In addition to its traditional recycling and composting projects, TerraCycle, founded in 2001, engages in a practice it calls “upcycling”, whereby trash isn’t entirely melted down but rather reused and remade into sellable new forms. One example: children’s backpacks that are clearly created out of used Capri Sun beverage packages.

Terracycle, a New Jersey company, partners with many manufacturers to recycle packaging. Collect participating products and ship them off. Groups like Colgate, Capri Sun, Clif Bar, Entenmann’s, Brita and Glad, to name a few are involved in this program.

Congrats to Cedar Ridge Elementary for placing second in the country in Capri Sun Recycling Contest through a company called TerraCycle.

TerraCycle is an innovative company that not only pays charitable groups to collect nonrecyclables, but then upcycles these materials to make functional items like a gift setcontaining Circuit Board Coasters, a Clipboard and Picture Frame ($20) to help prevent more than 3-million tons of electronic waste from landfills.04-20-16--Long Island Weekly(Print)

As Earth Day approaches, many of us ponder whether we’ll be leaving our planet in better shape than when we inherited it. After reading the disturbing fact that by the year 2050 more plastic bottles will occupy the ocean than fish, it doesn’t seem like we’re doing a particularly good job.

Tom Szaky, CEO and Founder of TerraCycle, Inc., talks about the costs of recycling and waste management, as well as his goal to recycle just about everything.

Don't throw out your empty baby food pouches and used mascara; upcycle it! So far, upcycling from Sustainable Westford has raised about $11,759.80 for Westford schools and has saved 6,649 pounds of trash from entering the waste stream, according to the Sustainable Westford website. Sustainable Westford's upcycle program can accept: foil drink pouches and their straws; energy and granola bar wrappers; chip bags; oral care products including toothbrushes and toothpaste containers (the heads of electrical toothbrushes cannot be accepted); and writing instruments excluding wooden pencils.

Increasingly, researchers are realizing that cigarettes are as much an environmental problem as they are a health issue. Walk along a beach or around a busy city and you step on a lot of cigarette butts, thrown carelessly to the ground. By one estimate, up to 6 trillion cigarette butts get flicked onto the ground and into the global environment every year. They’re one of the most common forms of the world’s litter, making up 25 to 50 percent of all trash collected from roads and streets.

D’Addario, the world’s largest maker of instrument strings and accessories, has been a pioneer in sustainability for decades – from environmentally responsible packaging to robust tree re-planting programs. The company is taking its environmental commitment even further in 2016 with the unveiling of Playback, the world’s first-ever industry-wide instrument string recycling program.

How do you get corporations to think about their footprint and have a positive impact on the environment in a way that still serves their own interest? Partner with them. The work that Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle, is doing in this space is innovative and provides new lenses to evaluate and think about collaborative models to do good better.