TerraCycle does some great things with recycled chip bags and drink pouches. In fact, you can get back to school supplies that are made out of your favorite food or drink product. This is a great way to keep the waste out of our landfills. The Capri Sun Pencil Pouch is made out of recycled Capri Sun pouches sewn together to form a zippered pencil pouch to hold all of your pencils in for school. The Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili Messenger Bag is made out bag wrappers and is great to put school books in or homework. The strap is adjustable and the bag  is lightweight. There are a variety of other recycled products to choose from. Head on over to TerraCycle to view more products.

The Swigert Daisies have started a Terracycle program in our cafeteria.  If you are unfamiliar with Terracycle, check the out here: www.terracycle.com.  Terracycle reduces waste by recycling many items that are not traditionally able to be recycled.

We’ve all heard it – “save the planet”, “go green”, “reduce, reuse, recycle.”  Here’s an easy way to do just that and potentially earn money for your group or charity through TerraCycle.

TerraCycle makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a wide range of different non-recyclable waste materials. Capri Sun – Honest Kids juice pouches can be recycled by Terracycle as can Candy Wrappers, Starbucks Coffee bags, Zip Loc Bags, pens, Cookie Wrappers, Colgate toothpaste, and more. Yes this is more involved, so try to get your local community or school involved.

LONG BEACH - It's the end of lunchtime at Longfellow Elementary School and students are lining up behind purple recycling bins to sort their trash. The bins are divided into six categories: energy bar wrappers, chip bags, plastic bags, city recycling, juice pouches and cookie wrappers. "I like that we recycle in our school because it's good for the planet," said 6-year-old Jenna Jacob, as she recycled her cookie wrapper. For students at Longfellow Elementary at 3800 Olive Ave. in North Long Beach, recycling is more than a lunchtime activity; it's a way of life, said Principal Laurie Murrin. "It's become part our campus culture," she said.

Every weekday at lunchtime, a curious scene plays out in elementary school cafeterias around the country. Students unpack their lunchboxes and hawk their dietary wares with a fervor that would make a Wall Street broker blush. A Fruit Roll-up for a Chewy bar here, a Yoo-Hoo for a Juicy Juice there. Chocolate bars are worth their weight in gold. At Dr. Joyanne D. Miller Elementary School, which Egg Harbor Township's fifth- and sixth-graders attend, students trade their empty Capri Sun pouches for something else: hope. Since January 2011, art teacher Wendy Montecalvo has been collecting the pouches and exchanging them for points as part of a program run by the Princeton-based company TerraCycle, which creates new products from waste. These points can be redeemed as a cash donation to a nonprofit organization or a school of the donor's choice. "I kind of fell into it," Montecalvo said. "I read in a magazine article on Riah's Rainbow, which is the charity that I give the money to, and it was through them that I started collecting the Capri Suns." To date, Montecalvo and the students at Miller have collected and exchanged 19,414 pouches, which translates to just less than $400 for the charity. Riah's Rainbow is named in memory of Mariah Jean Klein, who died in 2008 at age 4 after a battle with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, an aggressive brain tumor with no known cure. The charity's mission is one with which the art teacher sympathizes: The group uses donations to purchase coloring books for children in pediatric hospitals as an escape from their painful illnesses, just as they were for Riah. Montecalvo enlists the aid of a few Miller students in the project. When fifth-grader Emily Ross, who was in her class last year, said she missed the art teacher, Montecalvo gave her a job as part of the project. On Wednesdays and Fridays, Emily spends some of her lunch period with Montecalvo, cleaning and counting the juice boxes. Since she took on the job at the beginning of this school year, Emily said, she has become a Capri Sun enthusiast. "When my friends come over, they'll drink a juice box. I've got this little box at home they put them in," said Emily, 11, of Steelmanville. "I end up buying like two or three boxes a week because I drink them so much." Kevin Ditmire, a standout student in Montecalvo's art class, also volunteered to help as part of the project. Every day, he and a friend of his choice carry the day's haul from the cafeteria to Montecalvo's room. Despite his youth, the fifth-grader said he is conscious of the environment, which made the project an appealing one. "I've always been like a big fan of the environment," said Kevin, 10, of Cardiff. "I don't throw my trash on the ground or anything. I'm kind of eco-friendly, so this is one of the reasons I did it, too, because I like Earth." TerraCycle also runs exchange programs, known as brigades, for a number of other waste products, including candy wrappers, potato chip bags and soda cans. Montecalvo said she's open to expanding Miller's participation in the future, but right now her hands - and those of her little helpers - are full with the thousands of Capri Suns they're moving each month.

Stuart Walker was so disgusted by the smell of recycling bins during his first day as a member of Kemptown Elementary School's recycling club, he said he felt like putting a clothespin on his nose. Now the fifth-grader is signing up for a second stint with the club.

Capri Sun Rectangular Lunch Box ($15)

With the help of the TerraCycle program, Kelly Tilton has helped to make students understand the value of recycling. One of the things she has done has set up a bin at the school in which students can recycle their drink pouches. Kelly Tilton is a busy woman. Aside from being a mom and a business owner, the University Place woman is also doing her part to help the environment. And as she tells the story, she "just kind of stumbled upon" her contributions last year. Two of Tilton's four children  - Ben, 9, and Rachel, 6 - attend Sunset Primary, where their mom is a member of the PTA. She buys them the Honest Kids brand of fruit drinks that come in pouches. One day last year, she saw on one of the packages that the pouches could be recycled. In fact, through the TerraCycle program, one pouch could earn her 2 cents. (Click here to find out more about TerraCycle)

About: TerraCycle's purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste. We do this by creating national recycling systems for the previously non-recyclable. The process starts by offering collection programs (many of them free) to collect your waste and then convert the collected waste into a wide range of products and materials. With over 14 million people collecting waste in 11 countries together we have diverted billions of pieces of waste that are either upcycled or recycled into over 1,500 various products available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods Market. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that today ends up in our trash. The amount of trash that we generate is frightening. Recycling 'the usuals' is a good thing. TerraCycle goes beyond the usual and gives new life to waste that would fill up our landfills. There are a couple of ways that you can help. You can send them your waste, so that it can be upcycled or recycled. And you can purchase the fun products that they create from waste.