JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) - A program to recycle energy bar wrappers is ending in a Wyoming town known for outdoor sports and elsewhere.   After four years, a recycling center in Jackson will stop taking Clif Bar wrappers. Clif Bar offered the recycling since 2008 through a partnership with TerraCycle, a company specializing in hard-to-recycle materials. The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports the company collected the wrappers to be melted down into hard plastic. It donated a penny per wrapper to the American Releaf Program, which plants trees in areas affected by wildfires, mining, development and other disruption.   The program raised about $500,000 from wrappers collected at 14,500 locations.

February is National Reading Month. Working at the Dalton-Whitfield County Public Library for a couple of years during college solidified my love of reading books of all kinds. Though I work somewhere surrounded by recycling instead of books now, there are still plenty of great reads for kids and adults about going green that I’ve come to enjoy. Here are some of my recommendations for some eco-friendly reads this month;   • "Hey, That’s Not Trash" by Renee Jablow: This is a great interactive book for especially young readers. It goes over a young boy teaching those around him what goes in the recycling instead of the trash. Your child can also get practice with special press-out pieces that they then place in paper, plastic or metal bins on the book. It’s a great way to introduce the idea of sorting for recycling and I know some adults that may benefit from a reminder, too! You can also have a great discussion after reading about how children also have the power to influence people around them no matter how young they are.   • "Retrieving With EVIE" by Susan Harp: Created initially as a project for Keep Evansville Beautiful, this fun story is a great teaching tool about cleaning up litter. It’s also inspired by a real labrador who has her own Facebook page where she can interact with fans. Perfect for any young animal lover!   • "Michael Recycle" by Ellie Bethel: This book is perfect for Dr. Seuss fans and has great illustrations. This is better for elementary-age students that have some concept of what recycling is. This book focuses on superhero Michael Recycle as he visits a stinky and messy town. He teaches the town people how to take care of their town through recycling and picking up trash and it transforms the town into a beautiful place to live. It would be a great read before or after participating in a litter cleanup as a family and letting your child be their own superhero creating a better town to live in.   • "Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste" by Bea Johnson: From TED talk speaker Bea Johnson, this book covers how to use five simple steps to living more simply and creating a better planet. It focuses on beginning with refusing new waste and reducing how much we consume and then looking at recycling and composting as a last resort. This story combines an inspirational story with practical tips and routines for creating less waste. If you are just beginning to understand the full process of how we come to use so many things and learning that nothing just “goes away,” this is the book for you.   • "Make Garbage Great" by Tom Szaky and Albe Zakes: Written by the creators of Terracycle, a company focused on recycling hard to recycle materials like cigarette butts, this book covers recycling tips, do-it-yourself projects and fun stories connected to our collective pop culture connections and how it relates to our trash. The book is packed full of fun information. Did you know that the invention of paper made by wood was thought up while watching wasps creating their nests using wood fibers?   • "1,000 Ideas for Creative Reuse" by Garth Johnson: Some books are good to curl up in a cozy chair with and read, others are great for bedtime stories and sometimes you just need a good coffee table book. "1,000 Ideas for Creative Reuse" is great book to pick up and flip through from time to time. It’s a unique visual arts book showcasing work by artists using materials such as jelly candies and turning them into a hat or using milk jugs to create amazing and vibrant sculptures. For a coffee table book that can spark conversation, pick this one up.

