The Earth Shepherd Environmental Group of Absegami High School recently conducted a successful flip-flop recycling program. Participating schools were Smithville Elementary and Reeds Road elementary schools and Absegami. The three schools collected more than 100 pairs of flip-flops over a two week period. The flip-flops will be recycled by TerraCycle Inc. They will be made into things such as trash bins, flooring and park benches. Earth Shepherd was just started at Absegami in 2012-2013 and this was its first recycling drive. The group has been involved in cleanups and other school activities. “We were impressed by how enthusiastic the two elementary schools were for helping us get started on one of our first major projects,” Earth Shepherd founder and President Jamie Infanti said. “Our hope is that these drives will help teach elementary school students the importance of recycling, and each year we will gain more and more momentum throughout."

Tom Szaky collects the most disgusting things. Yucky yogurt containers. Sticky candy wrappers. Old flip-flops. Now, he and his Trenton, N.J., company, TerraCycle, are onto a new one: cigarette butts, the most common litter items on the planet. So bring ‘em on. Let neither stinkiness nor sogginess nor other manner of nastiness be a barrier. Once in hand, the company will “sanitize” and sort the butts, sending the paper and tobacco to a specialty tobacco composter. The filters will be melted and re-formed into pellets, eventually to end up as two different but butt-worthy items — ashtrays and park benches. For every 1,000 butts sent in by a TerraCycle member (find out more atwww.terracycle.com), a dollar will go to the national anti-littering nonprofit, Keep America Beautiful. Szaky said the new butt program “will help to promote our belief that everything can and should be recycled.” It’s part of his plan to “eliminate the idea of waste.” Targeting butts should be easy. They’re everywhere. A 2009 Keep America Beautiful study found that 65 percent of cigarette butts wind up as litter. In a quarter-century of beach cleanups, volunteers for the Ocean Conservancy have picked up more than 52 million butts — the most pervasive item they find. Many beaches now limit smoking to designated areas. Campuses fed up with spending thousands of dollars picking up the things have considered bans. Still the butts come. They are more than unsightly. Peer-reviewed studies have detailed how metals leach from smoked cigarettes. And how chemicals in the butts are harmful to fish, which is relevant because many butts wind up in waterways. Even when butts are picked up — or not littered to begin with — they add to the waste stream piling up in our landfills. Keep America Beautiful has actually studied butt locales. Most (85 percent) wind up on the open ground, followed by bushes or shrubbery, then around — not in — trash receptacles. The final 15 percent get stubbed out in planters.

TerraCycle is a company renowned for turning trash into treasure. Here's an inside look at the graffiti-clad warehouse in Trenton, N.J. where much of the upcycling magic happens.Late last week, I had the pleasure of touring the Trenton, N.J. offices of TerraCycle, a “waste solution development” firm with the most admirable mission to "eliminate the idea of waste."

This September, Stuyvesant’s Environmental Club began to take part in the Brigade programs of TerraCycle, an organization that engages consumers in the collection of recycled packaging and products. With each collected item, TerraCycle offers points that can later be redeemed for charitable monetary compensation.   Founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, then a 20-year-old Princeton University freshman, TerraCycle began with the production of organic fertilizer by packing liquid worm fecal matter in old soda bottles. Since then, the company has grown into one of the world’s fastest-growing green corporations. According to the organization’s official website, “with more than 20 million people collecting waste in over 20 countries, TerraCycle has diverted billions of units of waste and used them to create over 1,500 different products available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods Market.”   TerraCycle’s Brigade programs offer any organization or company the opportunity to make use of their waste stream. Aimed at eliminating the idea of waste, each Brigade program involves the collection a specific commodity—whether it is bottles, writing utensils, or electronics—previously regarded to be non-recyclable or difficult-to-recycle. Once an organization has selected a specific “Brigade” and has begun to collect waste, TerraCycle offers free shipping of the waste to the TerraCycle facility as well as points for each item collected. TerraCycle points can be redeemed for charitable gifts or a payment of $0.01 per point to a non-profit organization or school of one’s choice.   President of the Environmental Club senior Geyanne Lui first became aware of the importance of recycling when she took AP Environmental Science in 2011. “I noticed that a lot of people didn’t care about recycling—people threw all types of garbage in trash cans labeled specifically for cans and bottles or paper only,” Lui said. “I thought that it was important for there to be a program to show Stuyvesant students how easy it is to recycle as well as how significant it is.”   Looking for a way to bring a more organized recycling system to the school, Lui and the members of the Environmental Club consulted their faculty advisor and biology teacher Marissa Maggio for advice. Maggio had already been aware of TerraCycle, first becoming familiar with the organization through one of the students taking her online Environmental Biology course. In fact, last year, she introduced the Brigade program to her Stuyvesant freshman biology classes and offered extra credit to those that took part in bringing recyclable products from home for TerraCycle. After her students cumulatively raised approximately $150, Maggio thought that the Stuyvesant student body as a whole would be able to raise significantly more money.   With Maggio’s guidance, the members of the Environmental Club decided that TerraCycle would be a great organization to become involved in. In choosing Brigades they believed Stuyvesant students would most efficiently and conveniently contribute to, the club decided on the Chip Bag Brigade due to the sale of chips from the cafeteria vending machines, the Electronics Brigade, and the Flip-Flop Brigade for the summer season that just passed.   “Many schools in the city haves similar recycling programs,” said senior and Environmental Club member Kenneth Zheng. “The elementary school across from Stuyvesant, P.S. 89, is going to have their own TerraCycle program, and we are planning on collaborating with them to ship more recyclable waste together. We are also starting a mentoring program in which members of the Environmental Club volunteer during lunch periods to go over to P.S. 89 to teach the elementary students about recycling.”   However, before the club branches out to help other schools with their environmental cause, its members have been working to establish a structured system of recycling within Stuyvesant. Bins labeled for specific items have been placed in the cafeteria, and during lunch periods, certain club members help to engage other students in Stuyvesant’s TerraCycle Brigades and promote the conservation of resources. Moreover, the Environmental Club has created a recycling drive to collect cell phones, graphing calculators, ink cartridges, keyboards, cameras, and flip-flops.   The Environmental Club has decided to donate the money that is earned from the TerraCycle points to the Sierra Club, an organization that strives to successfully transition into a clean, green energy economy that better serves people and nature. The club members look to raise approximately $5,000 by the end of the school year.   Lui ultimately hopes that Stuyvesant’s TerraCycle Brigades will have both short and long term effects. “For starters, as we are collecting more waste to send out, we are raising more money for our charity that we are going to donate to. But, in the end, I hope that Stuyvesant students will become more accustomed to recycling in school, will not litter the streets, and value the environment more,” Lui said.   Maggio agrees and believes that the new recycling program will set the standard for not only Stuyvesant but also the broader scale of New York City. “Stuyvesant High School has always fostered rigorous academics and has really set the bar for scholarship in schools throughout the region, if not nation. Our [TerraCycle Brigades] can be another instance of how we excel—not just to benefit ourselves, but the environment as a larger whole.”