ONTARIO—Snake River Correctional Institution has joined other correctional institutions across the state in a sustainability effort that is aimed at recycling and raising money for local charities. In the Chip Bag Brigade, inmates collect corn and potato chip bags from their kitchen, housing units and vending machine areas and turn them in to a company called Terracycle, which takes used packaging materials and recycles them into new products such as photo frames, park benches and backpacks. “We accumulate one point per chip bag if we send a box of at least 14 pounds. Each point earns 1 cent toward a charity of our choice, and the SRCI Sustainability Group chose the Harvest House Missions in Ontario for our first recipient,” project leader Kailee Evans said. “We have had a very positive experience and have been able to donate over $300 to Harvest House Missions so far. We have also collected over 500 pounds of chip bags that would normally go in a landfill.” Terracycle allows Snake River Correctional Institution to print UPS shipping labels at no cost to ship the chip bags to the company. “The program not only benefits sustainability efforts, which is awesome, but it helps raise money for charity. Our donation goes to the Harvest House,” said Cathleen Shroyer, a public information specialist with Snake River Correctional Institution. “As with most community outreach programs we are involved in, a big part of why we do it is the spirit of giving back. I used to say it’s important to find avenues for inmates to give back to the community as a way to help rehabilitate them and teach them the importance of doing things for others.” Shroyer said the community outreach efforts had been fairly successful. The emphasis has started to turn giving back into something that the people at the prison do. “It’s become a regular part of our lives,” Shroyer said. The project is organized by staff members, and inmates are responsible for the collection and packaging the shipments. To date, the inmates have collected 43,724 chip bags for a cash value of $418.79. That means $419.79 that will be donated to Harvest House Missions. Shroyer said the program — and others like it — benefit prison inmates and staff alike. “A majority of our inmate population has surpassed the learning stage of why doing things for the community is important, and they are really more focused on taking action with that knowledge,” Shroyer said. “Our staff are equally motivated to do things which are beneficial to our surrounding communities. Understanding how much of a positive affect you can have in a given area, even with a small contribution, is well worth going the extra mile to help anywhere we can.” Zachary Chastaine is a news reporter at The Argus Observer. He can be reached at (541) 823-4815 or by emailing zachc@argusobserver.com. To comment on this story, go to www.argusobserver.com.

Morgan and her peers help to preserve the earth through the Fort Campbell, Ky., school’s new recycling program. Launched in September, Wassom has partnered with TerraCycle, an international upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products, according to terracycle.com.

TerraCycle has designated more than 40 waste collection groups or "brigades" in which to collect recyclables. Wassom's brigades include the Chip Bag Brigade, Lunch Kit Brigade, Personal Care and Beauty Brigade and the Candy Wrapper Brigade, among others.

Launched in September, Wassom has partnered with TerraCycle, an international upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products, according toterracycle.com.

Jenny Bruno’s fifth-graders at Oak Grove Primary School were challenged to reduce their carbon footprint after studying the human impact on the environment. Students wore crazy hair and hats to help raise nearly $500 to begin an upcycling or recycling program at Oak Grove Primary. Using the Web-based Terracycle program, which turns trash into other products, students set up an upcycling center in the school’s cafeteria and in hallways to help with the collection of items. Terracycle upcycles items such as lunch kits, chip bags, drink pouches and cereal bags. “Not only does this program help reduce our carbon footprint, the program in turn for the goods sends funds to the school,” Bruno said. The funds will be used to purchase new library books. “The students are very excited about reducing their carbon footprint and keeping these items out of our local landfills,” Bruno said. After a month of collection, the students collected 573 lunch kits, 1,216 chip bags, 1,835 drink pouches and eight cereal bags.

The G. Ray Bodley High School Environmental Club is about to undertake yet another world saving task, upcycling. Upcyling was an idea that was brought to the club by sophomore Cayla Weaver. The concept is an offshoot of the old saying, "one man's trash is another man's treasure."

 

The club will work with the company Terracycle to take Bodley's trash such as candy wrappers, juice boxes, and chip bags and make it into something useable like bags, benches, notebooks, and pencil cases. The best part of this arrangement, besides the obvious beneficial impacts to the environment, is that a portion of the profits earned from the resulting goods goes to a non-profit charity or school of the organizers choice.

The donations will be collected by the club and packaged and shipped back to the company to be upcycled into new goods. The products are divided into "brigades" based on their type. The brigades range from the obvious chip bags to the unexpected designer handbag brigade. All of the products created by the upcycled goods can be purchased on the TerraCycle website where customers can literally purchase a notebook made out of recycled chip bags for only 8.99 to take math notes in. And who knows, maybe that good karma will come in handy when working on homework and quizzes; it certainly can't hurt.

