Holt Elementary School is one of the only schools in the Eugene School District that participates in a program put on by Terra Cycle, a New Jersey based company that turns previously non-recyclable items such as chip bags, candy wrappers, juice pouches and yogurt containers into new products that range from park benches to backpacks to pencil cases, all thanks to Chastain. “I’ve been recycling for almost 40 years, because I feel that it is something I can do to help save the environment,” say Chastain. “It just seemed like a wise thing for me to do.” This program first caught Chastain’s eye in 2009 when she read a label on her son’s juice pouch box saying, “Earn money for your school.” After that, she started having the children in her son’s class collect juice pouches and she would then personally wash them and send them into Terra Cycle. Terra Cycle, which was started back 2001, has grown tremendously as a company and in 2012 it celebrated its 9th straight year of growing revenue.  The company recently expanded and created a system where schools can send in recycled items that can then be redeemed for points that benefit different charities that provide clean drinking water in Africa, meals to homeless Americans, or school supplies to homeless students.

Since many of these items cannot be recycled in your state and need to be mailed to the recycler, diehard recyclers may be faced with the moral dilemma of whether it’s worth the expense and resulting carbon emissions to ship an item off for recycling. Rather than delve into complex algorithms to solve this dilemma, I recommend reserving items like bras, medals, and trophies for recycling drives or bulk shipping. However, if you’re looking to replace a broken vacuum cleaner or worn out yoga mat, then some recyclers will offer you a discount on a new one. For you Clark Griswolds out there, you can upgrade your old incandescent Christmas lights for a discount on energy-saving LED lights. Sometimes recycling doesn’t just help the environment and your pocketbook. Just as thrift stores provide the opportunity for items to be reused while benefitting others, eyeglasses can be donated through most eyeglass retailers and through your local Lions Club for people in need. Similarly, if you’re in the mood for a new hairdo, your ponytail can be donated to a child with long-term or permanent medical hair loss. A great program for schools and community groups to raise funds while recycling difficult items such as chip bags and drink pouches is TerraCycle. They take these items and either recycle or upcycle them into new products that can be purchased at many large retailers. Terracycle has even incorporated their unique approach to recycling into their office design:  

The new drinks have 100% vitamin C, only has 40 calories per pouch and still has half the sugar than the leading kids’ drinks. I love the new packaging that is so easy to travel with and has really great kid-friendly messaging which includes sustainable farming, organics and TerraCycle partnership. What is TerraCycle? A program that upcycles and recycles traditionally non-recycable waste (including drink pouches, chip bags, tooth brushes and many more) into a large variety of consumer products.  See what I mean? Honest Tea is definitely standing behind their message for social responsibility and commitment to great products for a brighter future.

By Starla Pointer Of the News-Register

Instead of tossing empty juice pouches and granola bar wrappers into the trash, Columbus Elementary School students are recycling them by sending them to a company that uses them to make new products. The project is good for the environment, good for the instructional program and good for the school, said CB Mason of the Columbus PTA. She collects the recycled packages and prepares them for shipping to Terracycle, the remanufacturing company. In return, Terracycle offers cash the school can use for educational activities or equipment, or points the school can exchange for the company’s products. This year, she said, Columbus is using points to “buy” pencil bags that will serve as prizes for winners of the jog-a-thon. Grandhaven Elementary School had been involved in Terracycle recycling projects in the past. Mason learned about that school’s successes and brought the idea to Columbus two years ago. At first, Columbus students recycled only aluminum and plastic juice pouches. It has collected more than 13,000 so far, picking them up at a clip of about 125 a week. Last year, an after-school recycling club added granola and energy bar wrappers. This year, it’s expanded to other food packaging —chip bags, salty snack bags, cheese packaging, tortilla and tortilla chip bags, and tubs and lids that held cream cheese, yogurt, butter and other dairy products. In addition, students also can recycle mechanical pencils, pens, markers, Elmer’s glue packages, plastic tape dispensers and tape cores. Used batteries are being collected separately. PTA members will take them to local hazardous waste collection events. Teachers and staff members taught their students about the recycling project, explaining what could be recycled and how to do it. Students drop items into marked bins in the cafeteria, often encouraging one another to recycle rather than throwing things away. “My fourth-grader, Isaac, will see a friend with a package and tell him he can put it in the Terracycle box. A lot of kids do that,” Mason said. The PTA volunteer collects the recyclables on Fridays, spending about 30 minutes a week on the project. “It’s cumbersome to some extent, but I remind myself every week that we’re taking things out of the waste stream and earning a little money for the school. “And usually, several kids from Kids on the Block want to help,” she said. “The kids are pretty excited.” More information about the recycled materials company can be found at www.terracycle.com.

