FARMINGTON — The plastic No. 6 Solo cup that holds an icy cold beverage this summer can become a 10-cent donation to the United Way of the Tri-Valley Area.
Through a special summer promotion by TerraCycle's UpCycle recycling program, the local United Way gets donations for each cup. It has already received $62.60 for its first shipment of 626 Solo cups, Lisa Laflin, executive director, said.
Normally the cups might bring a cent or two but through August, they are worth 10 cents, she said.
When Sarah Martin visited the United Way looking for ways to give back to the community, conversations led to ways to support the organization, Laflin said. Martin is also a member of the Sustainable Coalition at the University of Maine at Farmington.
After talking with Laflin and meeting with the coalition, Martin volunteered to organize the recycling program and named the United Way as the beneficiary, Laflin said.
Also featured on the FOX affiliate in Rochester, NY., for recycling efforts.
At the Seneca Park Zoo, the focus is on the animals, making sure they have sustainable environments.
Tina Crandall-Gommel, the Zoo's Conservation Education Coordinator says, "recycling is the most important thing you can do. It effects most of our local animals and then our recycling efforts here also affect ocean animals."
The staff at the zoo wants to make sure their environment and ours are healthy ones. That's why a lot of different green efforts are underway.
"We collect all sorts of recycling that can't make it into your blue bin at home. Things like batteries fluorescent light bulbs cfl's, items for terra cycle like capri suns, dorito bags, other types of chips and cookies," says Crandall-Grommel.
Zoo visitors are invited to bring items like those to the "green" gazebo for recycling. They also hold recycle rallies several times a year to collect household items and e-waste.
The Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester was featured on the local news for its recycling efforts.
Melanie Ziomek has always been an avid recycler and is so adamant about it her sister jokingly calls her “super recycling nerd.”
“I told her I was going to make her a recycling nerd cape,” said her sister, Tammy Kozicki.
Ziomek recycles everything she can at Normal’s drop boxes, but was concerned about all the products that can’t be recycled.
“I realized how many ink cartridges my church (Word of Faith) and the company I work for (Central Illinois Grain Inspection) were going through,” Ziomek said.
She started collecting them in hopes of finding an outlet — and she finally did last fall.
It’s called Terracycle, a Trenton, N.J., company founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, someone equally passionate about finding uses for items that can’t be recycled.
Green Kids: This is the first in an ongoing series about efforts by area students to live greener lives.
Some environmentally savvy students in Memphis-area public and private schools are happily helping to turn their trash into treasure.
Their efforts at recycling are in conjunction with a company that makes plastic household products for sale. The students are participating in a "drink-pouch brigade" recycling effort through TerraCycle (terracycle.net). The students collect the pouches and send them to TerraCycle, which converts them into usable materials.
"(Recycling) is part of their culture now," said principal Bridget Martin of Sacred Heart School in Southaven, one of the participating schools.
"Our seventh- and eighth-graders recently had a guest speaker for theology who brought them snacks and soft drinks, and at the end they asked me where the bins for the trash were. They knew not to throw it in the regular trash."
The 360 students of Sacred Heart, which belongs to the Catholic Diocese of Jackson, Miss., have been involved with TerraCycle since February 2011, when parent Michelle Stamm and others signed the school up.
Green Kids: This is the first in an ongoing series about efforts by area students to live greener lives.
Some environmentally savvy students in Memphis-area public and private schools are happily helping to turn their trash into treasure.
Their efforts at recycling are in conjunction with a company that makes plastic household products for sale. The students are participating in a "drink-pouch brigade" recycling effort through TerraCycle (terracycle.net). The students collect the pouches and send them to TerraCycle, which converts them into usable materials.
"(Recycling) is part of their culture now," said principal Bridget Martin of Sacred Heart School in Southaven, one of the participating schools.
Seventh-grader Diamond Lacy, 13, and her 12-year-old sister, Crystal Lacy, who is in the sixth grade, said they decided to begin a campaign to collect and recycle used Capri Sun juice pouches after seeing a program for doing so advertised on the back of the drink’s packaging.
The Terra Stone Plant Caddy is made from drink pouches recycled into TerraCycle plastic. The caddy can be found in Target stores.
The saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. For TerraCycle, an upcycling and recycling company in Trenton, N.J., trash from schools in Knoxville and surrounding areas has become its treasure.
Items that are traditionally non-recyclable — such as Frito-Lay chip bags, Capri Sun drink pouches, MOM Brands cereal bags and Colgate oral care products — are collected to make products sold in stores such as Target.
The company recycles — or upcycles — trash into backpacks, tote bags, pencil cases, notebooks, messenger bags, and binders as well as watering cans and plant caddies.
The schools and community groups around the country who send their trash to TerraCycle don't do so without reward. The items collected accumulate points which can be converted to cash or gifts.
The challenges of a waste-recycling business.
This is getting a little embarrassing. Twice now I have written about a new program that I think is going to allow us to dramatically expand our recycling efforts. Both times — when I first mentioned the program eight months ago and when I wrote about it again almost two months ago — I thought we were just a few weeks from introducing the program. Both times I was wrong. We have now determined that we are about six months away.
The goal of our new program — we’re calling it “W.O.W.” or “World of Waste” — is to forge a direct link with our collectors, allowing us to recycle even more streams of waste. For example, today we collect about 2.5 percent of all of the drink pouches in America through a program that is sponsored by Capri Sun and Honest Tea and free to all participants. On the other hand, we have not yet been able to secure a sponsor to recycle used batteries. W.O.W. will allow us to collect batteries and a host of other waste streams. But in these cases, the costs will be paid by consumers, at least until we find sponsors.
So what happened? Why the delays?