One group of students worked with Sarah Vorreiter, a resident assistant in Lincoln Avenue Residence Hall on a floor designated as a Sustainable Living and Learning Community whose students tend to care more about environmental issues. Vorreiter had already initiated a recycling program with TerraCycle, an organization that collects trash and transforms it into sellable products, but participation had been low to nonexistent. She wanted the group from Kuo's class to help her expand the program and encourage more students to participate by recycling the specific kinds of trash that the company accepts. "We saw that there was no pre-existing advertising or other visible prompts to encourage students to participate," said Nick Musso, one of the students in the group. In order to solve the problem, the team of students decorated the large receptacles in the common trash collection room. But they found that one of the biggest obstacles to recycling was that the students were reluctant to take their trash down the hall to that special receptacle. "We were able to get boxes free from the Lincoln Avenue Residence dining hall," Musso said. "We stapled a flyer about the program to the boxes and delivered one to each room on the floor. Having a box right in their room made it more convenient for them to participate." The group also put flyers and collection bins in the women's shower areas, making it convenient for them to recycle empty shampoo and other beauty care product containers. "The students did a good job of thinking through where and how the residents use the products," Kuo said. "Putting the recycling bins in locations that are convenient made it easy for people to participate." The team also generated enthusiasm for the program with a pseudo competition. They set goals for the number of chip bags, dairy and beauty product containers, and candy wrappers the floor would collect in a three-week period of time and displayed colorful posters in the dorm to track the progress. The program resulted in 42 times more recycling of chip bags and 36 times more beauty care products than was recorded by Vorreiter from the months before.

EPHRATAH - Two local Scouts from the Sir William Johnson Boy Scout District have been selected to participate in the 2015 World Scout Jamboree. The pair - 12-year-old Dallis Green and 11-year-old Makayla Gray - are holding a recycling drive to raise the money needed to attend. The World Scout Jamboree will be held in Kirara-hama, Yamaguchi City, Japan, from July 28 to Aug. 8, 2015. The trip will cost the girls $4,000 each, Makayla's mother, Sara Gray, said. While at the event, the girls will meet over 30,000 other Scouts from around the world from over 40 other countries. Green and Gray are in a new pilot program through the Junior Explorer Club Post 2335, which is under Boy Scouts of America and is open to boys and girls in sixth to eighth grade, Sara Gray said. Makayla Gray said she became interested in the World Scout Jamboree after her brother Brent attended the event in Sweden in 2011. "After my brother went to Sweden, he was talking about it and I really wanted to see the things they do in other countries and see the culture," Makayla Gray said. "There are a whole bunch of activities that happen during the Jamboree too, like scuba diving." The two Scouts were looking for ways to generate money for the trip and found two companies that will provide cash for certain recycled items. "We wanted to make the world a better place because waste like this normally goes in the ground," Makayla Gray said. "We wanted to see the things we could recycle to not have so much stuff in the dirt." One of the companies is TerraCycle, which provides free waste collection programs for hard-to-recycle materials that will then be turned into affordable green products. The other company is CC Cash USA, which is in the business of recycling cell phones, toner cartridges, inkjets, laptops and iPods. The items the girls will be collecting to raise money for the trip include inkjet and toner cartridges, potato chip bags, candy wrappers and electronics such as laptops and cell phones. Sara Gray said the girls started the fundraiser a month ago and have earned about $300. She said it took a little while to spread the word of what they were doing, but now they are seeing a steady number of contributions. She said the money per item varies but usually ranges between 2 cents and $25, depending on what is being recycled. If anyone would like to support their effort, the girls can drop off a recycling box at any location and come to pick up these items at regularly scheduled times, Sara Gray said. A donation also can be made by contacting Jessie Viteo at 568-5697 or calling Bruce or Sara Gray at 762-7383 for a pickup. Any checks can be made payable to Sara Gray. Scouts Gray and Green also have a Facebook account where they will post updates and interesting information as they go along at www.facebook.com/recyclingqueensworldscoutjamboree. "It is still three years away, but I am excited and we really want to go," Makayla Gray said.

Old or broken drinking glasses. Burned-out incandescent light bulbs. Empty prescription-medicine vials. These are on an increasingly shortlist of common waste items that we can't put in our residential curbside recycling bin.   They are the unrecyclables.   That sounds almost criminal, doesn't it? Recycling has become so ingrained here in the Seattle area that we now expect to be able to recycle everything. When we can't recycle something, we want to know why.   Q: How about plastic or foil candy wrappers and chip bags? A: No municipal residential-recycling programs accept these. Some Seattle-area schools and nonprofits collect candy and snack packaging through programs offered by New Jersey-based TerraCycle, a for-profit company. TerraCycle funds these recycling programs through promotional partnerships with brands such as M&M's. Recyclability isn't everything. Reducing and reusing trumps recycling. But recycling certainly beats landfilling, and if a product or packaging is only "technically" recyclable, that doesn't help consumers. We're most likely to recycle when it's as easy as throwing something away.

This is about the time your favorite retailers – and loved ones – start dropping hints about shopping for the holidays so I figured I’d enter the fray with my list of The Top 15 Most Fabulous and Green Products of 2012. Hear why I think these items are fabulous and green, see pictures on my website and add these items to your list. And don’t worry about giving me credit when the giftee says “Ohhh, how thoughtful; this is perfect.” Noone has to know you heard it from me  A few hints to get your shopping juices flowing: 1. Nostalgic gift for the Baby Boomer on your list 2. Something for the person who’s been there/done that! 3. Perfect for the entrepreneur/systems person/orchestrator of world peace