Halloween is far behind us, but the collection of sunken candy packaging continues at LaRocque School. Teacher Dominique Hébert has established a partnership with the company Avrac A'davrac in order to pick up these papers which cannot be recovered.   The initiative had a lot of talk in October: the co-founder of Effect PH, Hélène Boissonneault, had collected in some forty drop-off points all these types of packaging (chocolate bars, chips, etc.) by handing them over to TerraCycle , a company which gives a second life to this type of waste.   Each class has its basket and a student is responsible for emptying it. "The children made video capsules to find out what to put in the box," says the teacher, who took care of the project at Halloween.   The teacher, who had difficulty finding a budget for the project, approached various organizations before Avrac A'davrac agreed to sponsor the school box. “What we said to each other is that we are training citizens, we want them to be eco-responsible. We want to make them aware of the environment, to pay attention to the planet, because we don't have planet B! "   The children wrote humorous scenarios for the broadcasting of the capsules.   Dominique Robert advocates for a better integration of environmental protection in schools. “The ecological aspect is up to our motivations. I think schools have to rethink that, ”she illustrates, giving the example of a budget for ecological initiatives. This place of the environment is all the more important as the ecological footprint of schools is large, she underlines by adding that certain initiatives should extend to all schools. "Is it up to us to do it?" Yes, as citizens, but how can we make institutions responsible so that it becomes collective and community action? "   The presence of collection boxes on Halloween had the effect of raising awareness among the children, who had not yet wondered about the fate of their candy, chocolate or other packaging.   "I never looked at whether we could put them in recycling," says Iona Gendron.   Owner of Avrac A'davrac, François Vincent notes that the initiative launched during Halloween week has indeed made people aware of what is happening with their packaging. “It gives a visual when you see tons and tons of garbage bags. It’s tangible. It's a huge amount of plastic, it makes you aware of that ... "However, we must pay attention to the opposite effect, notes Mr. Vincent, recalling that it is not because we can now recycle these packaging that we must encourage their consumption, the objective being to reduce at the source. Mr. Vincent believes that it is through laws and regulations that things can change.   The grocery store now offers its customers the possibility of paying $ 20 per year to dispose of their non-recyclable packaging in order to send it to Terracycle.   Dominique Hébert specifies that other projects are underway. It wishes to install three-way bins, to recover paper and cardboard, plastic and non-recoverable packaging intended for TerraCycle. "We are going to apply for financial assistance from the School Board Foundation," she said, stressing the importance of getting children used to sorting materials.

Halloween is far behind us, but the collection of packages of sunk candy continues at LaRocque School. Teacher Dominique Hébert has established a partnership with the company Avrac A'davrac in order to pick up these papers which cannot be recovered.

One of Teton County’s lesser-known recycling programs is saying sayonara.   Friday will be the last day for people to drop their Clif Bar wrappers at the recycling center. The sports bar company is ending its recycling program, which Teton County Integrated Solid Waste and Recycling has participated in for four years. Those who have gotten used to saving up their Clif packaging and foil-lined wrappers will have to find a new home for them at the end of this week.   “Everything’s going to have to go in the trash,” said Carrie Bell, Teton County Integrated Solid Waste and Recycling’s waste diversion and outreach coordinator.   Since 2008, Clif Bar has operated the program in partnership with TerraCycle, a company that specializes in recycling “hard-to-recycle materials.”   People could collect foil bar wrappers and packing materials manufactured by Clif and ship them to be melted down into hard plastic, which was used to make new recycled products. The company would donate a penny per wrapper to the American Releaf Program, which plants trees in areas affected by wildfires, pests and disease, as well as mining, development and forest clearing. The program raised $500,000 over the 12 or so years it operated, according to its website.   For the county the program was a bit of work. The recycling center needed to store about 50 pounds of wrappers before it could send them to TerraCycle. That took up a lot of storage. Shipping that quantity of wrappers happened three times in Bell’s tenure.   Recycling center workers also had to sift through the disposal box and throw out anything that wasn’t a foil-lined energy bar wrapper. Foil-lined medical waste and chip bags frequently found their way into the bin, but didn’t qualify.   “It was pretty time consuming on our end,” Bell said.   Still, she said, the program was consistent, which was a positive.   “We don’t want to open our door and close it frequently because we don’t want to send mixed messages by any means,” Bell said. “The energy bar wrapper program was great because it was a stable program for a long time.”   Now she wonders what will happen with Clif’s wrappers. One of the sustainable packaging pledges on the company’s website is to create packaging that’s 100% “reusable, recyclable, or compostable” by 2025.   Bell said she hadn’t seen much from Clif explaining how it would reach that goal. Its website is vague, and the company did not respond to the News&Guide’s requests for comment.   With the recycling program reaching its close, Bell questioned how wrappers, which will have to be thrown out for now, will affect the waste stream. If something is labeled as compostable, she said, but is not being composted, “it’s not really better than anything they had before.” And with recycling becoming more complicated, Bell wonders if creating a new formula for the wrappers would make it harder to recycle the packaging than before.   “I just want to make sure the direction they’re moving really is better than what they were doing before,” she said. “Prior to the change, these energy bar wrappers were actually being recycled and used to make more energy bar wrappers.”   Take your Clif and foil-lined bar wrappers to the Recycling Center by Friday so they can make it onto the final shipment to TerraCycle.   “Now is the time to bring them,” Bell said. After this week “they’re going to go in the trash.”  

