Karen Marietta, who leads the school's TerraCycle program, said since it began in 2011, faculty and students have recycled more than 204,000 items from plastic cereal bags and snack pouches to Elmer's glue sticks and plastic tape dispensers. "It's between the drink pouches and the granola energy bar wrappers," Marietta said. "Those are probably our biggest things." TerraCycle, an international recycling program that specializes in difficult-to-recycle packaging and products, covers the cost of shipping and pays schools a penny per piece.

"It smells. It's nasty," said Gwen Shindel, who teaches fourth and fifth grade at Prairie Winds Elementary School in Monument. But not one student has complained about the school's efforts to save normally unrecyclable food packaging from ending up in the garbage.

During the school year, the Westfield Area Y’s Preschool, Kids Club and Kindergarten staff organized and implemented a Recycling program through the TerraCycle recycling company.

During the school year, the Westfield Area Y's Preschool, Kids Club and Kindergarten staff organized and implemented a Recycling program through the TerraCycle recycling company.

Students at Hayden R. Lawrence Upper Elementary have collected more than 17,600 snack bags to recycle, making them top collectors in a free national recycling program created by The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. and TerraCycle.

Cedar Forest Elementary School in Spotsylvania County is one of five winning organizations in the country that helped collect and recycle more than 2.5 million Elmer’s glue sticks and glue bottles as part of a nationwide recycling contest. In the Elmer’s Classroom Cleanup Challenge, students and teachers sent their empty glue sticks and glue bottles to TerraCycle through the Elmer’s Glue Crew Brigade. “They were able to help the environment and earn money for the charity of their choice,” Emma Swanson of TerraCycle noted in an email. According to a press release from TerraCycle, teachers and students at Cedar Forest took part in the program at the end of the last school year. The idea was to ensure that less classroom waste made its way into the landfill.

For the third year, St. Francis Xavier School students are working to recycle small electronics, ink cartridges, glue stick containers, crayons and other items to save them from the landfill and promote good stewardship of the Earth.

We are excited to be doing TerraCycle again at RES this year. Not only does TerraCycle help the environment, it teaches our children to care for the earth. This year, some of the items we are able to collect have changed.

Local TV brigade hit.

Many of my invitations to TerraCycle are met with strong, no-thank-you affirmations, "I already recycle." "I've been recycling my entire life" (with a clear implication that the time is longer than I have been alive). A recycler is already traveling the right road to becoming a TerraCycler, but every single person may engage in TerraCycling and, for many reasons, it's not the same as recycling. One reason I would like to focus on is the concept of ZERO WASTE! A trash item sent to TerraCycle is fully re—used, recycled, re—purposed, or upcycled with no waste—nothing incinerated, nothing dumped into the earth, nothing permitted to quagmire into aquatic imbroglios. TerraCycle is committed to eliminating global waste by taking anything bound for a landfill and turning it into a functional new product—from back packs to park benches, cereal bags to building materials, fence posts to writing instruments, TerraCycle is changing the way the world sees trash and benefitting not-for-profits in the process. Beauty and personal care cases, containers, dispensers, tubes and bottles from items such as lipstick, mascara, eye shadow, shampoo and conditioner, bronzer, foundation, body wash, hand soap, lotion, shaving foam, powder, body lotion/cream, lip balm/gloss, face soap, face lotion, concealer; Brita pitchers, dispensers, bottles, faucet systems, all filters and packaging; standard cell phones, smart phones, and iPhones; cereal bags and plastic cereal bag liners; individual and large/outer flexible cheese packaging found on items such as shredded cheese, string cheese, individual slices, solid cheese blocks, deli—style sliced cheese and other large cheese packaging; extinguished cigarettes, cigarette filters, loose tobacco pouches, outer plastic packaging, inner foil packaging, rolling papers, ash; dairy tubs, seals, and lids from items such as yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, butter and margarine, whipped topping, pudding, plastic ice cream tubs and lids; plastic diaper packaging, wipes outer plastic packaging, and individual wipes packaging; aluminum and plastic drink pouches, and baby food and drink pouches; laptop, tablet, e-reader, Ipod, MP3 player, camera, digital camera, camcorder, GPS unit, and graphing calculator e-waste; baby and toddler food pouches and caps; Elmer's glue sticks, bottles, and caps; any foil-lined energy bar wrappers, granola bar wrappers or protein bar wrappers; Entenmann's plastic pouches; tubs, lids, and seals from all hummus containers; all inkjet cartridges and many toner cartridges; plastic trays and lids, plastic film, outer wrapping, and packaging; all individual, multi—pack and family size snack bags; all No. 6 rigid cups; plastic tape dispensers and cores; all toothpaste tubes with caps, toothbrushes, toothbrush and toothpaste packaging, and floss containers; pens and pen caps, mechanical pencils, markers and marker caps, highlighters and caps, permanent markers and caps. Are you one of the people collecting TerraCycle items? Does your fridge magnet, office desk, or church bulletin have a current list of TerraCycle brigades? If not, why not? Easier to let someone else take the responsibility? As I challenged in this column last week, let's go beyond easy! Add your name, church, business or organization to the growing list of TerraCyclers! To check out what trash TerraCycle can take, review the details and pictures at www.CoyoteHowlingShopForaCause.com, or visit Coyote Howling and learn how to take your trash back from the landfills and use it to fund meals for children. Coyote Howling's designated nonprofit: Feed My Starving Children. Tonya Huber, PhD, is founder and owner of Coyote Howling Shop for a Cause Contact her at CoyoteHowlingNM@gmail.com 575-808-8320.