The national winners of a recycling competition have now advanced to the next stage in saving the planet - upcycling. Mountain View School in Mangere Bridge took the first place in Fonterra's Milk for Schools recycling excellence competition this year. Their prize for being the best in the country was a DIY workshop held by TerraCycle. The winner last year was Miramar Central Primary in Wellington. To enter the competition, the students created a video showcasing how they minimise waste and increase recycling at their school. Their submission was judged as the most impressive. In an interactive session, the kids had a crash course in recycling, and how to reuse waste in functional ways. They learnt how to make bags, tic-tac-toe sets and coin pouches out of Fonterra yoghurt pouches. Deputy principal Joy Fraser says the school has always stressed the importance of recycling and minimising waste. "They're our future leaders. They are the ones we have to rely on," she says. The workshop has helped them grasp a whole new side to reusing waste. "It has given them an insight into how you can recycle and what other things you can make with it [waste]. They've been shown a dress made from a tent," she says. "They've learnt that it's worth recycling, not just to planet clean, but to make things for their own use." Evarose Inamata, one of the students participating in the workshop, says this is the first time she's made a bag from waste. She plans to put her money in the pouch she made. Ten-year-old Tevita Manu learnt that "you don't always have to put rubbish in the bin, but you could actually use it". And he plans on passing this knowledge to his family and friends. "I'm going to tell them don't chuck things straight in the bin. Think of what you can turn them into," he says. TerraCycle has been working with schools in partnership with Fonterra to encourage recycling at a young age. Schools that are interested in joining the programme can find more information at www.fonterramilkforschools.com.

Office Rubbish Removal Sydney: many offices do not produce a great deal of waste, especially for smaller office spaces with less than 10 workers. In some instances, the council bin provision may be suitable for your needs. However, it is pretty simple to organise low cost and effective waste management and recycling services for your office – and achieve very high levels of recycling to help the environment. Of course, as with everything else, a little bit of effort by your staff in separating waste and recyclables can really help to increase recycling percentages. Waster offers low cost and flexible waste, recycling and office rubbish removal Sydney services through flexible 30 day agreements. Check out our online shop for all options and services: By putting in place a simple waste management plan, you can pretty easily achieve very high recycling rates for your business – this can help keep your staff engaged and also lead to a better work atmosphere. We list from top to bottom – the easiest and cheapest recycling options to put in place to reduce any waste ending up in landfill. Cardboard and Paper recycling – most offices produce lots of paper and some cardboard. The cheapest way (and most environmentally friendly way to get rid of it is to have a cardboard bin collection. If some of your paperwork is confidential – you can organise a shredding bin. Confidential document shredding: a confidential shredding bin ensures your private docs are not simply thrown in the garbage. The bin is kept and collected by a security cleared driver from inside your office space. Commingled recycling: if your office has items like drinks cans, plastic bottle etc – a commingled recycling bin ( a yellow mixed recycling bin) could be a good move and will let you reduce any general waste going to landfill. Organic food waste: if you produce reasonable amounts of food waste, their may be an organic food waste collection service in your area. Alternatively, if you have a garden you could think about a composter. Recycling boxes: it is good to know also that pretty much anything can be recycled using TerraCycle recycling boxes – such as cigarettes, coffee pods, rubber gloves or hairnets – pretty much anything.

An industry forum on aerosols and 'staying relevant to today’s consumer' will be held as part of the Aerosol Association of Australia's industry training and education events this month. Aerosol 2017 will be held from 21-23 March in Sydney, and the forum will be run out of the Harbourside Room in the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in The Rocks on the 23rd. The talks will include the following line-up: ‘The New Consumer’ – Emma Lo Russo, CEO of Digivizer 'Aerosol Innovation: Examples from around the world’ – Jo Jackson, Colep/ACOA ‘Recycling traditionally unrecyclable products’ – Gemma Kaczerepa, TerraCycle Australia & New Zealand ‘Compressed gas and bi-compartmental aerosols’ – Paul Sullivan, MD of DH Industries ‘Are legislative and technical standards keeping up with innovation or a barrier to it?’ – Alain D’haese, European Aerosol Federation ‘The role of technical innovation to promote safety and product quality: an example’ – Richard Cooper, Emerson Automation Solutions – Cascade Technologies ‘How technology can enhance the customer relationship’ – Ben Smith, Engagis To register to attend the forum, click here.

A iniciativa atua desde junho de 2014 para transformar esponjas de limpeza doméstica usadas em matéria-prima para fabricar novos produtos: pás de lixo, lixeiras, suportes de notebook, entre outros.

Já a empresa TerraCycle tem um projeto na Espanha, Canadá e Estados Unidos que transformam os restos do cigarro em produtos plásticos, incentivando estabelecimentos a enviar gratuitamente as bitucas pelo correio.

...E por fim, você pode escolher dar um upcycle nos seus descartes se cadastrando no site da Terracycle.

