Girl Scout Troop 1126 helped reduce waste at Oak Meadow Elementary School in El Dorado Hills, all while raising money for school supplies for homeless children. The troop of fifth-grade girls recently completed a year-long Journey program exploring electricity and energy savings. The troop chose to participate in the TerraCycle program as its final project. TerraCycle helps eliminate waste by creating national recycling systems for previously non-recyclable or hard-to-recycle waste. Troop 1126 collected juice pouches, which go to TerraCycle to be recycled into various products from tote bags and pencil cases to plastic lumber and pavers. The troop will redeem TerraCycle points, valued at one cent per point, to be used for their charitable gift supporting school supplies for homeless children. The troop members described their journey and final project as “awesome, fun, exciting, amazing and cool.” “We are really proud of what we’ve done,” said Madelyn Minami of their efforts to help clean up the environment and support children with school supplies. “We really wanted to help kids our age,” said Anna Slojkowski. As part of their final project the girls publicized their effort on campus, collect juice pouches each day following the lunch periods, weighed the pouches and packaged them up to send to TerraCycle. Troop 1126 members hope to continue this effort once they leave Oak Meadow for middle school, by handing off the project to another younger troop on the campus.