The center had, for three years, participated in the Candy Wrapper Brigade, a TerraCycle program that provided free waste collection for hard-to-recycle materials. The program also awarded points, redeemable for charitable giving, for each wrapper collected and covered the cost of shipping the wrappers to be recycled.

Morgan and her peers help to preserve the earth through the Fort Campbell, Ky., school’s new recycling program. Launched in September, Wassom has partnered with TerraCycle, an international upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products, according to terracycle.com.

TerraCycle has designated more than 40 waste collection groups or "brigades" in which to collect recyclables. Wassom's brigades include the Chip Bag Brigade, Lunch Kit Brigade, Personal Care and Beauty Brigade and the Candy Wrapper Brigade, among others.

Launched in September, Wassom has partnered with TerraCycle, an international upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products, according toterracycle.com.

The G. Ray Bodley High School Environmental Club is about to undertake yet another world saving task, upcycling. Upcyling was an idea that was brought to the club by sophomore Cayla Weaver. The concept is an offshoot of the old saying, "one man's trash is another man's treasure."

 

The club will work with the company Terracycle to take Bodley's trash such as candy wrappers, juice boxes, and chip bags and make it into something useable like bags, benches, notebooks, and pencil cases. The best part of this arrangement, besides the obvious beneficial impacts to the environment, is that a portion of the profits earned from the resulting goods goes to a non-profit charity or school of the organizers choice.

The donations will be collected by the club and packaged and shipped back to the company to be upcycled into new goods. The products are divided into "brigades" based on their type. The brigades range from the obvious chip bags to the unexpected designer handbag brigade. All of the products created by the upcycled goods can be purchased on the TerraCycle website where customers can literally purchase a notebook made out of recycled chip bags for only 8.99 to take math notes in. And who knows, maybe that good karma will come in handy when working on homework and quizzes; it certainly can't hurt.

Solve and Benefit

TerraCycle’s team of scientists and designers have found ways to recycle and upcycle the waste we collect into cool new products. When we upcycle a piece of waste we leverage both the material it is made from and the original shape of the waste. When we recycle we transform the collected waste into new products through a variety of processes like injection molding. Best of all, when you're done with a TerraCycle product you can put it back in the original Brigade collection program and get credit for the waste a second time. One Brigade focuses on collecting candy wrappers. Participating in a TerraCycle Brigade is totally free. There are no signup or participation fees, and the shipping is covered by the program. Once you have joined the Candy Wrapper Brigade®, simply follow the steps below to receive your TerraCycle points:

Tom Szaky collects the most disgusting things. Yucky yogurt containers. Sticky candy wrappers. Old flip-flops. Now, he and his Trenton, N.J., company, TerraCycle, are onto a new one: cigarette butts, the most common litter items on the planet. So bring ‘em on. Let neither stinkiness nor sogginess nor other manner of nastiness be a barrier. Once in hand, the company will “sanitize” and sort the butts, sending the paper and tobacco to a specialty tobacco composter. The filters will be melted and re-formed into pellets, eventually to end up as two different but butt-worthy items — ashtrays and park benches. For every 1,000 butts sent in by a TerraCycle member (find out more atwww.terracycle.com), a dollar will go to the national anti-littering nonprofit, Keep America Beautiful. Szaky said the new butt program “will help to promote our belief that everything can and should be recycled.” It’s part of his plan to “eliminate the idea of waste.” Targeting butts should be easy. They’re everywhere. A 2009 Keep America Beautiful study found that 65 percent of cigarette butts wind up as litter. In a quarter-century of beach cleanups, volunteers for the Ocean Conservancy have picked up more than 52 million butts — the most pervasive item they find. Many beaches now limit smoking to designated areas. Campuses fed up with spending thousands of dollars picking up the things have considered bans. Still the butts come. They are more than unsightly. Peer-reviewed studies have detailed how metals leach from smoked cigarettes. And how chemicals in the butts are harmful to fish, which is relevant because many butts wind up in waterways. Even when butts are picked up — or not littered to begin with — they add to the waste stream piling up in our landfills. Keep America Beautiful has actually studied butt locales. Most (85 percent) wind up on the open ground, followed by bushes or shrubbery, then around — not in — trash receptacles. The final 15 percent get stubbed out in planters.