Dana Krueger, a special education teacher at Northview's Highlands Middle School leads a Green Team at the school, dedicated to mammoth recycling efforts. The recycling efforts have garnered awards for the school and money from a recycling company. Through the efforts of a Green Team, recycling has become part of the school culture and daily efforts at Northview’s Highlands Middle School. The Green Team was launched in March 2011 and now because of the recycling club’s efforts the school recycles everything from candy and gum wrappers, chip bags, drink pouches to glue sticks, toothbrushes, shoes, and electronics. Recycling has been a long-time passion for Dana Krueger, a special education teacher at Highlands Middle School who leads the Green Team recycling club that meets weekly after school. She stresses to students, staff, and parents that just making one change can “make a huge difference.” Dan Duba, principal at Highlands Middle School, said the efforts of Krueger and the recycling team have lead to community building. “I believe it’s a life skill and something that is good for everyone,” said Duba, noting Krueger’s passion for the environment has spread throughout the school. Krueger and her Green Team have taken over an empty classroom where recyclable items are gathered and sorted. Recycled items initially have come from the school but now students and parents bring items from home. Krueger said most of the recycled items are boxed and sent to TerraCycle in New Jersey who pays the school. Although the focus is on recycling and reducing waste, last year the program made $1,200 that will be used for the recycling club and buying things for the school. The school now taps and stacks the lunch trays that are rinsed off and recycled through Dart Container, a company that retrieves about 20,000 trays a year. Every two weeks all the plastics go to Chef Container and paper is routinely recycled through the Paper Gator. Highlands Middle School was rewarded with a bench and birdhouse made of recycled plastic bags after winning a national competition from Virginia-based Trex Company last year. “We sent in nineteen, 44-gallon bags full of those plastic bags,” Krueger said. With a grant from the Northview Education Foundation, the Green Team sponsored a toothbrush swap. Students bringing in toothbrushes to recycle were given a brand new one to take home. Another foundation grant funded a Vermicomposting system with a worm factory that will demonstrate to students how food waste is composted.

My husband looked over at me the other day and said, “Two years ago if you’d told me I’d be washing trash, I would have called you crazy.” Ah, but look at the crazies now. I discovered TerraCycle while writing this blog. When I first started posting over a year ago, I complained about how frustrating it was finding food without the packaging. An intern at TerraCycle wrote back saying he might have the answer to our question. And that we didn’t even have to wash the trash, just send it in. Well, not quite. I’d still rather throw out zero waste than recycle it. But if I hit a weak moment and break down and buy the darn M&M’s (oh no! NOT the sugar!) or a bag of chips, I can at least know it’s being up-cycled and not completely wasted. I watched a video on what TerraCycle does with the products we send them and must say, it was impressive that someone took the time not only to think this up, but actually do something about it. And of course, it was a kid who started it. A 19-year-old kid with an idea. Our future is not lost! I do find it frustrating that maybe the company isn’t big enough to receive all the recycling they wish. If I wanted to send in my items without paying the shipping myself or receive any points to reward myself for my time and effort, I had to be placed on a waiting list. I waited over a year and finally gave up, sending in almost two year’s worth of candy and chip bags (which really wasn’t that much as we’re only two people and not a huge company) to my niece’s school where they collect both chip bags and candy wrappers for TerraCycle. Her science teacher was thrilled. So, I suppose there is good and bad in everything. Hurry up and wait. Hey, at least someone is DOING something and not just talking. And I can give in now to a bag of sugar-filled, evil M&M’s every once in a while—without the guilt. Because life is short, damn it. And I really like M&M’s. I shouldn’t have to give up everything! I bet a kid you knows goes to a school who might just be interested in TerraCycle, if they aren’t doing it already. Just an idea to pass on. To a teacher. A friend. A neighborhood kid…

Hayhurst Elementary in Southwest Portland has gone from using seven 30-gallon bags of waste each lunch period to just half a bag. What’s the school’s secret?   Hayhurst PTA sustainability chairwoman Kendall KIC, (who legally changed her name to all caps), says that back in November of 2009 she discovered a program online called TerraCycle and has since kept 9,000 juice pouches out of the trash.   Capri Sun and other juice pouches had been among a slew of items difficult for schools to recycle, so kids ended up just throwing them in the garbage. But TerraCycle provides Hayhurst’s sustainability “brigade” with prepaid labels to ship out hard-to-recycle items, such as drink pouches, candy wrappers, chip bags and flip-flops.   The New Jersey-based company makes money from recycling the products and shares its earnings by granting points for the brigade to earn cash for the school or a favorite charity.   “Over time, it’s slowly building so people realize that we’re doing this,” KIC says. “My goal is at least 5,000 juice pouches collected during this upcoming school year.”   She keeps them packed in a yard-debris bag in her garage, but recently a school custodian allowed her space in the Hayhurst boiler room, where the juice pouches can dry. Some money comes back to the PTA for funding school activities, but that’s not the emphasis for organizers.   “About $200 a school year is not really what it’s about for us; it’s more about the sustainability piece,” KIC says.   Apparently, the secret is getting out, as this will also be the third year of a TerraCycle program at Sojourner School in Milwaukie. “Sojo” is an alternative magnet school and, at about 186 students, the smallest elementary in North Clackamas School District. Known for a high number of volunteer hours parents put in, it turned out to be a perfect early adopter of a TerraCycle program.   Starting with juice pouches in the first year, the Sojo program added toothpaste tubes, flip-flops, glue sticks and tape rings last year. TerraCycle program coordinator and former PTA Vice President Polly Lugosi says the brigades have extended their reach to neighbors not usually involved with the school. They’ve taken to collecting from soccer games.   “I find that people don’t throw them away even when they’re not at school,” Lugosi says.   At a holiday assembly this year, Lugosi says students will get a chance to vote on charities to donate about $100 collected from the program.   TerraCycle spokeswoman Lauren Taylor says a lot of people find out about the programs through the packaging, such as by seeing the labels on Capri Sun juice boxes, and then they go to the website. “It’s very easy for people to sign up based on the waste stream they’re looking to collect,” Taylor says.   Nationally, TerraCycle says its programs have raised $4.5 million for charity, thanks to nearly 31 million people collecting trash.   All schools are eligible, Taylor says. A tax ID number is necessary so the money can go to charity. The revenue from recycling can go to any charity — even the National Rifle Association (we asked).   The growing list of Portland-area schools getting involved includes Menlo Park Elementary School, David Douglas Arthur Academy, Faithful Savior Ministries, Earl Boyles Elementary, Mount Scott Elementary, Oak Grove Elementary, John Wetten Elementary, Chief Joseph Elementary, Sauvie Island Academy, John Jacob Astor Elementary, Markham Elementary, Laurelhurst Elementary, Parklane Elementary, Lynch Meadows Elementary and Creative Science School.

Porter's is pleased to continue its partnership with TerraCycle, a company that collects and upcycles trash into new products. As a TerraCycle partner school, Porter's collects specified trash items, such as energy bar wrappers, chip bags, and juice pouches, to donate to TerraCycle, who upcycles the trash into useable items. Porter's participation in the program is spearheaded by the school's Earth Club, led by co-heads Kelsey Perkins '12 and Abbie Gantner '13 along with faculty advisors Ellie Lindenmayer and Jon Thomas. Founded in 2001, TerraCycle is one of the fastest-growing green companies in the world. TerraCycle creates national recycling systems for previously non-recyclable or hard-to-recycle waste, with the goal of eliminating the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that currently is sent to a landfill. For more information on Porter's environmental initiatives, please visit www.porters.org/green.

While writing a previous article on green dental care, I found out about a great company called TerraCycle, which offers a program to accept “non-recyclable or hard to recycle waste,” such as toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes. After looking at the website , I decided TerraCycle deserved an article of its own! Started by a young Princeton student, TerraCycle began as a small business that sold worm casting fertilizer in used soda bottles. TerraCycle started expanding its business by producing various products out of post-consumer waste, such as pencil cases out of used CapriSun drink pouches. This process, called upcycling, involves producing new, useful products out of waste materials and useless products that otherwise would go to the landfill. So, upcycling helps reduce landfill waste and reduces resource use. TerraCycle quickly grew into a global project with over 20 countries now participating in their upcycling efforts.

Another Successful Terracycle shipment from the HUB!  This shipment tacked up another 4670 points in Terracycle points.  There were 316 Candy wrappers, 1208 Chip bags, 1420 Energy bar wrappers and 101 yogurt cups mailed!  This was just the summer collection.   Keep up the collection efforts!  These points will benefit THON and the Educational Equity Scholarship Fund (yogurt cups).   Thanks to all who participate.nother Successful Terracycle shipment from the HUB!  This shipment tacked up another 4670 points in Terracycle points.  There were 316 Candy wrappers, 1208 Chip bags, 1420 Energy bar wrappers and 101 yogurt cups mailed!  This was just the summer collection.   Keep up the collection efforts!  These points will benefit THON and the Educational Equity Scholarship Fund (yogurt cups).   Thanks to all who participate.