Em 2012 a Faber-Castell estabeleceu uma parceria com a TerraCycle e lançou um programa de coleta que permite a transformação de instrumentos de escrita em matéria prima reciclada que substitui o material virgem que seria utilizado e evita o descarte de resíduos no meio ambiente.

Fanshawe is one of the first schools in Southwestern Ontario to recycle cigarette butts from its campus. Sustainability staff are hopeful that participating in a unique waste management program designed by a company called TerraCycle will decrease the devastating environ­mental impact of a bad habit. To get the most out of the program, stu­dents are urged to do their part and throw their butts in the designated containers, which custodial staff empty regularly into a larger bin that will be shipped to TerraCycle’s Mississauga headquarters. In the past year, Fanshawe ac­cumulated just over 77 pounds of butts. TerraCycle specializes in break­ing down the compounds of materi­als that do not biodegrade or cannot be recycled by the public sector. They compost the natural tobacco content of cigarette butts, while recycling the plastic into materials used to build playgrounds and park benches. The program even pro­vides a reimbursement for its ship­ping fee in the form of a charitable donation. Fanshawe has chosen to redirect these funds back into its sustainability programming. As sustainability co-ordinator Amanda Whittingham said, smok­ers need to think twice before flick­ing their butt onto the ground. There is a common misconception among smokers that cigarette butts are made of cotton. There is even less awareness of how harmful butts are to the environment. “Billions of filters are left on the ground, and their toxins leech into the soil. They can poison the ground water or can clog up the sewage stations and sanitary water stations, and that goes straight into the river,” Whittingham said. At that point, birds and fish con­sume the filters, and the neurotox­ins and hormone disruptors within. Often, this prevents males from properly displaying for mating. Over the process of bioaccumula­tion, humans are likely to eventual­ly ingest the same poisons. While some schools are not able to afford the extra cost of supple­mentary sustainable programs, Fanshawe’s status as one of the province’s four largest colleges has allotted it the freedom to focus on progressing. According to Ivan Walker, senior manager at Facilities Operations and Sustainability, uti­lizing services like TerraCycle will help to set a precedent and pave the way for other colleges. “Fanshawe is also very much about utilizing our resources wise­ly, not only recycling after you’ve used them but also before you’ve used them,” Walker said. “If you happen to see any energy wastages you can also drop a line at sustain­ability@fanshawec.ca and we’ll see if we can attend to those issues.”

What should we do with those K-Cups? What do we do with “unrecyclable” items? Long-standing office supply chain Grand & Toy, operating since 1882 and now an ecommerce site also driven by direct sales, has solutions; the company is all-in when it comes to going green. Through innovative partnerships and by example, it has demonstrated a sincere and comprehensive dedication to sustainable practices, which invites socially conscious young employees and loyal customers. Last fall, Grand & Toy — owned by U.S. office supply retailer Office Depot, Inc. — issued its seventh annual Corporate Sustainability Report, based on its Seven Pillars of Sustainability program established in 2007. A 2014 survey of its key stakeholders — customers, suppliers and associates — ranked “the relative importance of each issue to all stakeholders. Green products and recycling were deemed the most important aspects, followed by packaging and transportation efficiency.” The recent sustainability report highlights progress across several key areas, including recycling and green product initiatives, such as the reduction of waste and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as new programs which provide opportunities for customers to go green. Two notable takeaways provided by Grand & Toy: “In 2015, Grand & Toy launched a revolutionary green products classification program, assigning products a light, mid or dark green shade depending on their environmental attributes. The company created a dedicated ‘Go Green’ page to allow customers to search green products more effectively, as well as a ‘Greener Office’ page to encourage environmentally conscious purchasing practices. Sales of green products have increased to 24 percent of total sales, up 4 percent since 2014.” “The 2014 TerraCycle K-cup recycling pilot project was rolled out nationally in 2015 resulting in 270,000 recycled coffee capsules by Grand & Toy and its customers, a vast improvement over the 50,000 recycled in 2014. Also, other Zero Waste Boxes were introduced to help customers recycle the ‘unrecyclable’ including office supplies, personal protective equipment and computer accessories.” There’s also a new-ish volunteer program called Pause and Affect that grants Grand & Toy associates eight paid hours per year to participate in volunteer activities, such as tree planting and neighbourhood clean-up. From the program’s inception in May 2015 to year-end, Grand & Toy employees contributed 577 hours of volunteering across Canada, a number the company hopes to grow moving forward. Grand & Toy also stages corporate volunteer events such as packing school supplies for underprivileged children to further engage its employees. As Grand & Toy’s sustainability manager, Serguei Tchertok is responsible both for overseeing the Corporate Sustainability Report, as well as ensuring implementation and execution of its practices across the business. He spoke with Samaritanmag about the company’s many initiatives and why being the so-called green guy makes going to work in the morning such a pleasure. If you had to describe Grand & Toy’s sustainability efforts in an elevator pitch, how would you do it? I’d say our top priorities are greener products, recycling our products and making sure our community involvement is high and our associates are engaged in our communities. If we can achieve those things above all else, we’re doing okay. This is Grand & Toy’s seventh Corporate Sustainability Report. Put that in some perspective: how common are these kinds of reports in the business world. They’re becoming more and more common with both mid- to large-size corporations. t’s a heartening trend and research seems to indicate that younger workers often ask prospective employers about their governance and altruism before accepting jobs. In 2015, we published a Thought Leadership Insights Report. We collaborated with Hamilton’s McMaster University and asked students how they felt about their future employers’ sustainability practices. We asked students if they’d refuse a job offer if a company’s sustainability practices were not great as new graduates and as mid-career professionals. Many of the students — some 13 percent — said that sustainability mattered so much they’d turn down a job even as new graduates. When imagining themselves as mid-career professionals, most said they would reject a job offer. It’s clear that if you want to attract and keep the best and brightest, you must ensure your environmental and social practices are on par. Is it fair to say the office supply industry — with its high product attrition rate — is uniquely placed to lead the charge on sustainability? Yes, and that’s why recycling is one of our top sustainability issues. We definitely need to make sure we are taking better care of our products once they go out into the world. We have take-back programs for some of our products, such as the thINK program for ink and toner cartridges. In 2014 when I started with Grand & Toy, we formed a partnership with (waste solutions company) TerraCycle Canada and we became the first retailer in Canada to offer a recycling solution for coffee capsules such as K-cups. We launched that program nationally in 2015 and we added other recycling options for so-called unrecyclable products such as personal protective equipment, office supplies and even candy wrappers. Apart from its environmental impact and ability to attract talent, where else do you gauge the impact of these sustainability measures? Our top sustainability issue is green products so we want to be sure our product offering is expanded. And we want to move our customers towards environmentally friendly purchasing. If we can do that, it’ll eclipse anything we do internally as a corporation because the impact of buying recyclable products — or products with other meaningful environmental attributes — is huge. In some cases, that’s very measurable, as with paper where we can present people with life-cycle analysis of how much water, trees and energy has been saved. These numbers are quite impressive and they really add up.  

