It's a wrap for Halloween at Loggerhead Marinelife Center. The Juno Beach sea turtle rescue and research center announced that through its fourth annual Unwrap the Waves recycling campaign, it had collected a total of 272,595 candy wrappers. The Marinelife Center also announced H.L. Johnson Elementary School as the recycling champion during its live broadcast among participating schools from Martin to Miami-Dade counties. The Unwrap the Waves campaign kicked off Saturday, Oct. 19, and ended Monday, Nov. 11, summoning a record number of 34 schools and more than seven community partners throughout four counties. LMC will recycle 100% of the collected candy wrappers through Terracycle’s Zero Waste Program, which will be re-purposed into school supplies, such as pencils and notebooks. After announcing the winner, the LMC Education Department challenged students to the next school-wide undertaking called the Blue Holiday initiative. The competition will stir hands-on, STEM-centric lesson plans aligned in Next Generation Sunshine State Standards (NGSSS) for grades K-12. The lesson plan includes two holiday classroom challenges for a chance to win fun sea turtle prizes. One of the prizes for the winning classroom will be an opportunity to name a future sea turtle patient at LMC’s Sea Turtle Hospital. Both competitions will have a virtual submission, so any school can participate. For more information, visit www.marinelife.org or call 561-627-8280. ¦

                                                     

Making the dean’s list multiple times at Mercer County Community College while studying with retired professor and renowned painter Mel Leipzig, California native Leon Rainbow has always been hungry to learn. A firm believer in education, he has taught at Princeton’s Young Achievers, TerraCycle, and at countless workshops from New York to Washington, D.C., to Florida. Rainbow says, “I encourage my students to make the most of their educational experiences. The more education and skills you possess, the more valuable you will be.”   While Rainbow has created designs for clients from Louis Vuitton to Infiniti and Blackberry, his heart and soul reside with a community of premier graffiti artists with whom he has had a 20-year collaboration. “Aerosol is a process that takes years to learn,” Rainbow explains. “I would challenge anyone who underestimates it to try and use a spray paint to create work. To get can control is challenging for anyone.”   To celebrate this community of painters, Rainbow has brought them together to showcase their work at Princeton Day School’s Anne Reid ‘72 Art Gallery in an exhibition titled “Urban Architecture.” It will be on view from December 2 to January 9, with an opening reception on December 12 from 5-7 p.m.   Jon Conner (Lank) is an artist and designer who teaches drawing and design at Mercer County Community College; a member of the mural group S.A.G.E. Collective, he has been creating public art and mural projects up and down the East Coast for 15 years.   Dave Orante, another mural painter, is a senior graphic designer at the Princeton Theological Seminary.   Kelsi Kosinski is a painter who graduated from Mason Gross School of the Arts.   Radek Selski is a graffiti artist whose paintings have been installed in the Drumthwacket Gardens.   Elan Wonder is a founding member of the graffiti group Fresh Collective.   Dean Ras Innocenzi studied with Mel Leipzig and has also worked extensively on murals at Trenton’s TerraCycle.   Graffiti artists Brendon Lopez, Mek, and Sophie Ban, who is currently exhibiting in the Drumthwacket Gardens, round out the group in the exhibition.   Princeton Day School is at 650 Great Road, Princeton. The gallery is open to the public when school is in session; the reception is free and is also open to the public.      

