At the Seneca Park Zoo, the focus is on the animals, making sure they have sustainable environments.
Tina Crandall-Gommel, the Zoo's Conservation Education Coordinator says, "recycling is the most important thing you can do. It effects most of our local animals and then our recycling efforts here also affect ocean animals."
The staff at the zoo wants to make sure their environment and ours are healthy ones. That's why a lot of different green efforts are underway.
"We collect all sorts of recycling that can't make it into your blue bin at home. Things like batteries fluorescent light bulbs cfl's, items for terra cycle like capri suns, dorito bags, other types of chips and cookies," says Crandall-Grommel.
Zoo visitors are invited to bring items like those to the "green" gazebo for recycling. They also hold recycle rallies several times a year to collect household items and e-waste.
The Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester was featured on the local news for its recycling efforts.
It’s time for spring cleaning, and the truth is in the trash. It’s springtime, alright. Down by the street there are bottles and packages tossed out of passing cars. I hate the looks of it, and I can’t understand how some people can do that without a bothered conscience. I am only thankful for a memory it elicits. When my children were young I discovered what looked like a bottle dump, except that these weren’t old and they were mostly “nip” bottles. My children confessed that I had stumbled upon their laboratory. They wanted to see what would grow in various mediums such as dirt, water or moss. My sister’s boy began to plead with jealousy that he wanted a lab, too! Don’t you just love children’s creative and sometimes competitive spirit?
In a similar spirit, some people are making money by making creative recycling their business. One such company is TerraCycle based in Trenton, N.J. It was founded by the worm poop guy. You know of him, right? I remember the story being in the news but did not realize he has grown from homemade fertilizer to fantastic recycling partnerships all over the world. According to their website, “Founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, then a 20-year-old Princeton University freshman, TerraCycle began by producing organic fertilizer, packaging liquid worm poop in used soda bottles. Since then TerraCycle has grown into one of the fastest-growing green companies in the world.”
TerraCylcing was recently brought to my attention by Kevin Rogers. Kevin works at the Franklin Park Zoo (among other cool places), where they receive some much-needed funds for collecting items usually considered trash. Candy bags, bread bags, cookie packages, cosmetic containers, tooth brushes, floss containers, pens and highlighters are among the items currently being collected. Kevin hopes to expand the benefits by finding locations allowing him to place collection boxes. He would also like to have some attractive containers built by partnering with the schools’ vocational classes. I suggested a Scout might be interested in the idea for an Eagle Scout project.
For right now, the project has begun at the Halifax Recycling Center, with drop-offs of potato chip bags, cookie packages and candy bar wrappers. They ask that you please not place these items in your roadside pick-up, but take them to the Recycling Center.
Welcome back to Rock Roundup, when we take a look back at Council Rock community happenings and give a sneak peek into what's coming up on the calendar.
Here's the latest from Council Rock:
Newtown Elementary School
TerraCycle is a private business headquartered in Trenton, NJ.. which specializes in making consumer products from post-consumer materials, often reusing waste materials that are otherwise difficult to recycle. The Newtown Elementary School community collected close to 20,000 items for TerraCycle recycling during the 2010-2011 school year.
I am completely inspired by Tom Szaky’s approach to changing, and changing, and changing his business model to ultimately achieve his organization’s mission. Tom is the CEO of
TerraCycle, a recycling company, who described in
this New York Times boss blog how he kept adapting his business model until he got it right:
Eco-friendly students at Cape Cod Hill School in New Sharon are collecting food waste off lunch trays to make their own compost and they are collecting empty juice pouches, chip bags and cookie wrappers for Terracycle, a nationwide program that pays schools to collect non-recyclable waste that is converted to other products. So far, the project has made more than $500. Mt. Blue Regional School District board members this week heard from teachers Katy Perry and Patricia Murray and Principal Cheryl Pike on the growing environmental activism. Working on the Terracycle recycling project are, from left, Colton Nason, Hunter Robbins, Brianna Jackson, Ben Christopher, Dawson Adams and Addisyn Davis.
