store. During an approximate 15 minutes chat, he highlighted his concerns and offered solutions. He would follow up with a visit to the retail store and work further with those two girls. The result was a dedicated team of girls who figured out how to get creative.

Tom Szaky, a 28-year-old wunderkind from Canada, wants you to send him your garbage, and he’ll pay the shipping. Oh, and he also wants to make a lot of money and save the world by taking unrecyclable waste like chip bags and juice pouches and turning them into new products like backpacks, kites, coolers and clocks. Now he and his company, TerraCycle, take tons of hard-to-recycle plastics and other waste collected from collection “brigades” formed in schools, churches businesses and service organizations and turns them into products sold at Walmart and Target. They pay the shipping for articles like shopping bags, used pens, whatever, and pay 2 cents per unit to a charity on behalf of the collecting organization. All of it is organized through the company Web site, terracycle.net. The feel-good business model has worked with giant companies like Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay and Kimberly-Clark, who pitch the program on their packaging. Walmart and Target also have joined up, setting up collection points and selling products.

The Daily Deal over at EcoMom today is the Terracycle Kids Vegetable Growing Kit and a book – Barefoot Books Kid Garden – Yours for $13!!! (Regular price $25). “Teach kids about gardening and the environment at the same time with the TerraCycle Kid’s Growing Kits for Vegetables, Flowers or Herbs. The Kits use upcycled Stonyfield Yogurt Cups as planting pots and TerraCycle’s famous Worm Poop mixed with compost for the growing medium. The Kits come with growing instructions and the cardboard tray holding it all together is even embedded with the seeds needed to start the plants. Almost no part of these kits becomes waste and they come with everything you need to start growing right away.”

The wonderful people at the Tillicum Subway have allowed Tillicum Elementary to place a collection bin for empty chip bags at their location on Union Ave. Please help support Tillicum Elementary and Subway, while staying green and recycling! For each bag collected, Tillicum Elementary can upcycle through TerraCycle to receive $.02 and keep everyday trash out of the landfill. This program is helping the students learn about caring for the environment by getting involved and recycling!

You all have heard of Terracycle, haven't you? If you haven't, listen up! Terracycle a super cool company that makes super cool stuff out of trash, like juice pouches, potato chip bags and candy bar wrappers, and make them into very cute, useable stuff, like tote bags, pencil pouches, lunch boxes, clipboards, fences, toys... The list goes on and on and on! Check out their site to see what all they recycle. You can actually start a brigade to collect trash and they will pay your organization! Check out the brigade program here.

Northfield-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.