EPHRATAH - Two local Scouts from the Sir William Johnson Boy Scout District have been selected to participate in the 2015 World Scout Jamboree. The pair - 12-year-old Dallis Green and 11-year-old Makayla Gray - are holding a recycling drive to raise the money needed to attend. The World Scout Jamboree will be held in Kirara-hama, Yamaguchi City, Japan, from July 28 to Aug. 8, 2015. The trip will cost the girls $4,000 each, Makayla's mother, Sara Gray, said. While at the event, the girls will meet over 30,000 other Scouts from around the world from over 40 other countries. Green and Gray are in a new pilot program through the Junior Explorer Club Post 2335, which is under Boy Scouts of America and is open to boys and girls in sixth to eighth grade, Sara Gray said. Makayla Gray said she became interested in the World Scout Jamboree after her brother Brent attended the event in Sweden in 2011. "After my brother went to Sweden, he was talking about it and I really wanted to see the things they do in other countries and see the culture," Makayla Gray said. "There are a whole bunch of activities that happen during the Jamboree too, like scuba diving." The two Scouts were looking for ways to generate money for the trip and found two companies that will provide cash for certain recycled items. "We wanted to make the world a better place because waste like this normally goes in the ground," Makayla Gray said. "We wanted to see the things we could recycle to not have so much stuff in the dirt." One of the companies is TerraCycle, which provides free waste collection programs for hard-to-recycle materials that will then be turned into affordable green products. The other company is CC Cash USA, which is in the business of recycling cell phones, toner cartridges, inkjets, laptops and iPods. The items the girls will be collecting to raise money for the trip include inkjet and toner cartridges, potato chip bags, candy wrappers and electronics such as laptops and cell phones. Sara Gray said the girls started the fundraiser a month ago and have earned about $300. She said it took a little while to spread the word of what they were doing, but now they are seeing a steady number of contributions. She said the money per item varies but usually ranges between 2 cents and $25, depending on what is being recycled. If anyone would like to support their effort, the girls can drop off a recycling box at any location and come to pick up these items at regularly scheduled times, Sara Gray said. A donation also can be made by contacting Jessie Viteo at 568-5697 or calling Bruce or Sara Gray at 762-7383 for a pickup. Any checks can be made payable to Sara Gray. Scouts Gray and Green also have a Facebook account where they will post updates and interesting information as they go along at www.facebook.com/recyclingqueensworldscoutjamboree. "It is still three years away, but I am excited and we really want to go," Makayla Gray said.

  The university's environmental club and Residence Hall Association partnered with Terracycle to bring a new recycling contest to campus.  

Halloween is here, bringing lots of tricks and treats. Each of those tasty treats come nicely wrapped in what will soon become trash. However, there may be a better place for all of those wrappers besides the garbage. TerraCycle is a web-based recycling service with the goal to eliminate waste. Their specialty is creating collection and solution systems for anything that must be sent to a landfill. TerraCycle does this by having teams or groups sign up for a specific program, called the brigades, and start sending them the waste. Each brigade is built on collecting a specific type of item in bulk. The materials are up-cycled into household and office items, and distributed to major retailers including Walmart and Whole Foods.   M&M’S has teamed up with TerraCycle to form the M&M’S Candy Wrapper Brigade, to collect and give candy wrappers a second life. Not only will more trash be kept out of landfills, but participants will also be helping a school or charity of their choice. TerraCycle will reward participants two TerraCycle points per candy wrapper, and each TerraCycle point is worth 1 cent that will be donated to the school or charity selected when participants register. Registration with TerraCycle is free. Just collect enough individual candy wrappers, large candy bags and multi-pack candy bags to fill up a shipping box or bag. Download a pre-paid shipping label from TerraCycle’s website and drop off the box at the nearest UPS location.