Teachers at Lostant Elementary School used to see a lot of used Capri Sun drink pouches get thrown away. Now the school earns two cents for every one of those pouches they collect and return to a company called TerraCycle, which makes affordable, eco-friendly products from packaging waste.
The school uses the program not only as a fundraising opportunity but as a way to educate and inspire students.
The recycling project started four months ago, when 14-year-old Alex Copado was reading the packaging of Capri Sun drinks, a lunch-time favorite of students.
Alex, a Perris resident who just finished his freshman year at Rancho Verde High School in Moreno Valley, had loved the drink since he was 10, but knew there were no recycling bins designed for containers, like there are for cans and bottles.
A Far Northside
school and two area churches earned money for their programs while keeping waste out of landfills.
Students in Kathrynn Hodson's class at Spring Mill Elementary and groups at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church on the Far Southside and St. John's Lutheran Church on the Southeastside collected non-recyclable packaging such as makeup tubes through a program called the Aveeno Beauty Brigade, said Sara Koncius, TerraCycle spokeswoman.
TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based
company, takes the items like the tubes, chip bags or even bicycle chain and turns them into products such as backpacks, pictures frames and makeup pouches.
The school and churches earned two cents for every tube collected. Any school group or nonprofit can sign up for the program, Koncius said.
Both churches also are participating in other fundraising collections such as the Capri Sun Drink Pouch Brigade and the Frito-Lay Chip Bag Brigade.
Terracycle <
http://www.myatlantamommy.com/2009/12/terracycle.html> is a fantastic organization which takes used wrappers and turns them into some super cool stuff! I am happy and proud to announce Terracycle recently invited me to join their Blogger Club! Yay! AND they have offered to do a cool Back to School giveaway for My Atlanta Mommy readers, which I will let you know about very soon!
Terracycle <
http://www.myatlantamommy.com/2009/12/terracycle.html> is a fantastic organization which takes used wrappers and turns them into some super cool stuff! They are always coming up with fun and cool ways to recycle, but they also have come up with a way (actually 6 ways) Moms can go green, reduce waste at home, AND raise money for their kids school and/or favourite charity.
In the second half of the show, Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle, joins John and Mike to talk about how his company is solving the problem of non-recyclable waste. In America alone, TerraCycle has 10.1 million people collecting waste — about 3 million pounds a day! — to convert into consumer products.
TerraCycle converts everything from organic waste to plastic juice pouches into like-new products, in turn creating a whole reuse market that previously did not exist.
“About 80% of the products we buy are not recyclable, and those are the ones we focus on creating solutions for,” Szaky says. He notes that TerraCycle has about 70,000 collection points — growing by about 500 a day — in countries around the world.
A large-scale drive at C. Richard Applegate School will ensure that almost 6,000 drink pouches never hit a landfill, thanks to a band of fifth-graders who wanted to help their community.
David Lundy, 11, and a group of classmates -- Jordan Cerio, 10; Kelly Preston, 11, and Ella Kemp, 11 -- recently organized a large drive in which students were encouraged to donate used Capri Sun, Kool-Aid and Honest Kids drink pouches.
The pouches would then be given to the "upcycling'' company Terra Cycle, which collects trash such as drink pouches, candy wrappers and even used writing instruments to make backpacks, laptop cases and other products. What's more, Terra Cycle pays for the waste material they take in -- for example, two cents for every drink pouch they receive.
We've blogged about TerraCycle before but they're continuing to make headlines. If you're unfamiliar with TerraCycle, they donate cash to charities in exchange for your cigarette butts, razors, expired pills, plastic food wrappers, etc, find new uses for them, and sell those products for a profit. See how they're doing all this while turning an enormous profit, after the jump.
TerraCycle already has their trash collecting and recycling operations in six countries and plans to launch in 11 more. TerraCycle is currently a $40 million company but owner Tom Szaky hopes they can become the "Google of garbage", according to an article in the Telegraph.
For Tom Szaky, it started with a dream, the environmentalist itch, and a little weed. Fast-forward to a decade later, and it’s clear that Szaky (silent ‘s’) has come a long way.
As a Princeton University freshman in 2001, Szarky was shocked at how much waste he saw on the Ivy League campus. Not just the lack of recycling opportunities, but also the waste of food in cafeterias and the overall loss of resources. That, combined with a fall break trip to Montreal where he learned about using worm compost to grow better pot, and an idea was born.
Szaky is now the founder of Terracycle <
http://www.terracycle.net> . The company “makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a wide range of different non-recyclable waste materials.”
Tom Szaky wants to be the rag-and-bone man to the world, collecting the rubbish no one else wants - cigarette butts, razors, expired pills and plastic food wrappers - and turning an enormous profit by finding new uses for it.
His US-based company TerraCycle already has rubbish collecting and recycling operations in six countries and expects to launch in 11 more (including Japan, Australia and Sweden) in the next year. He launched TerraCycle in Britain last September and in Ireland this month.
'We're just a $40 million company at the moment,' he says. But he plans to become the Google of garbage. 'A billion-dollar company doesn't seem that big? why not!'