Approximately 55 percent of parents throw away toys to reduce clutter in their homes, according to a study by natural and sustainable product manufacturer Tom’s of Maine. In an effort to keep those toys from ending up in landfills, Tom’s of Maine has partnered with N.J.-based TerraCycle to collect, donate and recycle toys from households across the U.S. during Earth Month.   “For Earth Month 2017, we’ll be focusing on this tangible issue of broken toys and, to do that, we are partnering with TerraCycle for the national Less Waste Challenge toy recycling program,” Susan Dewhirst, Tom’s of Maine public relations communications manager, says in a statement. “We ran a similar toy recycling program in 2015, and due to high demand, we ran out of boxes in just 72 hours. This year, we are providing participants with downloadable shipping labels so that more toys can be recycled. We hope to divert more than 5,000 pounds of broken toys from landfill during Earth Month 2017.”   The toys that are collected through the program go through an extensive sorting process. If the toys are unable to be donated to charities like The Salvation Army or Goodwill due to missing pieces, malfunction or other reasons, they are manually sorted and processed for recycling in TerraCycle’s facility.   “To start the recycling process, we manually remove all of the e-waste and more hazardous items like batteries and the circuit board from the electronic toys,” says TerraCycle Director of Process and Product Development Rick Zultner. “For toys that don’t have an electronic component, we break them down by polymer type and separate out the metals, plastics and other materials. From there, the materials are placed in their designated waste streams for proper recycling.”   One of the biggest challenges TerraCycle faces with recycling the toys and their materials is the variety of items that are sent to its facility. Because of the different shapes and materials of each toy, the recycling process requires a lot of manual work, which can be timely. But according to Zultner, creating partnerships with companies like Tom’s of Maine makes the process easier because they can help TerraCycle overcome the challenges that pop up during the recycling process.   “There’s a different process for how we recycle things like board games and electronic waste than action figures or dolls,” TerraCycle Founder Tom Szaky said in a statement. “There’s a real complex solution behind the scenes, but the good news is that everything is 100 percent recycled into new materials. This creates two points of value from the environmental point of view: it eliminates toys from ending up in the waste stream and it recycles and reuses all of the valuable materials that make up these toys—from the metals that make up electronic toys to the plastics that make up plastic toys to the fibers that make up the dress of a doll.”   While majority of the toys created in the world today are able to be recycled despite some challenges, the demand for more electronic and interactive toys could present more recycling challenges in the future.   “I think the complexity of toys is increasing in terms of the parts that go in them, the motions they make and the technical abilities of the toy manufacturers themselves,” says Zultner. “By increasing the electronic capabilities and the enjoyment of the toys, manufacturers are making them more difficult to recycle. As long as the manufacturers don’t add too many different polymers to the toys of the future, I think we will still be able to separate and recycle materials.”