With the wide variety of individual-size packaging for food products, creating a portable lunch that will please youngsters’ tastebuds is easier than ever. However, it also causes more waste, which leads to fuller wastebaskets, and eventually, fuller landfills. That’s where the program TerraCycle comes in. The company, headquartered in New Jersey, collects difficult-to-recycle food packaging and turns it into extra money for schools. Three area schools currently are participating in this program: Bad Axe Elementary, Owendale-Gagetown Area Schools and Our Lady of Lake Huron Catholic School in Harbor Beach.

GENESEE COUNTY, Michigan — Some schools are finding cash in an unlikely place: Students’ lunch boxes. A handful of Genesee County schools have supplemented in-school recycling efforts by teaming up with TerraCycle, a New Jersey company that pays them for reusable and recyclable materials like empty juice pouches and potato chip bags.

The Bluffton Middle School is accepting certain trash for its upcycle program, a recycling-like initiative and fundraiser that earned the school more than $1,750 last year and about $700 so far this year. Unlike traditional recycling, upcycling, a term first created in 1994, does not break down products to incorporate them into other materials. Instead, upcycling is designed to essentially change the used product into a new product without breaking it down. Consider these examples from the TerraCycle website. homework folder lunchbox backpack stereo clip board

As students headed back to class this fall in dozens of area schools, they were reminded to think twice before dumping the remains of their school lunch in the trash. The schools- more than 50 of them in Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin Counties- are partnering with TerraCycle, a national "upcycling" and recycling company which comes up with creative ways to reuse non-recyclable or hard to recycle waste.

Atlanta (CNN) -- They say one man's trash is another man's treasure and for Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle, that couldn't be more true. His New Jersey-based company is helping millions of people wise-up to waste recycling. But is was a wacky idea that got 29-year-old Szaky started. "My friends and I were trying to grow some plants and realized worm poop was one of the best fertilizers to feed them," Szaky said, "...and that suddenly started getting me to thinking differently about waste."

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TerraCycle turns non-recyclable plastic waste into recyclable products. Natalie Allen reports.

Terracycle is a company that collects and "upcycles" different kinds of waste packaging and turns that waste into new consumer products. Repurposed products include pencil cases made from Oreo cookie wrappers, kites from Skittles packages, backpacks from Capri Sun drinks pouches and natural plant fertilizer made from worm excrement that is packaged in empty soda bottles. These upcycled products are available for sale in several large national chain stores including Home Depot, Walmart and Wholefoods Markets. So far, Terracycle has collected over 1.5 billion tons of waste. In Lays potato chip packets alone, over two million tons of waste has been diverted from landfills.