  SARCAN currently doesn’t recycle used plastic containers obtained from licenced recreational cannabis stores in Saskatchewan. When cannabis was legalized, many consumers weren’t expecting to cope with more excessive plastic waste, especially after the hubbub over plastic bags and bottles filling landfills and water bodies. But in the era of post-legalization, plastic bottles, boxes and cartons have replaced baggies for cannabis purchases.   The plastic containers for cannabis are designed to manage this new government-controlled product. Manufacturers don’t have to follow specified regulations in regards to the materials they use for the containers, but they have to follow specific guidelines set by Health Canada and the Federal Cannabis Act. The containers must be opaque or semi-transparent. Also, cannabis containers in Canada must be unappealing to children and youth, be able to guard against contamination and the boxes should keep the products fresh.   Across Canada, most of the provinces and territories haven’t yet addressed the issue of recycling cannabis containers. In Ontario, packaging for cannabis can be recycled in curbside recycling programs, or at the province’s recycling depots. The polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) containers are recyclable at all depots in Ontario. But containers manufactured from low-density polyethylene are only accepted at certain facilities. Meanwhile, containers made from polypropylene aren’t taken for recycling at the majority of Ontario’s sites. Since cannabis products come in a variety of packaging, including sealed envelopes, plastic jars, tubes and boxes, consumers in Ontario are asked to check the bottoms of their containers for the appropriate codes before recycling.   In the rest of Canada, there are options whenever local recycling programs aren’t available in either the province or the community. Canopy Growth Corporation have arranged a container recycling program through Tweed – the manufacturer’s retail brand. The recycling program is administered by the New Jersey-based company, TerraCycle.   TerraCycle will accept containers from all licenced producers in Canada. The containers must originate from licenced producers – the packages themselves don’t have to be derived from companies affiliated with Canopy Growth. Individual consumers can even post their used containers to TerraCycle for recycling. TerraCycle and their subcontractors will take the containers, clean them, then melt the boxes into plastic pellets, allowing them to be refashioned and manufactured into different products, such as park benches.   Currently, some cannabis retail outfits in Saskatchewan and elsewhere in Canada have recycling boxes for TerraCycle in their stores, where used cannabis containers can be dropped off after they’re cleaned. Unlike deposit bottles and cans, used cannabis containers cannot be redeemed for cash at this time.

NORMAL — A group of volunteers and an organic produce farmer were named winners of two "green" awards handed out each year by the Ecology Action Center to recognize significant local efforts to improve the environment.   Amie Keeton, Janet Guaderrama, Macia Nagy and Melanie Ziomek shared the McLean County Recycling and Waste Reduction Award, which honors outstanding recycling programs or waste reduction efforts. The four coordinate local collections of “TerraCycle,” a nontraditional recycling program that recycles a wide range of diverse items including snack chip bags, drink pouches, water filters, and beauty product packaging.   The effort includes a 24-hour drop-off site in partnership with St. Luke Union Church in Bloomington. Over the past several years, the TerraCycle program has helped divert more than 100,000 items from landfills.   Congerville farmer Henry Brockman received the Anne McGowan Making a World of Difference Award for promoting environmental awareness or natural resource conservation. McGowan was an early director of the EAC.   Brockman provides vegetables to hundreds of Central Illinois residents each year through community-supported agriculture subscriptions. “The goal of everything I do in my fields is to give life to the soil and the entire ecosystem," he said.   Brockman plants over 650 varieties of vegetables each year, experimenting with new types and improving his practices to adapt to a changing climate.   The mission of the Ecology Action Center is to inspire and assist the community in creating, strengthening, and preserving a healthy environment. The EAC is a central resource for environmental education, information, outreach, and technical assistance in McLean County.

