The TCU Environmental Club works with Terracycle to help promote recycling

The university's environmental club and Residence Hall Association partnered with Terracycle to bring a new recycling contest to campus. The competition, which started after fall break, allows students to turn in materials such as candy wrappers, chip bag wrappers and juice boxes into collection boxes in their residence halls, said environmental club president Brooke Long.

Creating Green Jobs In The USA TerraCycle Videos's Channel Get 2 Cents For Your School Or Charity For Each Drink Pouch, Cookie Or Candy Wrapper, Etc. You Send To TerraCycle TerraCycle Pays All Shipping (all) Costs.

30-year-old social entrepreneur says movement’s time has come Friday November 19, 2012 -- Kristian Partington Being true to a core strength is the biggest lesson entrepreneur Tom Szaky has learned in his business life and that’s the advice he offers others who are eager to dive into the world of social enterprise. “A social business needs to work as a business first and foremost,” he says. “Really focus on what makes you special, and hold onto that. Outsource everything else around you, other than what makes you exceptionally special.” When you stay true to the core principles of a green business, “karma is on your side,” Tom says, and in a world that demands green choices, success is totally attainable. Tom founded TerraCycle in 2001 based on cycling waste into plant fertilizer, and the company has grown steadily since. It is considered by many today to be a leading example of a business that lives and breathes environmental and social sustainability. The company now offers a range of affordable, eco-friendly products created from waste. At 30, Tom represents a new generation of social entrepreneurs that is keenly aware of the public’s demand for consumer choices that allow them to feel good about the companies they support through their spending. TerraCycle’s dedication to environmental stewardship is generating loyal customers and supporters. “For us it’s very simple,” Tom says. “We have very strong customer service in-house, we have very strong social media, and things like that really help foster a relationship with the consumer.” His company and his team are committed to the core principles of sustainable development and growth, he says, and this creates loyalty among consumers. There’s no question in Tom ’s mind that the shift to a more socially-conscious approach to business is a movement whose time has come, and he points to the fact that media and consumers are making green issues a central topic as cornerstones of this growing momentum. “Media has picked up that ‘green’ is an issue that people care about and resonate with, and because of that it’s made it much easier for social businesses to get credit and to be seen as an important aspect of the economy,” he says. Governments are now making green jobs a priority and investing in an ecology of sustainable business enterprise, Tom points out, and that’s because society now demands it. “The topic has gone out there and become mainstream, and I think when you mainstream a topic, that’s when things get very exciting for a movement.” Tom will be speaking at SVN's Fall Conference November 14-17. Resister now www.svn.org/fall2012. If you have questions, comments or a story to share, please contact kristian(at)axiomnews.ca. Axiom News provides Stakeholder News to SVN. To read more news stories, click here.

