To its credit, Green Mountain is exploring more recyclable and compostable packaging. Mars partners with TerraCycle in a program that permits offices to ship used Flavia packs to a facility that churns them into products like pencil cases or notebooks—so that is one workaround Green Mountain could pursue. Darby Hoover of the Natural Resources Defense Council suggested prepaid envelopes that consumers can just fill with empty pods, which would then end up in facilities that would repurpose them.
Here is a segment on Back-to-School that has a nice shout-out for TerraCycle and the Capri Sun lunchbox.
Click on the link next to Video and then forward ahead to 4:00. The TerraCycle and Capri Sun mentions are between 4:00-4:40.
Elizabeth Seton High School students are recycling in a new way–recycling the unrecyclable.
Due to the plastics and metals contained in CapriSun and Kool-Aid drink pouches, these products cannot be conventionally recycled. However, a New Jersey-based company, TerraCycle - with the assistance of the all-girl school's ecology club - collects these pouches, which the company repurposes into bags and backpacks.
Other coffee companies are also wrestling with the waste issue. Businesses that use Flavia pods, which is made by Mars, are able to ship the used pods to the New Jersey company TerraCycle, which will compost the coffee or tea and reuse the plastic in products like pavers and fencing, a TerraCycle spokesman, Albe Zakes said. More than 2.5 million Flavia packs in the United States have been recycled in the last year. Mars sells a billion drinks a year in 35,000 workplaces worldwide.
In Britain, Mr. Zakes said, TerraCycle has processed more than 800,000 coffee discs from Kraft’s Tassimo single-serve system. The results are being evaluated for possible application in the United States, a Kraft spokeswoman, Bridget MacConnell, said. Kraft and Mars are paying for collecting the pods, including shipping costs to TerraCycle.
Terra Cycle, il social network della ‘spazzatura’ che permette agli utenti di spedire gratuitamente i propri rifiuti per convertirli in oggetti di consumo, è un’altro esempio di questa tendenza. nato in America, il servizio è in arrivo anche nel nostro paese; il fondamento di questa piattaforma sociale è semplice e brillante: gli appartenenti alla community si organizzano in brigate per raccogliere e differenziare la spazzatura, da spedire a carico del destinatario, perché possa vivere una ‘seconda vita’.
TerraCycle makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a range of different non-recyclble waste materials. TerraCycle is one of the fastest growing eco-friendly manufacturers in the world!
When I first started Terracycle, I spent a lot of my time explaining what upcycling was. It was this foreign concept whose name wasn't on a lot of people's radar. Now, a handful of years later, more than 10 million people are collecting the brand specific waste that we've used to make a range of products; it has become increasingly common and may some day be as conventional as recycling.
Currently, several startups are building their business around upcycled products and major corporations are including upcycling in their operations and products. Corona is even using it as both an environmental awareness bringer and marketing tool, building pop up hotels at famous beaches from the waste collected there!
As upcycling grows, so do the Terracycle collection Brigades. Our newest with Colgate, giving toothbrushes and and toothpaste tubes a life beyond the waste bin, is nearly full after two months of starting. 2000 spots used to take a year or more. Whether it's because people are anxious to do something different with their waste or because the incentive of easily raising funds for your children's school or favorite organization is appealing in these cash starved times, it's clear that upcycling has arrived.
We're testing out various reuses, but so far we've made toothbrush holders, shave kits and make up cases from Colgate products.
TerraCycle's mission is to take material that would otherwise go into landfills and create useful (and profitable) consumer products. Szaky often refers to trash as the things people will pay to get rid of. In his book, he compares graffiti to the raw materials in TerraCycle's products. Cities and individuals are willing to pay to get rid of graffiti. Beyond the urban art that decorates their facility, TerraCycle sells Urban Art Flower Pots <http://www.terracycle.net/products/5-Urban-Art-Flower-Pot> that are constructed from plastic waste and decorated by local graffiti artists.