OCEAN CITY – Following the success of a cigarette disposal initiative near the Boardwalk this summer, a resort committee began a discussion this month on expanding efforts to the Maryland-Delaware line. Earlier this summer, the town installed cigarette butt receptacles – or butt huts – along with signage stating, “smoking prohibited beyond this point,” on the side streets to the west of the Boardwalk. In doing so, resort officials had hoped the containers would encourage smokers to properly dispose of cigarette butts. Last year, it was determined the town’s Boardwalk smoking ban had led to a larger issue of cigarette butt litter accumulating at the street ends adjacent to the promenade. In a meeting this month of the Ocean City Green Team, Councilman Tony DeLuca, chair of the committee, highlighted the successful butt hut program. “People were actually putting cigarette butts in them,” he said. “That was unbelievable.” DeLuca said the next step was to replace certain containers to the west of the Boardwalk with larger butt huts and expand the program to include more street ends. “We need to expand it now from the end of the Boardwalk to the Delaware line,” he said, “every single street.” Public Works Director Hal Adkins told the committee that crews would be replacing the butt huts on certain streets between now and next May. However, he said expanding the program could require more manpower. “They are not difficult to build, they are not difficult to install, but the issue will be the collection process …,” he said. “It all comes down to what volume we end up experiencing. There will be a few streets out there where we’ll probably collect once or twice the whole summer and we’ll be fine. Then you are going to have other ones with higher frequency that I can’t guarantee you I’ll have the manpower to get to them.” Committee members this week also discussed private efforts to reduce cigarette butt litter in Ocean City. At the same time the town installed its butt huts near the Boardwalk, a partnership with the Maryland Coastal Bays Program (MCBP) provided similar containers to private businesses throughout the resort. However, the second prong of a two-pronged approach did not experience the same success. Sandi Smith, marketing and development coordinator for MCBP, said challenges included the installation of the butt huts at private businesses and the collection of the cigarette butts, which were combined with the resort’s cigarette litter and shipped off to be recycled. “At Coastal Bays, we like to create projects for the community and partner on projects, but we are not here to run projects …,” she said. “You are looking at the person that shoveled the 313,500 cigarette butts and put them in boxes to mail to TerraCycle.” While the program received positive feedback, Smith said only half of the participating businesses had installed the butt huts. She added that those who did use the containers did not always recycle the contents. “We said from the very beginning the worst case is they empty them into the garbage can …,” DeLuca noted. “But at least they aren’t on the streets and all over the curb. They aren’t recycled, but they aren’t in the bays and ocean.” Smith told the committee that MCBP had received grant funding to pay for someone to develop a plan for improving the program. She said the next step would be to work with the town and find someone who can run the program and focus on source-reduction efforts. “To make it sustainable you need to create a position and figure out how we as a city can fund it,” she said.

This undated product image provided by Ten Thousand Villages shows gift wrap made from saris that are recycled by artisans in Bangladesh. The company says sales have been growing steadily since the wraps were introduced in 2013; so far this year, sales are up 20% over 2018. (Ten Thousand Villages via AP)   By ASSOCIATED PRESS | | PUBLISHED: November 27, 2019 at 10:05 am | UPDATED: November 27, 2019 at 10:05 am By Dee-Ann Durbin, The Associated Press   Growing unease about waste has some Americans rethinking wrapping paper.   Gift wrap is still a huge business. U.S. sales of wrapping paper climbed 4% to $8.14 billion last year, according to a recent report by Sundale Research. But sales of reusable gift bags rose faster, the company said. Sundale said it’s also closely watching green trends — like furoshiki, the Japanese art of wrapping with fabric — because they could impact gift wrap sales in the coming years.   Marie Wood, a student at Northern Arizona University, started wrapping Christmas gifts in brown paper grocery bags a few years ago when she saw the bags piling up at home.   “It wasn’t consciously around environmentalism, but a good way to use these bags that aren’t going to get used otherwise,” she said. Now that her parents carry reusable bags to the grocery, the pile is getting smaller. Wood says she might switch to fabric wrapping that she can reuse each year.   “I want to change the disposable nature of my wrapping,” she said.   Some consumers are ditching wrapping altogether. In a survey released last month, half of U.S. respondents said they will give holiday gifts without wrapping this year to avoid using paper, according to Accenture, a consulting firm. Nearly two-thirds said they would happily receive gifts without wrapping.   Gift wrap companies are taking notice. IG Design Group, a United Kingdom-based maker of stationery and wrapping paper, said earlier this year that it removed glitter from its paper because it’s not recyclable.   Paper Source, a Chicago-based chain, introduced a recyclable wrapping paper made out of crushed marble and limestone that uses less water to produce than regular paper. A limited release of the paper sold out before the holidays last year. This year, about one-third of Paper Source’s holiday wrapping papers will be stone-based.   “Our customer is more aware of sustainability and their carbon footprint,” said Patrick Priore, the chief marketing officer for Paper Source. “We would be foolish not to go in that area.”   Here are some wrapping and recycling ideas:   — Choose recyclable gift wrap. Papers that contain foil, plastic coating, cellophane and glitter are not recyclable, according to the American Forest and Paper Association. The association says a general rule of thumb is to crumple up the paper; if it stays in a tight ball, it’s paper-based and can be recycled. Kula, Hawaii-based Wrappily uses old printing presses to print designs on recyclable newsprint. A three-sheet set of its paper is $10. Hallmark sells a set of four rolls — 35.2 feet in total — for $14.99. Paper Source says its stone paper can be recycled; it costs $9.95 for a 10-foot roll.   — Go with gift bags. Westlake, Ohio-based American Greetings says gift bags now make up 30% of its wrapping business. They cost more upfront than many wrapping papers, but they’re easy to reuse; just cut off ribbon handles — which aren’t recyclable — if you’re putting paper gift bags in the recycling bin. Many sizes and varieties of gift bags are available at Etsy.com. Philadelphia-based VZ Wraps sells a set of three cotton wine bags for $13.59. Amazon has a set of five cotton bags for $23.95.   — Wrap with fabric. An ancient craft in Japan is gaining converts elsewhere. Ten Thousand Villages, a fair-trade retail chain, sells gift wrap made from saris that are recycled by artisans in Bangladesh. The company says sales have been growing steadily since the wraps were introduced in 2013; so far this year, sales are up 20% over 2018. The 26-square-inch wrap, which comes with instructions, sells for $12.99. Or go even simpler; wrap a gift in a pillowcase or a T-shirt.   — Recycle it all. New Jersey-based recycling company TerraCycle promises to recycle everything — including ribbons, bows, tissue paper and wrapping paper with glitter — in its Gift Zero Waste Box. The company sends customers an empty box with a paid return label; once it’s full of gift wrap, customers send it back. TerraCycle says it has processes for even hard-to-recycle products like ribbon, which it uses for insulation or melts into plastic pellets. The company says a medium box is the most popular size for family gatherings; it costs $147.

Earlier in this decade, Kashi customers — specifically, enthusiasts of the Bear Naked granola brand — began asking the cereal company to make its stand-up pouches recyclable. It took a close collaboration with Dow's specialty packaging unit to realize that vision alongside the many other initiatives that the food company's sustainability team is managing.   "Those of us who work in sustainability know that packaging is a smaller part of the overall environmental impact of a product, especially when you compare it to the agriculture, water usage and energy that goes into manufacturing a product," said Ashley Leidolf, North America end-use marketing manager at Dow Packaging & Specialty Plastics, during last week’s GreenBiz webcast on the roles of collaboration and innovation in sustainable packaging.   However, that nuance is not common knowledge to consumers. After consuming a product, they just want to dispose of the leftover packaging responsibly — and more are expecting consumer products companies to provide that option.   For context, Bear Naked already had a recycling partnership in place. As early as 2008, it partnered with TerraCycle, a social enterprise focused on recycling different forms of packaging, and encouraged its customers to use those services to recycle their packages. But Bear Naked wanted and needed to go beyond this effort because TerraCycle's services weren’t available for a chunk of its customers, as the program required signing up and saving the packaging to ship to TerraCycle.   Instead, Bear Naked had to change its packaging — using different materials — to meet the standards of the more convenient in-store plastic bag recycling drop-off bins in retail stores across the United States.       Responding to customers’ needs and attempting to reach more consumers who prioritize sustainability, Kashi's parent company Kellogg blessed the group's decision to change its packaging about three years ago. Kashi began working with suppliers to test new designs and ideas, but with each prototype over the course of about eight to 10 months, it ran into another challenge — the pouches wouldn’t seal (not acceptable for a food company) and the variety of materials didn’t work on its existing equipment, which was imperative for the project.   "It was very frustrating," said Shannon Moore, lead packaging engineer at Kashi, who noted that after these trials, her team decided to take a step back to figure out the cause of the problem. "We had to do a root cause analysis."   Enter Kashi's collaboration with Dow's packaging division, which reaches back to 2017 when Kellogg began a strategic partnership with the unit. The two organizations discussed packaging technologies that were available, and Kellogg encouraged Kashi's team to consult Dow's packaging experts.   Together, the teams forged a unique partnership — working beyond the typical supplier-customer relationship — that helped them accelerate packaging innovation. The breakthrough came in March 2017, when the Kashi team that worked on the Bear Naked brand went to Dow’s Pack Studios in Houston, the packaging company’s global network of labs and collaboration facilities. Over the course of two days, the two organizations refined the project's goals by considering these and other questions:  

1. What is the shelf-life of the product?
2. What type of equipment would the package run on?
3. What is the format of the bag?
4. Did it need to be a stand-up pouch with certain aesthetics?
5. What is the Bear Naked brand?

  "That’s probably typically outside of our relationship with our materials suppliers, but it was really important to talk through why we had made choices on how the pouch looked, why we were in a standup pouch, what products we use, [how we protect] our food," Moore said.   Understanding all of these details is important for a materials supplier to be able to use the "right tools in its toolbox" to create the right solution, Dow's Leidolf said. From these discussions, Dow compiled a list of suppliers and manufacturers that it could partner with to turn the previous failures on the Kashi project into a success.       "We’ve seen that over the years when we do this type of work, when the materials supplier gets very involved with the brand owner and their requirements, and understands the needs and the trends of the final package, then we can actually develop better solutions as a materials supplier, to go into those final packages," she said.   Six months after its meeting with Dow, Kashi ran a full-scale trial and was able to seal its packaging — passing its integrity testing and sensory analysis, which assessed if the food and pouches met the performance of its current pouches.   "That was a huge development for us to be able to go from three to four trials where we were having the same result in the matter … to be able to truly successfully deliver this recyclable package," Moore said.   This isn't just a pilot: In 2019, Bear Naked started converting to the recyclable packaging that consumers can put into store drop-off bins at retailers across the country. And now all of Bear Naked's product packaging is recyclable. As for the future of Kashi's packaging, Moore said that eventually, curbside recycling would be ideal.

