TerraCycle offers school supplies and other products that allows students to express their personalities while also caring for the environment. TerraCycle is an awesome company that has mastered the art of recycling and upcycling by using traditionally non-recyclable items to create a variety of affordable, eco-friendly products.

A new school year means new school supplies are needed. What if you could get your children the supplies they need and be able to go green this school year? Well it is possible with TerraCycle!

The Prize Pack Includes:

• 3 Star Wars Workbooks of Choice from Workman Publishing {$27}
• 2 Tops and 1 Bottom of Choice from French Toast {$30}
• TerraCycle Clif Kids Backpack {$17}
• 4 Rolls of Character Duck Tape – Random Selection {$24}

Keep your pens and pencils organized in this taller and wider version of the slender pencil-case. This case is made entirely from individual drink pouches that have been stitched together. Mix or match your favorite TerraCycle® products to create a school bag that will make you think you are in the snack aisle of the grocery store! * Specific wrapper is subject to variability Every year BILLIONS of drink pouches end up in dumpsters and landfills across America. TerraCycle®, Capri Sun® and Honest Kids® are working together to put an end to this tremendous loss of resources. As an eco-friendly innovator, TerraCycle® converts pre and post-consumer drink pouch waste material into cool new recycled products. You’ll be a grade A student in TerraCycle’s eyes by using this backpack made from recycled drink pouches. With adjustable straps and an outer zipper pouch this backpack is both fun and functional. Specific wrapper is subject to variability Every year BILLIONS of drink pouches end up in dumpsters and landfills across America. TerraCycle®, Capri Sun® and Honest Kids® are working together to put an end to this tremendous loss of resources. As an eco-friendly innovator, TerraCycle® converts pre and post-consumer drink pouch waste material into cool new upcycled products. My son loved this backpack and pencil-case. He can not wait to show it off at school. They are very well made. To learn more about these products click here

Terracycle is a unique company, they take products that would normally end up in the landfill and they turn them into usable products! Products include backpacks, notebooks, tote bags, binders, speakers, and even pencil cases! I think I love about this is, it’s such a great way to recycle non-recyclable products, and it shows kids that products you would normally throw in the trash can be made into usable products for not only around the house but also school. My daughter is the type of child that will reuse everything to make new things with it, her bedroom is a mess, but she is being creative and saving things from the landfill so how can I get on to her for that! This school season before you send those kiddos off, head on over to Terracycle and check out all those school items that were made with someones trash! Not only are the products unique they’re durable and would make the perfect addition to those back-to-school wardrobes. We received a Clif Kid backpack to check out. I found this backpack to be well made and unique. I also found it to be perfect for those that are in the elementary grades. It’s perfect to carry their school work. We will be using ours for geocaching. With having a love for geocaching and loving that this company recycles non-recycle items makes it the perfect backpack for our wilderness adventures. If you would like to get involved in saving the landfills, you can collect products and send them to Terracycle to be turned into reusable products! Simply head to the site to learn how, this would be a great way to get your kids involved in helping save the planet. Make sure to follow Terracycle on their social media channels to stay up to date on any new products they may have.

Marathons, triathlons, mud runs and Ironman competitions—these are just a few of the popular races and events you’ll find popping up in every state around the U.S. today. Americans are becoming increasingly more health conscious, and participation in these events rises every year; the Tough Mudder mud run alone has seen over 1.3 million participants since its inception in 2010. But these high intensity events have one particularly unanticipated problem: energy bar and other performance product packaging waste. Meal replacement bars, energy shots and gel chews have skyrocketed in popularity, in part due to the surge in the number of endurance events. In 2011 for example, U.S. retail sales for nutrition and energy bars was estimated to be around $1.7 billion, 71% higher than in 2006. As the sales of these energy products increase, trails of packaging are left to accumulate on event grounds. Competitions and races each have their own set of volunteers who sign up to help run events. With hundreds, sometimes thousands of volunteers at each competition, cleaning up can be completed quickly—but how efficiently? As volunteers go through the effort to clean up massive amounts of litter, separation becomes especially difficult as countless pieces of trash and packaging are thrown into the wrong waste streams, inevitably ending up in landfill. Thankfully, there are organizations that help manage and arrange waste-reduction efforts for event staff. One association, called The Council for Responsible Sport, is looking to make a change in the way competitions handle all of their sustainability efforts. The Council evaluates what efforts are being made by the event to become eco-friendly, and when specific criteria are met, the event is awarded a certification for their achievements. The certifications range based on the number of criterion met, from “Basic” to “Gold” Certification. A number of marathons have already taken impressive steps to clean up streets from packaging waste and other race debris. The Philadelphia Marathon, for example, achieved a Gold Certification from The Council for Responsible Sport after using the both the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and the Office of Civic Engagement to help educate race attendees about recycling, as well drive forth the goal to divert 75% of marathon waste from landfills. The Chevron Houston Marathon, also with Gold Certification, bans vendors from using Styrofoam packaging and food containers, also ensuring that a majority of all event-related waste is diverted from the landfill by taking both pre and post-race measures to educate attendees, and direct waste into its proper stream Organizations and government services do their fair share to help maintain the streets at the conclusion of the race, but how are consumer product companies themselves getting involved? TerraCycle, for example, partnered with energy bar producer Clif Bar & Company to collect and recycle energy bar wrappers, shots and packets, even repurposing the waste material into products such as recycling bins and bike racks. All of the waste gets diverted from a landfill, while subsequently being turned into useful, reusable products. Poland Springs is another good example, using its “RECYCLE 4 Humanity” campaign to help eliminate some of their own bottled water packaging waste. Before race weekend begins, Poland Springs sets up large clear bins throughout the course and Athletic Village so people can properly recycle their plastic bottles throughout the day. It doesn’t address the issue of consumption that leads to the issue in the first place, but at least it shows that consumer product companies are beginning to take responsibility for the packaging waste their products generate, “greening” these exciting and popular sporting events in the process. These races and city-run marathons are great for our increasingly health-conscious culture, but can strain resources and promote wastefulness if not managed properly. This is exactly why organizations like the Council for Responsible Sport are critical, and why sustainability efforts like TerraCycle and Clif’s are important to integrate into existing events to ensure that they aren’t just stewards of health and exercise, but of environmental responsibility and proper recycling practices as well.