Sustainability is everywhere in 2020, and we are here for it. Several brands are stepping up and taking responsibility for their carbon footprint. Now, that list also includes DYPER, an eco-friendly subscription-based diaper service that recently launched REDYPER, the first ever national diaper composting service.   The service launches in partnership with TerraCycle, a waste management company. If DYPER customers choose to opt in, they’ll be given a specially engineered waste-grade box (that meet United Nations Haz Mat shipping standards), label and materials, in which they can ship their soiled diapers back to TerraCycle for composting.     According to the news release, diapers are a $48 billion industry, and, annually, over 20 billion diapers fill American landfills. "We're committed to making diapering effortless for parents, gentle for babies and kind to the planet," Sergio Radovcic, DYPER’s CEO stated in the release. "It wasn't easy to develop the most fully compostable diaper ever created. But, we are thrilled that our partnership with TerraCycle will make it easy for families to keep their used diapers out of landfills."   The waste composted through the service will likely be used for vegetation, highway medians and other specialized applications. For a limited time, customers can opt in to the service for free, after which it will be $39 a month. Learn more about REDYPER here.

After more than 18 months of research and design, San Diego-based Bear Naked granola brand by Kellogg's, a food manufacturing company headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan, is now the first fully recyclable stand-up pouch on the market nationwide.   The recyclable pouch made with a food-grade packaging barrier means that consumers can recycle their granola bar bags at about 18,000 retail stores across the nation that collect plastic bags and other types of plastics for recycling.   For the past 10 years, Kellogg has partnered with Trenton, New Jersey-based TerraCycle to recycle its multilayer packaging through the company’s mail-in program. The brand recycled more than a half-million pouches through the program. For Kellogg to recycle its packaging through the store drop-off program, and reach more consumers, the brand had to design a recyclable film. Working with Dow, Midland, Michigan, Berry Global, Evansville, Indiana, and several other packaging suppliers, Kellogg developed a new a monolayer polyethylene (PE) pouch, says Shannon Moore, Kellogg’s lead packaging engineer.   “When the brand had decided they wanted to go a bit further with their sustainability story, we spent some time working with our existing packaging suppliers and film converters,” Moore says. “The common denominator for all those converters was they were getting their postconsumer resin (PCR) from Dow.   “We met at their facility and we started working with some of their partners who also supplied Kellogg. We all worked together to figure out how to create a package that looked exactly like what was on the shelf and had the same look and brand feel.”   Kellogg makes the PE pouch using Dow’s Retain polymer modifier technology, which allows converters to combine other PE resins to fabricate recycled films without sacrificing physical or optical properties. The PE films made with Retain are approved for the How2Recycle logo by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), according to Dow.   “I’m really excited about this technology and I’m sure other consumer goods companies are going to start similar projects,” Moore says. “The technology allows for a higher barrier material to go through the store drop-off process and to be used by Trex and other end markets. That’s really important.”   Making sure the material, including the recyclable zipper developed by Fresh-Lock, was compatible with Kellogg’s existing bagging equipment was a big challenge in the development process, Moore says.   “PE has a much lower melt temperature than a traditional multilayer pouch, so working around the film properties for that was a challenge,” she says. “The bag itself has a window, so maintaining clarity of the window that we had previously was a challenge. Then on top of that, we have a matte finish, so we had to do several trials to get that printing process correct.”   Regarding Fresh-Lock’s recyclable zipper, Moore says, “We brought them in to make sure that the zipper didn’t melt through the film while we were sealing it on the bagger. The material they were using had to be fully recyclable, so we had to make sure they were getting the correct certifications to make it fully recyclable with the bag so we didn’t have any challenges when we went to the store drop-off program.”   Kellogg began working on the Bear Naked recyclable pouch when the brand joined United Kingdom-based Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative.   “Having the EMF commitment and being a signatory allowed us to come together and start working on sustainability more broadly,” Moore says. “This project is nice because it allows us to start looking at how we can incorporate this technology into other Kellogg brands that use similar packaging formats and what would it take for us to do this in a different brand.”   Currently, there isn’t any recycled material used in the Bear Naked packaging. Moore says there’s more work that needs to be done in developing food-grade PCR. The pouches also aren’t recycled into new pouches, yet, but closing the loop is something Kellogg is trying to figure out, Moore says.   “We’re looking at how can we incorporate food-grade postconsumer resin, so we can have recyclable content in our material,” she says.   Many flexible plastic packages, including plastic bags, can’t be recycled through curbside recycling programs. Last year, Kellogg joined the Film and Flexibles Task Force led by The Recycling Partnership, Falls Church, Virginia. The task force is working to define, pilot and scale recycling solutions for the more than $31 billion dollar packaging industry, including plastic film, bags and pouches, according to the nonprofit.   “We became a partner at the end of last year,” Moore says. “It’s really helped us get more involved in what does the infrastructure look like and what are the challenges that are going on with infrastructure. It’s allowed us to get our hands dirty and work alongside other consumer goods companies that have similar aspirations as Kellogg.”   While more recycling solutions are in the works, flexible plastics made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) can be recycled through the store drop-off locations.   In addition to the How2Recycle store drop-off logo that Kellogg has placed on the back of its Bear Naked bags, the brand designed a separate Recycle Ready logo to educate consumers. Kellogg also revamped its Bear Naked website, which has a link to the store drop-off program and locations.   The brand also kicked off a social media campaign on Instagram, where followers are most interactive. Moore took the campaign a step further by posting a video on her personal LinkedIn page of her collecting different types of plastics and showing people how the store drop-offs work, she says.   “We were having people taking pictures of themselves dropping off the bag and showing people they’re at Target and you can drop this off here now,” Moore says. “It’s really simple. We get a lot of comments from people saying, ‘Hey, I didn’t know this. When did you guys start doing this? This is great.’”

After more than 18 months of research and design, San Diego-based Bear Naked granola brand by Kellogg's, a food manufacturing company headquartered in Battle Creek, Michigan, is now the first fully recyclable stand-up pouch on the market nationwide.   The recyclable pouch made with a food-grade packaging barrier means that consumers can recycle their granola bar bags at about 18,000 retail stores across the nation that collect plastic bags and other types of plastics for recycling.   For the past 10 years, Kellogg has partnered with Trenton, New Jersey-based TerraCycle to recycle its multilayer packaging through the company’s mail-in program. The brand recycled more than a half-million pouches through the program. For Kellogg to recycle its packaging through the store drop-off program, and reach more consumers, the brand had to design a recyclable film. Working with Dow, Midland, Michigan, Berry Global, Evansville, Indiana, and several other packaging suppliers, Kellogg developed a new a monolayer polyethylene (PE) pouch, says Shannon Moore, Kellogg’s lead packaging engineer.   “When the brand had decided they wanted to go a bit further with their sustainability story, we spent some time working with our existing packaging suppliers and film converters,” Moore says. “The common denominator for all those converters was they were getting their postconsumer resin (PCR) from Dow.   “We met at their facility and we started working with some of their partners who also supplied Kellogg. We all worked together to figure out how to create a package that looked exactly like what was on the shelf and had the same look and brand feel.”   Kellogg makes the PE pouch using Dow’s Retain polymer modifier technology, which allows converters to combine other PE resins to fabricate recycled films without sacrificing physical or optical properties. The PE films made with Retain are approved for the How2Recycle logo by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), according to Dow.   “I’m really excited about this technology and I’m sure other consumer goods companies are going to start similar projects,” Moore says. “The technology allows for a higher barrier material to go through the store drop-off process and to be used by Trex and other end markets. That’s really important.”   Making sure the material, including the recyclable zipper developed by Fresh-Lock, was compatible with Kellogg’s existing bagging equipment was a big challenge in the development process, Moore says.   “PE has a much lower melt temperature than a traditional multilayer pouch, so working around the film properties for that was a challenge,” she says. “The bag itself has a window, so maintaining clarity of the window that we had previously was a challenge. Then on top of that, we have a matte finish, so we had to do several trials to get that printing process correct.”   Regarding Fresh-Lock’s recyclable zipper, Moore says, “We brought them in to make sure that the zipper didn’t melt through the film while we were sealing it on the bagger. The material they were using had to be fully recyclable, so we had to make sure they were getting the correct certifications to make it fully recyclable with the bag so we didn’t have any challenges when we went to the store drop-off program.”   Kellogg began working on the Bear Naked recyclable pouch when the brand joined United Kingdom-based Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative.   “Having the EMF commitment and being a signatory allowed us to come together and start working on sustainability more broadly,” Moore says. “This project is nice because it allows us to start looking at how we can incorporate this technology into other Kellogg brands that use similar packaging formats and what would it take for us to do this in a different brand.”   Currently, there isn’t any recycled material used in the Bear Naked packaging. Moore says there’s more work that needs to be done in developing food-grade PCR. The pouches also aren’t recycled into new pouches, yet, but closing the loop is something Kellogg is trying to figure out, Moore says.   “We’re looking at how can we incorporate food-grade postconsumer resin, so we can have recyclable content in our material,” she says.   Many flexible plastic packages, including plastic bags, can’t be recycled through curbside recycling programs. Last year, Kellogg joined the Film and Flexibles Task Force led by The Recycling Partnership, Falls Church, Virginia. The task force is working to define, pilot and scale recycling solutions for the more than $31 billion dollar packaging industry, including plastic film, bags and pouches, according to the nonprofit.   “We became a partner at the end of last year,” Moore says. “It’s really helped us get more involved in what does the infrastructure look like and what are the challenges that are going on with infrastructure. It’s allowed us to get our hands dirty and work alongside other consumer goods companies that have similar aspirations as Kellogg.”   While more recycling solutions are in the works, flexible plastics made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) can be recycled through the store drop-off locations.   In addition to the How2Recycle store drop-off logo that Kellogg has placed on the back of its Bear Naked bags, the brand designed a separate Recycle Ready logo to educate consumers. Kellogg also revamped its Bear Naked website, which has a link to the store drop-off program and locations.   The brand also kicked off a social media campaign on Instagram, where followers are most interactive. Moore took the campaign a step further by posting a video on her personal LinkedIn page of her collecting different types of plastics and showing people how the store drop-offs work, she says.   “We were having people taking pictures of themselves dropping off the bag and showing people they’re at Target and you can drop this off here now,” Moore says. “It’s really simple. We get a lot of comments from people saying, ‘Hey, I didn’t know this. When did you guys start doing this? This is great.’”

Dyper, the eco-friendly diaper service is fulfilling its promise to create the best diaper for babies, parents, the planet and wallets by introducing the first compostable diaper offered in the over $48 billion industry. The company has announced its partnership with TerraCycle to implement the Redyper composting program in the U.S., making it turnkey for existing and new subscribers to return their soiled-diapers for composting.   Though composting Dyper diapers at home has always been possible, the TerraCycle partnership allows families to skip the DIY and help ensure that their used diapers don’t add to the more than 20 billion diapers filling landfills in the U.S. yearly. Dyper provides an environmentally-sound, cost-effective and convenient way to receive diapers through a monthly subscription. All products are made from responsibly sourced materials that are free of harmful chemicals, prints and scents.   “We’re committed to making diapering effortless for parents, gentle for babies and kind to the planet,” says Sergio Radovcic, CEO of Dyper. “It wasn’t easy to develop the most fully compostable diaper ever created. But, we are thrilled that our partnership with TerraCycle will make it easy for families to keep their used diapers out of landfills.”   Dyper subscribers that opt-in to the Redyper program are provided with bags and a specially designed box engineered to the strictest United Nations Haz Mat shipping standards. When the box is full, subscribers can download a prepaid shipping label from the Dyper Composting Program page found on the TerraCycle website for easy return of their soiled diapers for composting. The waste composted through this program will be used in specialized applications, such as for vegetation in highway medians.   “As the first of its kind initiative, the Redyper Program offers consumers a unique opportunity to responsibly dispose of their soiled diapers, as well as minimize their environmental impact by composting them through TerraCycle,” says Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle. “We are pleased to partner with Dyper to drive awareness of this ground-breaking program.”   The TerraCycle supported Dyper Composting Program is part of Dyper’s ongoing initiative to make eco-friendliness in the baby segment more effective and convenient. Along with being compostable under the right conditions, Dyper’s product is made from responsibly-sourced bamboo and free of chlorine, latex, alcohol, perfumes, lotions, PVC, TBT and Phthalates. Through the brand’s smartphone app, Dyper subscribers can also schedule routine deliveries, request expedited shipments in as little as two hours, or ship-back unused diapers.  The entire diaper journey is counterbalanced through carbon offsets purchased by Dyper on behalf of subscribers. Learn more about the program by visiting dyper.com/redyper.  For a limited time, REDYPER opt-in will be free with a monthly subscription of Dyper.  Following the limited time offer, Redyper will require a monthly maintenance fee of $39.

Halloween is far behind us, but the collection of packages of sunk candy continues at LaRocque School. Teacher Dominique Hébert has established a partnership with the company Avrac A'davrac in order to pick up these papers which cannot be recovered. The initiative had a lot of talk in October: the co-founder of Effect PH, Hélène Boissonneault, had collected in some forty drop-off points all these types of packaging (chocolate bars, chips, etc.) by handing them over to TerraCycle , a company which gives a second life to this type of waste.  Each class has its basket and a student is responsible for emptying it. "The children made video capsules to find out what to put in the box," says the teacher, who took care of the project at Halloween.  The teacher, who had difficulty finding a budget for the project, approached various organizations before Avrac A'davrac agreed to sponsor the school box. “What we said to each other is that we are training citizens, we want them to be eco-responsible. We want to make them aware of the environment, to pay attention to the planet, because we don't have planet B! " The children wrote humorous scenarios for the broadcasting of the capsules. Dominique Robert advocates for a better integration of environmental protection in schools. “The ecological aspect is up to our motivations. I think schools have to rethink that, ”she illustrates, giving the example of a budget for ecological initiatives. This place of the environment is all the more important as the ecological footprint of schools is large, she underlines by adding that certain initiatives should extend to all schools. "Is it up to us to do it?" Yes, as citizens, but how can we make institutions responsible so that it becomes collective and community action? "  The presence of collection boxes on Halloween had the effect of raising awareness among the children, who had not yet wondered about the fate of their candy, chocolate or other packaging. "I never looked if we could put them in recycling," says Iona Gendron.  Owner of Avrac A'davrac, François Vincent notes that the initiative launched during Halloween week has indeed made people aware of what is happening with their packaging. “It gives a visual when you see tons and tons of garbage bags. It’s tangible. It's a huge amount of plastic, it makes you aware of that ... "However, we must pay attention to the opposite effect, notes Mr. Vincent, recalling that it is not because we can now recycle these packaging that we must encourage their consumption, the objective being to reduce at the source. Mr. Vincent believes that it is through laws and regulations that things can change. The grocery store now offers its customers the possibility of paying $ 20 per year to dispose of their non-recyclable packaging in order to send it to Terracycle.  Dominique Hébert specifies that other projects are underway. It wishes to install three-way bins, to recover paper and cardboard, plastic and non-recoverable packaging intended for TerraCycle. "We are going to apply for financial assistance from the School Board Foundation," she said, stressing the importance of getting children used to sorting materials.