Terracycle <http://www.myatlantamommy.com/2009/12/terracycle.html>  is a fantastic organization which takes used wrappers and turns them into some super cool stuff! I am happy and proud to announce Terracycle recently invited me to join their Blogger Club! Yay! AND they have offered to do a cool Back to School giveaway for My Atlanta Mommy readers, which I will let you know about very soon!

Terracycle <http://www.myatlantamommy.com/2009/12/terracycle.html>  is a fantastic organization which takes used wrappers and turns them into some super cool stuff! They are always coming up with fun and cool ways to recycle, but they also have come up with a way (actually 6 ways) Moms can go green, reduce waste at home, AND raise money for their kids school and/or favourite charity.

Earth Month is one time of the year when a number of companies come up with initiatives as well as project to showcase their efforts to preserve the environment and protect the ecology. One of the companies that have taken the lead in this is the retail giant Wal-Mart, which has tied up with Terracycle to display ‘before and after’ products. This is in the realm of recycling which is one of the key ways to conserve the environment. These products will be displayed all month on Wal-Mart shelves. These are essentially products that are taken by Terracycle and then recycled into fresh consumer goods.

In the second half of the show, Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle, joins John and Mike to talk about how his company is solving the problem of non-recyclable waste. In America alone, TerraCycle has 10.1 million people collecting waste — about 3 million pounds a day! — to convert into consumer products. TerraCycle converts everything from organic waste to plastic juice pouches into like-new products, in turn creating a whole reuse market that previously did not exist. “About 80% of the products we buy are not recyclable, and those are the ones we focus on creating solutions for,” Szaky says. He notes that TerraCycle has about 70,000 collection points — growing by about 500 a day — in countries around the world.

With the Save the Corks program, ABC is teaming up with Nomacorc to upcycle and recycle the corks through TerraCycle. Natural and synthetic wine corks are accepted. In addition, for every cork turned in, 2 cents is then contributed to charities.  In one month alone, ABC rose over $750 for charity.

In the annals of startup lore, Tom Szaky's story is one to remember. He started his company, TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net/> , after harvesting worm poop in his Princeton dorm to create an organic fertilizer so he could, as he says, "grow better pot." Why not make "sustainable and affordable" products from waste materials? he thought. Since 2007, TerraCycle has convinced more than 7 million people in 60,000 locations to collect over 1 billion pieces of trash. TerraCycle "upcycles" this waste into a variety of high-quality products, from fertilizer and fire logs to tote bags and kites. Szaky, who immigrated at age 8 from Hungary to Canada, continues to have fun thinking of ways to "manipulate waste" and help save the planet.

As global director of product at Royal Robbins, Scott Hamlin was responsible for eliminating the outdoor-clothing company's "fabric liability" -- mountains of surplus cloth. "It wasn't quite enough to make a production run, and it was more than what was conscionable to just throw away," he says. "So we would write the check to the textile factory and the factory would take over from there, and nobody ever asked where that fabric went." He knew, though, that much of it would end up in landfills. So did his industry peers Gary Peck and Jim Stutts. So last year, the three joined forces to launch a company to "upcycle" excess fabric into hip apparel for outdoor enthusiasts. TerraCycle pushed upcycling into the consumer lexicon by making new products out of post-consumer packaging. Looptworks -- the name is a take on closed-loop, zero-waste manufacturing -- is among a new wave of startups that are tackling the other end of the garbage problem: pre-consumer waste.

As part of an ongoing effort to be environmentally responsible citizens, the students at Central Elementary School in Simsbury joined Terracycle's Juice Pouch Brigade and have collected over 8,000 juice pouches since 2008. The pouches are sent to Terracycle and they make new products from them, since they can not be recycled, and they give Central two cents for each pouch. Central has just received a check from Terracycle for $117.02, and has donated it to the Audubon Nature Institute, who through the Louisiana Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Rescue Program (LMMSTRP), are the primary responders for the state of Louisiana for the rescue, rehabilitation, and release of marine mammals and sea turtles impacted by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Similar pop-ups by other neighborhood business improvement groups are happening throughout the city. The Port Authority currently has a month-to-month lease agreement with the Fashion Center business improvement district and the Times Square Alliance. The retail space, a storefront at the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 41st Street and Eighth Avenue, has been called Blank SL8. In April and May it was home to TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based store that sells products made from waste materials.

A large-scale drive at C. Richard Applegate School will ensure that almost 6,000 drink pouches never hit a landfill, thanks to a band of fifth-graders who wanted to help their community. David Lundy, 11, and a group of classmates -- Jordan Cerio, 10; Kelly Preston, 11, and Ella Kemp, 11 -- recently organized a large drive in which students were encouraged to donate used Capri Sun, Kool-Aid and Honest Kids drink pouches.    The pouches would then be given to the "upcycling'' company Terra Cycle, which collects trash such as drink pouches, candy wrappers and even used writing instruments to make backpacks, laptop cases and other products. What's more, Terra Cycle pays for the waste material they take in -- for example, two cents for every drink pouch they receive.