At TerraCycle, we are often approached by brands vying for the attention of the conscious consumer. In all of this rush, few brands have taken the time to really characterize this new target. Who exactly is the conscious consumer anyway? Conscious consumers can be difficult to classify, as they can’t simply be identified by ethnicity, age, gender, or socioeconomic status. The conscious consumer is not as focused on price. Instead, they are focused on how their everyday purchases affect the larger political and environmental landscape. They are label-readers and fact-checkers; they are the brand-ambassadors and brand-trashers; they are the bloggers and the “sharers” on social media. Aligning brand marketing to capture this consumer segment requires a meticulously crafted strategy that includes a plan for authentic action. When sitting down with partners who are approaching this consumer for the first time, I advise them to think about their PR and marketing campaigns only after nailing down the actual plan of action. That is, what has the brand done, or what is the brand trying to do, to make the world a better place? In other words, organizations boasting environmental or social stewardship are best served when following bold claims with equally bold actions. The oil giant BP is a case-in-point example of what not to do. Back in 2000, the company launched a $200 million campaign to seemingly reinvent themselves as a clean, green brand that considered alternatives “Beyond Petroleum.” This entire campaign, which seemed absurd from the start, came on the coattails of a $45 million acquisition of Solarex, a solar energy company. You read that right: BP spent $200 million to tell the world of their $45 million “green” investment. Conscious consumers were enraged, and they took to blogging and trashing BP’s questionable campaign from day one. The conscious community boycotted BP long before the Gulf of Mexico fiasco, which only added another 150 million gallons of fuel to their fire. This disaster, combined with conscious consumer disgust, even led to BP’s removal from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Had BP followed their campaign with an aggressive strategy to make renewable energy a quantifiable percentage of their overall portfolio, they could have transformed the conscious consumer from a squeaky wheel to a loyal customer. At the end of the day, even a Prius needs to fill up its tank. There is a growing niche of new businesses that have built their organizations with larger social or environmental missions in mind. Brands such as Clif Bar and Tom’s of Maine are prime examples of conscious consumer brands. Each organization was built, from inception, on pillars of social and environmental stewardship. Staying true to this mission has allowed them to grow from boutique brands to national leaders in their category. Founded in 1904, Garnier has a long history of making lines of personal care and beauty products made using all-natural ingredients. However, it wasn’t until the last 10 years that Garnier revamped its marketing platform to communicate to consumers those natural ingredient products and the brand's larger mission of environmental stewardship. Immediately upon launching their Pure Clean product line intended “For a Cleaner, Greener World,” conscious consumers put Garnier under the microscope. These conscious investigators found biodegradable ingredients, more eco-friendly packaging, and the absence of harsh chemicals still common in similar products. After building their marketing platform on the success of their low-impact product lines, they followed with even more real action. Not only did Garnier sponsor a recycling program for their hard-to-recycle product category (cosmetics), but they also turned that waste into the building blocks for a community garden. The key to Garnier’s success was incorporating authentic action, followed by marketing, followed by even more authentic action. When comparing BP to Garnier, BP made no real change in product or mission, but still dove into aggressive conscious consumer marketing. Garnier on the other hand created an entirely new product line just for the conscious community and communicated quantifiable changes to their business platform, both in the formula and in their recycling initiatives. When comparing Clif Bar and Tom’s of Maine to Garnier, we see entirely different business structures that ultimately converge on the idea that the only real way to gain value in the conscious community is through genuine action. Doing good, does good.

I recently learned about this program run by a company called TerraCycle. They partner with a number of companies, including Bear Naked, Clif Bar & Company brands (including Shot Bloks and Clif Shot) and Tom’s of Maine; and offer programs for everyday refuse items like snack bags (potato chip bags, for example, which I remember learning in grad school have something like 17 layers) and even cigarette butts.

It was at my lowest point that I attended a lecture given by Tom Szaky, the founder of an environmental startup called TerraCycle — and gained a new perspective on how to change the world.  He too started out as a Princeton student interested in helping the environment. Tom dropped out of school to found his own company in 2001, with the vision that he could one day “eliminate the idea of waste.” Within a few years, his passion and drive transformed his dream into substantial action.

Terracycle allows you to send in your trash in exchange for a 2 cent donation to your choice of school or charity for each qualified piece of waste that you send in.  Besides the cash payment option they have also added a number of other great ways to reward you and your teams for your collections.