  Georgia Army National Guard Capt. Andrew Lane is a man on a mission. If it’s recyclable, “Captain PLaneT” aims to keep it out of the local landfill – and earn cash for his parish while he’s at it.   Lane launched a Tithing with Trash program at St. Gregory the Great Episcopal Church in Athens, Georgia, when he returned home from a deployment in Afghanistan in 2010. Since then, the congregation has earned nearly $4,800 collecting hard-to-recycle items such as empty toothpaste tubes and Solo Cups and sending them to TerraCycle in Trenton, New Jersey, to earn 2 cents per item. TerraCycle, in turn, recycles or “upcycles” the trash – turning it into “green” products such as backpacks fashioned from Lay’s potato chip bags.   “They’re not just doing it to hug trees or sing ‘Kumbaya.’ They’re turning it into artwork or consumer products,” Lane said.   The nonprofit TerraCycle partners with some of the world’s largest companies, who sponsor collection programs for particular waste streams – say, spent writing utensils or empty tape dispensers, explained Lauren Taylor, U.S. public relations director. Some sponsor only collection of their brands’ trash, while others accept any related items. Kraft’s “dairy tub brigade,” for example, takes all manner of dairy-product tubs, lids, foil tops and other packaging.   Individuals such as Lane sign up to join a sponsored trash “brigade,” collecting and shipping specified items via United Parcel Service for free to TerraCycle and receiving “points” they turn into cash. “The money earned needs to go to a charity,” Taylor said. “Somebody can’t just decide this could be a great side job for them.”   “The majority of the people who collect for us are schools,” she said. They set up lunchroom collection points – juice-drink pouches here, candy wrappers there – often after a parent or teacher realizes how much trash is being pitched and thinks, “We’re throwing money away.”   It’s hard to quantify, but churches also participate, and St. Gregory is one of a handful of Episcopal churches signed up to benefit from TerraCycle trash, Taylor said. “We definitely know Andrew because he is just so energetic and just loves our programs and really motivates people to collect. … He is definitely among the most highly motivated.”   Lane is a sustainability evangelist.   “It’s really powerful, because we’re the only creatures in existence that we know of that generate trash that we have to pay someone to haul off,” he said. Without addressing sustainability issues, he said, “for our grandkids it could be deep, deep, deep trouble.”   “We might actually trash this planet and poison its water or run out of water … without an epidemic or a war.”   Lane has given diocesan council presentations about TerraCycle and met Diocese of Atlanta Bishop-elect Robert Wright while separating food waste at the Mikell Camp and Conference Center. “He actually came and shook my hand. He said, ‘I see you’re not actually just speaking; you’re a man of action.’”   In Athens, Lane is lobbying a Kroger grocery store to let the church maintain a collection container for TerraCycle trash. At St. Gregory, parishioners place items in assorted labeled bins.   “I see people carrying in their containers and standing out there and sorting stuff out in Andrew’s elaborate bins,” said parishioner Lois Alworth, a member of the church’s Green Guild/Creation Keepers committee that Lane chairs. “There’s not a whole lot that the church itself uses that TerraCycle takes. What we get is what people bring from home.”   “We all laugh and say because we’re Episcopalians everybody has lots of wine corks,” she said. “TerraCycle takes really odd things, [like] toothpaste containers, when they’re empty, and old toothbrushes.” Every four to six weeks, committee members gather after church for a “box-up event” to package the TerraCycle items for shipping, she said.   Even here, recycling comes into play. Lane sometimes uses economy-size cat-food, dog-food or chicken-feed bags as shipping envelopes for TerraCycle trash. UPS doesn’t mind as long as the packages aren’t leaking liquid, he said. “You could mail a sweater in there if you didn’t care if your sweater smelled like dog food.”   TerraCycle collects waste in 20 countries, with almost 32 million trash collectors and nearly 2.5 billion units of waste collected in the United States since 2007, Taylor said.   Lane has his eye on a program started in Canada and expected to launch in the United States this month: a “cigarette butt brigade” that will take all cigarette waste, including the plastic wrap and aluminum board from packaging. This tackles “one of the dirtiest, one of the most prolific forms of waste,” said Lane, who is in his second semester studying for an Army graduate certificate of sustainability through Arizona State University. Look at any paved road in America, and you’ll see cigarette butts, he said. “They’re thrown out, and they sit there until eternity, until they’re washed into a stream or a river.”   A discussion with Lane ranges to environmental topics far beyond TerraCycle, from his battle to promote recycling at the Army’s Fort Stewart to the near-extinction of white rhinos to the role of black soldier flies in composting to Germany’s renewable-energy goals. He describes listening to his son read how Native Americans taught the Pilgrims to bury dead fish with corn plants as fertilizer and noting, “That’s composting.”   At St. Gregory, green initiatives likewise move beyond TerraCycle. The congregation assiduously composts food and paper waste. A church webpage provides current and cumulative data for energy generated by the parish’s months-old solar panels (2.99 megawatt hours so far, enough to power 99 houses for a day and offset 2.07 tons of carbon or the equivalent of 53 trees). Next up: a 450-gallon rain cistern.   “We just need to hook the gutters to it, and we’ll be in business,” Lane said, noting that an inch of rain on a 1,000-square-foot roofline translates to 500 to 600 gallons of water. Installing the gravity-fed cistern to water plans is “taking what the good Lord has given us and not squandering it.”   “Our church,” he said, “may be the greenest church in Georgia.”   Georgia Interfaith Power and Light has supported St. Gregory in its green efforts and awarded the church a Trailblazer Award for its TerraCycle program.   “We encourage all of our congregations to get involved in more intelligent ways of thinking about their waste and … where they throw things,” Executive Director Alexis Chase said. “Other churches are considering doing TerraCycle. Everyone is sort of trying to figure out a way they can be involved.”   Some “brigades” are full, based on the funds partner companies provide, but Lane offers a solution for churches that still want to participate. By request, he’ll send shipping labels for them to send trash to Trenton.   He keeps track of the resulting cash and sends 80 percent to the participating church, with 20 percent going to St. Gregory.   “It has two positives: You get paid for it, and you know you’re doing a good thing for the planet,” Alworth said.   But eliminating waste does create a headache or two at church. It took awhile to convince Lane – who says he believes in “zero waste” – that they still needed a trash container despite the TerraCycle, recycling and compost bins, Alworth said.   Once, a mass of fruit flies flew out of an unemptied compost bin while they were setting up a funeral repast; they spent the whole time trying to “swoosh flies away” inconspicuously, she recalled. “That was the one time we came close to not composting anymore.”   “It’s not something you take real lightly, and not every parish has an Andrew,” she said.   But overall, she sees participating in composting and TerraCycle as good stewardship of God’s creation.   “Anything that we do like this helps us to feel like we’re being better stewards than we would be if we sent all this stuff to the landfill to just sit there and pile up,” she said. “I think that’s why people do it. They love the church, they love each other, and they’re willing to do this for the betterment of everything.”