Less than two months ago, I decided to get serious about my personal carbon footprint. Like many people, I bring my reusable bags to the store and do my best to check the labels on food products — is it organic, is it BPA-free, etc. Deep down, however, I know this is not enough.   After a summer filled with heartbreaking environmental events like the fires in the Amazon and Alaska, massive melting of Greenland’s ice sheets, and another year of record temperatures, I was compelled to make a drastic change in myself by taking steps toward adopting a zero-waste lifestyle. I started a community Facebook page, Zero Waste Santa Clarita, to 1) educate and reinforce my own goals, and 2) help others find zero-waste options and plastic alternatives in Santa Clarita.   Previously, I had stopped working on projects that I care about, because the impending reality of climate change rendered everything else meaningless. I was very depressed, not knowing what I could do about it. About this time, a young woman from Sweden—Greta Thunberg — sailed across the Atlantic on a zero-emissions sailboat to meet with leaders at the U.N. Climate Change Summit in September. That it was the time to act hit me straight away.   Now, in the ninth week of transitioning, I’m more familiar with local brands and food options in Santa Clarita. I purchase locally made honey and fresh produce at the Old Town Newhall and College of the Canyons farmers markets, beer in refillable growlers at local breweries in Santa Clarita, and recently I stopped by the new SCV Vegan Exchange Market in its first month.   I frequent the bulk bins at several local grocery stores. There are lots of bulk options that are cheaper, healthier, and free of packaging. I make my own peanut butter. I use washable bamboo towels rather than paper towels for cleaning, for reusable tissues, and as an alternative to cotton swabs. I’m researching the pros and cons of bidet toilet seats vs. toilet paper. Some of the changes I’ve made are temporary until the market offers something better.   The ultimate goal is to maintain an empty trash bin and avoid anything going in the landfill at all costs by finding alternative places to drop off food waste. Things I am unable to recycle locally I am collecting to mail to TerraCycle, a company that researches and implements smart ways to use things like toothpaste tubes and cigarette butts.   When cooking, I make large batches so there is less time and energy in the kitchen. Rather than digging for a recipe, I allow what is in the fridge to guide the next thing I try out. Every choice is focused around decreasing food waste. What ingredients can I buy to combine with stuff in my refrigerator that will soon expire? Do I need to freeze anything that I can’t finish eating? When shopping, I try to buy local or from bulk bins first. If I have to buy packaged food, I choose glass, paper, or metal packaging before plastic. This can be challenge if you are buying for others. I offer alternatives to my family when possible and practice Zero Waste leader Bea Johnson’s five R’s of zero waste — Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot.   With the recent outbreak of fires in and around Santa Clarita in October, I am convinced that learning how to live this lifestyle is critical in slowing down the worst impacts of climate change and surviving in a world with depleting resources and food security challenges. While researching, I learned that Santa Clarita is moving toward zero waste emissions and improving waste management collection. However, I am disappointed with the majority of grocery stores, markets, and retailers in Santa Clarita, as they sell an overwhelming amount of single-use plastic, an acutely inefficient byproduct of fossil fuels. On top of this, I see many restaurants that still use Styrofoam… yes, Styrofoam.   This is unacceptable in a world that desperately needs us to drastically reduce our waste, consumption, and plastics, which are overtaking our oceans and waterways, leeching into our food, killing wildlife, contaminating fish and other seafood, and exposing us to serious health risks — not to mention making life on planet Earth more challenging. It is not the sole responsibility of the consumer to solve the problem. Businesses must take action now to implement plastic alternatives.

  If you have a child who's a fan of the hit LOL Surprise toys you've no doubt noticed that the tiny surprises come wrapped in a lot of plastic packaging. LOL Surprise toys are available in a wide range of price points, and the more expensive the product the more tiny plastic toys it contains. The thing with LOL Surprise toys is that each toy inside the packaging tends to be wrapped in its own plastic shell, making for a lot of plastic garbage once a child is done opening everything up.     As most consumers are making a concerted effort to reduce the amount of plastic they use, MGA Entertainment, which owns LOL Surprise is also making an effort to do something about the massive amount of plastic waste their hit toys create. MGA Entertainment's CEO Isaac Larian exclusively told CNN Business that his company is actively working towards a better packaging solution. "We are working on a brand new biodegradable plastic for 2020," Larian explained while adding that the company is working to replace the plastic inner packaging on the toys with paper.     MGA Entertainment has also teamed up with recycling company TerraCycle, the same company that Target partnered with for their car seat recycling initiative to help cut down on the waste created from the LOL Suprise sets. In addition to being able to recycle the packaging of the LOL Surprise! toys, they're also recycling the actual toys as well. It's not as easy as putting your toys and packaging in your recycle bin at home, but if you're serious about recycling the waste created by these toys it is possible.   Consumers simply sign up on TerraCycle's website, package up the products to be recycled and ship it for free using the packaging label that will be prepared in advance. MGA Entertainment's CMO Hailey Wu Sullivan told CNN Business that they also have a "bigger plan in place with TerraCycle," going forward but haven't released any details yet.       There doesn't seem to be any end to the popularity of LOL Surprise! toys so it's refreshing to see the company is working hard to ensure they are doing all they can to create more environmentally friendly packaging and recycling alternatives for consumers.