In 2009 a parent volunteer at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Glen Burnie saw an advertisement for a company called TerraCycle. Its “Get cash for trash” headline caught her attention, and before you could say, ‘Sounds too good to be true,’ there was a bin in the school cafeteria for the students to deposit their empty juice pouches at lunch. Since then, the school has collected over 70,000 juice pouches and recycles an average of 1,000 pouches per week during the school year. Founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, TerraCycle began upcycling various products around 2007. An initiative that started with drink pouches, today the company offers more than 40 Brigades® that collect what was previously non-recyclable or difficult-to- recycle waste. A brigade is simply the term TerraCycle uses to designate its donations—so there is, for example, the Yogurt Container Brigade, the Cheese Packaging Brigade, and the Candy Wrapper Brigade. St. Paul’s initally joined the Drink Pouch Brigade. Most of the brigades are free for participants and include free shipping as well as a donation for each piece of waste recycled.

Founded in 2001 by Princeton freshman Tom Szaky, Trenton-based TerraCycle collects pesky hard-to-recycle waste, figures out a way to make it happen, and turns trash to treasure -- or at least useful household items, including this flower pot made from crushed computers and fax machines. $10, www.dwellsmart.com

If sweet-smelling room deodorizers aren't your thing, here's something to consider: the Moso Bag, a natural air-purifying bag containing moso bamboo. What's so great about that? Moso bamboo is said to absorb and filter odors, pollutants, allergens and bacteria while dehumidifying to prevent mildew, mold and moisture. What's more, it's fragrance-free, unlike some air fresheners that mask odors by covering them up with other scents.

TerraCycle, based in Trenton, NJ, is a for-profit company that upcycles and recycles traditionally non-recyclable waste – into creative consumer products. Even in a city like Cambridge that has a very progressive recycling program (yay for recycling coffee cups and pizza boxes!), there are so many products that are not recycled – and that could be diverted from landfills with TerraCycle’s programs.  Like candy wrappers, chip bags, corks, cookie packaging, and the list goes on….

The designers at TerraCycle refer to themselves as “junkies.” The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders may not recognize job addiction, but after speaking with the company’s resident design junkies, it is not hard to imagine withdrawal symptoms on days off. Not simply because the Trenton, New Jersey-based recycling and upcycling firm does eco-friendly work, but because so much of what they do, or fail to do, is an exercise in recombinant aesthetics. It was hard not to picture a modern art piece dangling in the Guggenheim when Brad Sherman, one of TerraCycle’s design junkies, told me about a chandelier he made of used eyeglasses. Although this project, and his bamboo-like picture frames made of cigarette butts, never made it to market, it says something about a company when even its failures can be mistaken for art.

I love re-purposing things. If you think about it, as a society we are extremely wasteful. We think nothing of tossing away things that we no longer want even when they're still useful. I hate thinking about all of the juice pouches, vinyl records, old CD's, and who knows what else just sitting there in the landfill for thousands of years. Terra Cycle is a company that takes many average household items and gives them a new purpose rather than allowing them to end up in the landfill.  DwellSmart is proud to partner with TerraCycle to provide customers the opportunity to purchase from the growing range of TerraCycle products. To view their complete TerraCycle collection, please visit TerraCycle Products.