[Episcopal News Service] Georgia Army National Guard Capt. Andrew Lane is a man on a mission. If it’s recyclable, “Captain PLaneT” aims to keep it out of the local landfill – and earn cash for his parish while he’s at it.   Lane launched a Tithing with Trash program at St. Gregory the Great Episcopal Church in Athens, Georgia, when he returned home from a deployment in Afghanistan in 2010. Since then, the congregation has earned nearly $4,800 collecting hard-to-recycle items such as empty toothpaste tubes and Solo Cups and sending them to TerraCycle in Trenton, New Jersey, to earn 2 cents per item. TerraCycle, in turn, recycles or “upcycles” the trash – turning it into “green” products such as backpacks fashioned from Lay’s potato chip bags.   “They’re not just doing it to hug trees or sing ‘Kumbaya.’ They’re turning it into artwork or consumer products,” Lane said.   The nonprofit TerraCycle partners with some of the world’s largest companies, who sponsor collection programs for particular waste streams – say, spent writing utensils or empty tape dispensers, explained Lauren Taylor, U.S. public relations director. Some sponsor only collection of their brands’ trash, while others accept any related items. Kraft’s “dairy tub brigade,” for example, takes all manner of dairy-product tubs, lids, foil tops and other packaging.   Individuals such as Lane sign up to join a sponsored trash “brigade,” collecting and shipping specified items via United Parcel Service for free to TerraCycle and receiving “points” they turn into cash. “The money earned needs to go to a charity,” Taylor said. “Somebody can’t just decide this could be a great side job for them.” TerraCycle “upcycles” some trash into useable products such as this backpack created from Lay’s potato chip bags. Photo/TerraCycletoday   “The majority of the people who collect for us are schools,” she said. They set up lunchroom collection points – juice-drink pouches here, candy wrappers there – often after a parent or teacher realizes how much trash is being pitched and thinks, “We’re throwing money away.”   It’s hard to quantify, but churches also participate, and St. Gregory is one of a handful of Episcopal churches signed up to benefit from TerraCycle trash, Taylor said. “We definitely know Andrew because he is just so energetic and just loves our programs and really motivates people to collect. … He is definitely among the most highly motivated.”   Lane is a sustainability evangelist.   “It’s really powerful, because we’re the only creatures in existence that we know of that generate trash that we have to pay someone to haul off,” he said. Without addressing sustainability issues, he said, “for our grandkids it could be deep, deep, deep trouble.”   “We might actually trash this planet and poison its water or run out of water … without an epidemic or a war.”   Lane has given diocesan council presentations about TerraCycle and met Diocese of Atlanta Bishop-elect Robert Wright while separating food waste at the Mikell Camp and Conference Center. “He actually came and shook my hand. He said, ‘I see you’re not actually just speaking; you’re a man of action.’”   In Athens, Lane is lobbying a Kroger grocery store to let the church maintain a collection container for TerraCycle trash. At St. Gregory, parishioners place items in assorted labeled bins.   “I see people carrying in their containers and standing out there and sorting stuff out in Andrew’s elaborate bins,” said parishioner Lois Alworth, a member of the church’s Green Guild/Creation Keepers committee that Lane chairs. “There’s not a whole lot that the church itself uses that TerraCycle takes. What we get is what people bring from home.”   “We all laugh and say because we’re Episcopalians everybody has lots of wine corks,” she said. “TerraCycle takes really odd things, [like] toothpaste containers, when they’re empty, and old toothbrushes.” Every four to six weeks, committee members gather after church for a “box-up event” to package the TerraCycle items for shipping, she said.

