SM Hanson Music is kicking off its instrument string recycling program with a free restringing and recycling event Saturday. What happens to old guitar strings once they are replaced? Quite often, they end up in the landfill. Rick Hanson and SM Hanson Music, Inc., want to do something about that. The longtime Salina music store is publicly kicking off its instrument string recycling program with a free recycle and restring event from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the store, 335 South Clark Street. The event is sponsored by D’Addario® and international recycling company TerraCycle®. Old strings collected during the event will be recycled through Playback, D’Addario’s free, national recycling program. Playback is the world’s first instrument string recycling program, launched through a partnership between D’Addario and TerraCycle, a global leader in recycling typically non-recyclable waste. During Saturday’s event, musicians can have their electric or acoustic guitars restrung with new D’Addario XT Electric or XT Phospher Bronze Acoustic strings at no charge. With new strings and labor, that’s a value of more than $25 per guitar, Hanson said. Additionally, people can bring in any old instrument strings for recycling. A peek inside the the instrument string recycling box at SM Hanson Music, Inc. Hanson, who has served as president of SM Hanson Music, Inc., for the past three months, said that while the free restringing event is only on Saturday, the recycling effort will continue at no charge for any instrument strings. The store will even accept strings that are shipped to it from outside Salina, he said. “We’ve been searching for a solution for old string reuse after installing a new set on a guitar, so it’s great that D’Addario and TerraCycle are helping dealers confront this issue,” Hanson said. “Recycling these strings, regardless of brand-name, will help to greatly minimize our store’s landfill contribution.” Hanson said the Salina music store is one of three in Kansas that offers instrument string recycling services. SM Hanson Music, Inc., boasts a 47-year history of providing quality service and products for every musician – from beginner to expert. For all levels and ages, the full-service music store helps musicians find the right gear based on any budget, music taste, or experience level. With friendly and knowledgeable staff channeling more than 80 years of combined music teaching experience, S.M. Hanson Music, Inc.,  is a one-stop shop for instruments, gear, musical expertise, and even sound and video systems via their Sound Solutions Department. For more information about the guitar restringing and instrument string recycling event or other events offered by SM Hanson Music, Inc., check out the store’s Facebook page or website.  

Once Upon a Farm, the beloved kid nutrition brand that makes organic, cold-pressed baby food, smoothies, and applesauce, has expanded their partnership with international recycling company TerraCycle® to offer consumers a free, easy way to recycle packaging from their entire product line.      

• Participation in the Once Upon a Farm Recycling Program is easy. Simply sign up on the TerraCycle program page and mail in the packaging using a prepaid shipping label. Once collected, the packaging is cleaned and melted into hard plastic that can be remolded to make new recycled products. Additionally, for every pound of waste shipped to TerraCycle, collectors can earn $1 to donate to a non-profit, school or charitable organization of their choice.

    The Once Upon a Farm Recycling Program is open to any interested individual, school, office, or community organization. For more information on TerraCycle’s recycling program, visit www.terracycle.com.

A 3M passa a distribuir os displays da Scotch-Brite que contêm plástico vindo de esponjas recicladas pelo Programa Nacional de Reciclagem da marca, que serão implementados em lojas de todo o Brasil. Essa novidade é lançada no ano em que o programa completa cinco anos de existência, tendo coletado mais de 1,5 milhão de esponjas nesse período.

When trick-or-treaters show up at your door this Halloween, what are you going to give them?

 

Odds are good that you planned to pass out candy, but it wasn’t always that way. When trick-or-treating only gained popularity in the United States in the 1930s and ’40s, common trick-or-treat offerings included nuts, coins and homemade baked goods. Around the 1950s, candy companies decided to capitalize on the event. They spent decades making inroads on the holiday by downsizing candies into bite-sized packages and marketing them as treats for Halloween.

  Now, Halloween is an annual billion-dollar windfall for candy industry giants. According to the National Confectioners Association, Americans purchase nearly 600 million pounds of candy a year for Halloween.  

Even if everyone in the country is handing out king-sized candy bars (and any kid will tell you they are not), that’s a lot of candy wrappers. Most candy wrappers are made of mixed materials: coated paper, polypropylene film or a combination of aluminum and plastic, depending on the candy. It is not cost-effective for recycling companies to break down these tiny scraps of material that, ultimately, are too difficult to sell.

Every Halloween, millions of candy wrappers wind up in landfills. Talk about spooky.  

If you simply must have candy but are concerned about the waste, the company TerraCycle will accept candy-wrapper-waste through their Zero Waste Box program. Order a box (pricing ranges from $43 to $218, depending on the size), collect the waste and ship it back to TerraCycle, where they will separate the wrappers into its component parts for reuse.

There are other reasons to hand out something besides candy on Halloween aside from the waste, though. Besides the health and dental impact (the average trick-or-treater consumes about three cups of sugar on Halloween, which is 27 times the daily recommended amount), children with severe allergies are often excluded from the ghostly fun. The Food Allergy Research and Education organization started the Teal Pumpkin Project in 2014, encouraging households to hand out non-food treats (and indicate that they are doing so with a teal-painted pumpkin, flyer or sign on their porch or door) so that children with severe allergies can have a safe, fun Halloween.   Choosing alternatives to candy on Halloween can be tricky, though. Parents often tell children to toss homemade baked goods. Plus, one of the benefits of bite-sized candy is that it is cheap, and you can buy it in bulk.   If you are willing to be creative, though, there are plenty of non-candy options that your neighborhood trick-or-treaters will enjoy. Here are five alternatives to candy for a healthier, lower-waste and allergy-friendly Halloween.

Finger puppets

Halloween-themed finger puppets are easy to make out of recyclable and biodegradable materials. This DIY from the blog Easy, Peasy and Fun will help you make simple, spooky ghosts out of paper with your family before the festivities begin. Or you can also buy finger puppets in bulk.  

Crayons

Kids love coloring. Use soy wax, beeswax or bits of old crayons, melt them down in Halloween-themed molds and let them cool before handing them out to creative trick-or-treaters. You can even hand the crayons out with these printable Halloween finger puppet templates from the blog What We Do All Day for an extra-fun two-in-one gift.

 

Rope bracelets

Choose a colorful cord and quickly fashion these sliding knot bracelets using this DIY from the blog ManMade. Kids will be scrambling over each other to choose their favorite colors. Hopefully, they will sport their new bracelets for the rest of their trick-or-treating adventures and beyond.

 

Miniature gourds

What is more autumnal than a miniature gourd? Stop by your local farmers market or grocery store to pick up a bulk bag of miniature pumpkins and gourds to hand out to trick or treaters. Kids will love the funny shapes and can keep them on display all season long (as an added bonus, they are both biodegradable and compostable).  

Seed packets

Pique neighborhood kids’ interest in gardening by handing out packets of seeds instead of candy. Even if they cannot plant them until spring, a packet of pumpkins will stay in the Halloween spirit while encouraging kids to ask questions about gardening. Biodegradable, plantable seed paper cut out in Halloween shapes is also a fun option. Mixes with pollinator-friendly flowers are easy to grow and will benefit the whole neighborhood.

 

When trick-or-treaters ring your doorbell this Halloween, surprise them with any of these more sustainable alternatives to bite-sized candy. Their molars, their parents and the planet will thank you.

20 Nassau Sold to Hotel Developer

An iconic office building at the corner of Nassau and Chambers streets has been sold to a hotel developer, according to reporting by Planet Princeton as well as property records. The building at 20 Nassau Street — pictured above —is home to more than 100 small businesses including doctors, psychologists, social workers, consultants, startups, lawyers, architects, and various others. The building has retailers and restaurants, such as Jammin’ Crepes, at street level. Property records indicate the building was sold on October 24 to a company called GPNJ, and Planet Princeton reported the contact was listed as Benjamin Weprin, the owner of Graduate Hotels, a company that builds nostalgia-themed hotels in college towns. A New York Times profile described Weprin as a swaggering “brotelier” whose 11 existing hotels cater to alumni, college-shopping families, and helicopter parents.

Terracycle Partners with Gerber

Baby food manufacturer Gerber has partnered with Trenton-based international recycling company TerraCycle to provide a way to recycle packaging that would otherwise end up in a landfill. Some of Gerber’s products are not recyclable under some municipal recycling programs. Parents can sign up on the Gerber Recycling Program page at www.terracycle.com/en-US/brigades/gerber and mail in packaging that is not municipally recyclable using a prepaid shipping label. Once collected the packaging is cleaned and melted into hard plastic that can be remolded to make new recycled products. “Through this free recycling program, Gerber is offering parents an easy way to divert waste from landfills by providing a responsible way to dispose of certain hard-to-recycle baby food packaging,” said TerraCycle CEO and founder Tom Szaky. “By collecting and recycling these items, families can demonstrate their respect for the environment not only through the products that they choose for their children, but also with how they dispose of the packaging.” For every pound of packaging waste sent to TerraCycle through the Gerber Recycling Program, collectors can earn $1 to donate to a non-profit, school, or charitable organization of their choice. “We’re thrilled to partner with TerraCycle as part of our broader sustainable packaging efforts,” said Gerber president and CEO Bill Partyka. “Our commitment to sustainability is rooted in giving parents a hand in making their baby’s future that much brighter.” The Gerber Recycling Program is open to any interested individual, school, office, or community organization. TerraCycle, 121 New York Avenue, Trenton 08638. 609-393-4252. Tom Szaky, CEO. www.terracycle.com.

Deaths

Rita Pintimalli, 89, on October 24. Together with her husband, she owned and operated Country Gardens in Robbinsville. She previously owned and operated Quakerbridge Gardens and Continental Coffers in Hamilton. Jack M. Conley, 76, on October 22. He was a senior research scientist at American Cyanamid Company. Edward M. Lawrence, 72, on October 19. He was a CPA with his own practice, Lawrence & Hilem, in Princeton, for more than 30 years. Charles A. Lynch, 84, on October 15. He led a long career in the chemical industry that included working in research for FMC in Princeton and retiring as an account executive for the state Department Of Commerce. Samuel Hynes, 95, on October 10. He was a professor of literature at Princeton best known for his 1988 memoir, “Flights of Passage,” which recounts his time as a bomber pilot in the Pacific theater of World War II. He was also a literary critic, writing for the New Yorker, the New York Times, and other publications.

VANCOUVER – Thought leaders, innovators and global brands will converge on Vancouver over the next two days for the ninth annual Zero Waste Conference, hosted by Metro Vancouver.   The 2019 Zero Waste Conference brings change-makers and innovators from different sectors and around the globe to share their insights and winning strategies.   The two-day forum will highlight successes, pitfalls and opportunities as businesses and communities shift to zero waste principals, through in-depth sessions on business model transformation, plastics, design innovation and circular cities.   TIME AND LOCATION Wednesday, October 30: 8:45 a.m. – 4:45 p.m. Thursday, October 31: 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.   Vancouver Convention Centre East, 999 Canada Place Vancouver, BC V6C 3C1   SPEAKERS INCLUDE:  

• Opening Keynote Skylar Tibbits – Founder of the Self-Assembly Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Skylar will provoke audiences to radically reimagine how we use materials and interact with products in our daily lives – his vision is a world where buildings, products and machines are capable of self-assembly, repair and replication, without robotic parts.
• Closing Keynote Valerie Craig – Deputy to the Chief Scientist and Vice President of Operating Programs, National Geographic Society, Valerie will amplify the great challenges presented by plastics waste, questioning how we got here and discovering potential solutions that will require global thinking and human ingenuity.
• Harald Friedl, CEO, Circle Economy – Harald will share insights on how to accelerate the global transition to a circular economy: can it be the key to tackle the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and diminishing resources?
• Arthur Huang – With a vision where everything from consumer goods to buildings is made from recycled materials, Arthur is singlehandedly accelerating the shift to the circular economy. Through his company Miniwiz, he has created TRASHPRESSO, a portable, solar-powered recycling platform that turns plastic into new products in only ten minutes.
• Tom Szaky – The founder of TerraCycle and Loop, Tom presents a new way of shopping that eliminates single-use packaging. In Loop, products are delivered directly to customers in durable containers that are then collected and refilled at least a hundred times before being recycled.
• The conference also welcomes as speakers executives from Subaru, Unilever, Nature’s Path Foods, Canadian Tire, Ellen MacArther Foundation, The Finnish Innovation Fund: SITRA, Ocean Wise, City of Helsinki, Smart Prosperity Institute, Arup Canada, Cascades Recovery+, The Natural Step Canada, Recyc-Quebec, Metabolic, Recycling Council of Alberta, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

Soooo many candy wrappers, sitting in a pile in the trash...but wait, you can recycle them thanks to our friends at Loggerhead Marinelife Center!   JUNO BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — Loggerhead Marinelife Center's "Unwrap the Waves" program is back for this Halloween season. The center and several other organizations in the area will be collecting candy wrappers to 100 percent recycle.   According to the Environmental Protection Agency, plastic packaging accounts for 30 percent of the U.S.’s solid waste every year.   The center will collect candy wrappers and send them to TerraCycle, who will recycle the wrappers since a majority of recycling centers don't accept candy wrappers. Last year, the "Unwrap the Waves" program collected 19,000 wrappers. Wrappers can be dropped off at Loggerhead Marinelife Center, Manatee Lagoon, FAU Pine Jog Environmental Education Center, Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, Inc., and Sandoway Discovery Center.   Twenty-nine Palm Beach County schools are also collecting wrappers. Candy wrappers are being collected now through November 11.

Earlier this month, Rubicon Global, a technology company born in the waste and recycling industry, launched its very first "Trick or Trash" Halloween campaign, a free recycling-awareness program for educators across the United States. The idea was to provide teachers and educators with a recycling and circular economy lesson plan, as well as a Candy and Snack Wrappers Zero Waste Box through TerraCycle to keep Halloween candy and snack wrappers out of landfills by diverting them into recycling streams. According to industry data, Americans purchase nearly 600 million pounds of candy for Halloween. It was smashing success. The free program had more than 450 teachers in 49 states plus the District of Columbia sign up in less than a month. One of those schools in Illinois was our very own Gemini Middle School in Niles. Seventh-grade teacher Beverly Mendoza, who signed up for the "Trick or Trash" program, said "I was taught to recycle from a young age, but more recently I've noticed that there are many cities and neighborhoods that still don't provide recycling, and that is a shame. There are over 1,100 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in my middle school. Students chew gum daily. They go through tons of wrappers within a week, and most of those wrappers end up in the trash. We do a lot within our school to recycle paper, plastic bottles, and are even collecting bottle caps to send to a company that will create a bench out of them for the school. This Trick or Trash program from Rubicon is a great extension of our existing recycling and sustainability efforts and we are excited to be a part of it."  

US-based nutrition provider Gerber and recycling company TerraCycle have partnered to recycle baby food packaging across the country.   The two companies are individually committed to eliminate waste and enable customers to recycle baby food packaging via TerraCycle.   To join the programme, customers need to enroll on the Gerber Recycling Program page. Then, they can send non-municipally recyclable packaging.   The packaging will be collected, cleaned and converted into hard plastic. The recycled plastic can be reused to produce new recycled items.   Interested individuals, schools, offices or community organisations can participate in the programme.   TerraCycle CEO and founder Tom Szaky said: “Through this free recycling programme, Gerber is offering parents an easy way to divert waste from landfills by providing a responsible way to dispose of certain hard-to-recycle baby food packaging.   “By collecting and recycling these items, families can demonstrate their respect for the environment not only through the products that they choose for their children but also with how they dispose of the packaging.”   To encourage participation in the programme, customers will be rewarded $1 for every pound of packaging waste sent.   The reward will go to a non-profit, school or charitable organisation of the collector’s choice.   Gerber president and CEO Bill Partyka said: “We know every parent’s top priority is to ensure a healthy, happy future for their baby. Our commitment to sustainability is rooted in giving parents a hand in making their baby’s future that much brighter.”   Earlier this month, TerraCycle collaborated with health and hygiene company RB to enable customers to recycle their consumer goods packaging.

Nestlé-owned Gerber has announced that it is partnering with the TerraCycle recycling program in the US to help repurpose hard-to-recycle packaging to keep it out of the landfill. The program will allow consumers to mail Gerber packaging that can't be accepted through municipal collection programs to help transform it into new products upon being melted down. Consumers can use a prepaid shipping label to partake in the free program and help do their part to keep simple-use plastics functional. The TerraCycle recycling program partnership with Gerber was touted by TerraCycle CEO and Founder Tom Szaky who said, "Through this free recycling programme, Gerber is offering parents an easy way to divert waste from landfills by providing a responsible way to dispose of certain hard-to-recycle baby food packaging. By collecting and recycling these items, families can demonstrate their respect for the environment not only through the products that they choose for their children, but also with how they dispose of the packaging.”