You know those crinkly snack bags? The ones made of foil or other materials that aren't easily recyclable? Now someone wants them. Tom Szaky and Trenton, N.J.-based TerraCycle have made a successful business out of taking things no one else wants and turning them into cool products that people will buy. Recently, Szaky announced that Hamilton Township, just outside Trenton, had been selected for a national pilot project to collect chip bags. Through an arrangement with Frito-Lay, TerraCycle already collects 0.05 percent — not much, true — of chip bags through its Brigade collection programs, which offers student groups and other organizations money for sending in loads of chip bags that otherwise would be discarded. Now, however, through its new "Chip in for Change" pilot, TerraCycle wants to increase the amount collected to at least 10 percent — closer to the average recycling rate of plastic bottles. To do that during the trial, which began July 11 and runs through Oct. 31, Hamilton Township will need to collect 114,930 chip bags (38,310 per month), according to TerraCycle. For every 50,000 chip bags collected, $250 will be donated to local charities or nonprofits.

• Trenton-based recycling company Terracycle has launched a new campaign aimed at increasing the rate of recycling for chip bags, and they’re using Hamilton Township as the test case to see if the program can be a success applied to a larger scale.
• So I challenged my team at TerraCycle with a simple, but monumental question. Can we grow the recycling rate of chip bags to that of municipally recycled plastic bottles? It took 40 years to get to the 25% recycling rate of plastic bottles, but is it possible for a small private company to grow recycling rates to the same level in less than 4 years?
• For the challenge, TerraCycle launched a new program called “Chip in for Change,” with the ambitious goal of getting a local township here in NJ up to 30% recycling of chip bags within 4 months. This program was launched on July 11, 2012 in Hamilton, New Jersey and will run through October. With success, Hamilton will serve as a pilot for nationwide scale-up opportunities.