Protect our Earth with these ultra hip school supplies from TerraCycle – all of which are made from upcycled materials. Each product, from backpacks to pencil cases to notebooks, is upcycled from common trash items you might find in any classroom or cafeteria such as drink pouches, chip bags and granola bar wrappers. TerraCycle pays schools and charities to collect their trash and send it to them, free of charge. And for every item they receive, TerraCycle donates money to the school or a charity of the school’s choice. Sign up at http://www.terracycle.com/en-US/ and visit http://www.dwellsmart.com/Products/School-and-Art-Supplies to purchase.

I think most people are at least aware of the importance of reducing, reusing, and recycling as much as possible, even if they don’t do it.  I think the problem for a lot of people is that sometimes they don’t know how to go about it. For example, we do not have recycle pick up at our new home, so we have to head into town to (like 3 minutes) to recycle our glass, plastics, and paper. I recently was introduced to a company that takes the phrase, “someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure” to a whole new level. TerraCycle is a company whose purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste. By creating national recycling systems for previously non-recyclable or hard-to-recycle waste. Anyone can sign up for these programs, called the Brigades, and start sending TerraCycle waste. TerraCycle then converts the collected waste into a wide variety of products and materials. 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. Their goal is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that today must be sent to a landfill.

At heart of co-creative innovation lies new partnership propositions, and the results of such business partnerships often are unthinkable products. This Lays spiral bound notebook is a truly unthinkable product: the papers are made of recycled material, and its hardbound is made by processing used snacks wrappers. And, it is a result of unlikely partnerships involving Frito Lay, Inc, a part of PepsiCo, and a global leader in the manufacture of snacks, TerraCycle, a recycling company, and thousands of individuals customers of Lays products across the US, and retailers like WalMart, The Home Depot, and Whole Foods. What more, the product also stands for a shared value - value for all. This story of co-creative innovation is scripted by the need for snacks manufacturer, Frito Lay, Inc, to reduce its environmental impact. (This is of course one way of assuming what makes the partnership tick.) Lay encourages its consumers to send used Lays wrappers to TerraCycle, a recycling company. Lay takes care of the postage fee - consumers can download a pre-paid shipping label from TerraCycle website! The company also donates $ 0.02 for every used wrapper sent by the customer to a charitable institution that the customer chooses.

Hudsonville Christian School released the detailed list of waste to be sent to TerraCycle.

What can you do with candy wrappers, worn out flip flops, or the box from your toothpaste? You can upcycle it! TerraCycle’s goal is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating national recycling systems for previously non-recyclable or hard-to-recycle waste. Anyone can sign up for these programs and start sending them some of your waste on their list. Some of the waste that is collected includes things that a lot of use every day including: energy bar wrappers chip bag wrappers toothpaste boxes corks flip flops cleaner packaging cell phones candy wrappers drink boxes TerraCycle will then use your garbage to make a wide variety of products and materials which includes bags umbrellas, clipboards, plastic planters, and purses. The program has gotten lots of support, and over 20 million people collect waste in over 20 countries. With the programs, TerraCycle has collected billions of units of useful trash and used it to create over 1,500 different products which are available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods.