TERRACYCLE NEWS

ELIMINATING THE IDEA OF WASTE®

Add Love to After School Snacks w/ Little Bites and $25 Giveaway

With back to school here, we also have lots of after-school activities. Not only do I pack lunches, but I also often pack snacks to take on the go when we head out to sports practice, events, and other activities. One of our favorites is Entenmann’s® Little Bites® and these little mini-muffins are great for snacking on the go since they convenient pre-portioned pouches. A perfect lunchbox staple or easy afterschool snack, Entenmann’s® Little Bites®, contain no high fructose corn syrup, use real ingredients like blueberries, bananas, strawberries and chocolate chips, are certified Kosher, contain zero grams of trans fat per serving and most varieties are less than 200 calories per pouch.

Volunteers collect 1,000 pounds of garbage in coastal cleanup

NORWALK — “If you help out your community, your community will help you back,” explained Jen Cunniffe to her 9-year-old daughter and the girl’s 8-year-old friend, as the three used their trash grabbers to gather litter caught in the reeds at Oyster Shell Park. Cunniffe was one of dozens of volunteers gathered at North Water Street’s Heritage Park for a community-wide cleanup effort targeting Norwalk’s coastline. In all, over 70 volunteers took to the land abutting Long Island Sound’s many tributaries Saturday as a part of the third annual “Source to Sound” river and harbor cleanup.

Cleaning up coffee culture

We meet for it, offer it, pick it up and put on pots of it: whether you drink it or not, coffee culture is a real thing. A coffee-drinking consumer today has their choice of café (Internet to Cat [yes, the pet]), style (espresso, americano, cold brew, to name a few) and easy ways to obtain their brew of choice at home and on the go. Even those who prefer tea, hot chocolate or cider can agree that the market for hot beverages is one that offers convenience and quality, just the way they like it. But as it is with many products that are fast and convenient, the trade-off is often a lack of sustainability along the supply chain. This can include diminished equity for producers and negative environmental impacts. Thus, the International Coffee Organization created International Coffee Day. Recognized on September 29 in the United States (the world’s second-largest importer of coffee beans), the event is a way to acknowledge that something as ubiquitous as coffee has varying degrees of sustainability. Being aware of these can help us make better choices.

Green Initiatives Bring Internal Benefits

There now exists an urgency to recycle lab materials. Nature estimates that lab plastics waste accounted for 5.5 million tons in 2014, roughly the estimated tonnage of 67 cruise liners—and this estimate only speaks to one of the many types of waste created by labs.
The quantity and variety of waste generated depends on the type of lab, as the lab and research industry can be broadly defined to include hospitals, universities, pharmaceutical corporations and regulatory agencies. Every lab is different and creates a mix of natural and synthetic materials, which may include glass, plastic, hybrid material, lab garments, and nitrile and rubber gloves. These materials are dumped in the same landfills that are flowing into our oceans, release chemicals into the air and take up more and more of our land.