While I was reading Daniel Goleman’s book Ecological Intelligence, I was struck by the phrase cradle to cradle. I had heard cradle to grave before, meaning that most of the items we purchase end up in landfills, or essentially the “grave” to sit for endless amounts of time never really going away. The notion cradle to cradle means that everything we buy should in some way biodegrade and go back to nature or be recycled into a new product (Goleman, 2009). My guess is that many of us don’t spend a lot of time thinking about this concept or where our products go after we get rid of them. I was so struck by this notion that products could actually go from cradle to cradle that I started looking into this a little more. A few years ago the PTA at my school decided to start collecting Frito Lay bags for an organization called Terracycle (terracycle.net). Perfect timing. I hadn’t heard of Terracycle at this point, but was looking for a way to get away from the cradle to grave habit. When I looked at the website, I realized Terracycle has a handle on this cradle to cradle concept! They take common household garbage (Frito Lay bags, Mars candy wrappers, etc.) and make new products from it. Backpacks, purses, you name it! I was eager to get started with this school-wide project, so I introduced it to my 5th grade class and for an entire school year we collected Frito Lay bags. This snack seemed to be a class favorite, producing about 5-10 bags per day for snack time! While we never calculated the total amount of bags we collected, I’d have to easily guess it was over 800 bags. Imagine that from just one classroom! I don’t think too many of my colleagues shared my enthusiasm for this project, but I was still happy to do my share. If my calculations are correct, there are about 2 million classrooms in the USA! Wow, could there really be about a billion Frito Lay bags floating around schools in the US?