(NAPSI)—People around the U.S. are increasingly bringing the “green” back to their neighborhoods. In addition to initiatives like Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) and environmental education through the schools, residents are starting to focus much of their attention on building long-lasting landmarks such as community gardens. The American Community Gardening Association estimates that there are already 18,000 community gardens throughout the country, and for good reason. According to Minnesota nonprofit Green Matters, community gardens decrease crime in urban areas with little vegetation, increase the value of properties in the surrounding area and can help locals save money on food through garden-generated produce. Instead of driving to a distant supermarket for produce or a faraway park for some green space, it’s just a matter of walking over to the nearby garden. The health benefits associated with these gardens show how important open garden spaces can be to otherwise “greenless” urban environments. In 2013, University of Utah researchers found that residents who get involved with community garden projects have recognizably lower body mass indexes than nongardeners, with less chance of being overweight. Not only that, fresh produce from community gardens is less likely to be contaminated with pesticides than other kinds and can be used to teach kids about better nutrition. Organizations such as GrowNYC try to make neighborhood gardens more prevalent. It has already helped establish more than 70 community gardens in New York City, one made with recycled beauty waste with the help of Garnier and recycling company TerraCycle. Initiatives like these not only help establish community gardens in areas with otherwise sparse vegetation, but get the public involved, increase environmental awareness, and educate the community at the same time. Assistant Director Lenny Librizzi shared these tips for getting involved in a community garden. • Look Online—Well-organized community gardens usually have websites or Facebook groups. • Visit—Take a walk through nearby gardens to see which one you’re most drawn to. • Get Your Hands Dirty—Being a member of a community garden is about more than just growing vegetables. All members should expect to help with common areas, composting, watering, or volunteering time.Ê • If At First You Don’t Succeed—Each garden has different rules and management systems. If you don’t feel like you’re gelling with the group, try out another one or consider starting your own. Organizations such as the National Recreation and Park Association and the U.S. Department of Agriculture offer grant programs to communities to help fund garden projects. Some companies are also helping. For example, TerraCycle and Garnier will bring another Garnier Green Garden made out of recycled beauty waste to one of five urban areas in the U.S. in a contest decided by a public vote. To vote and learn more, visit www.green.garnierusa.com.

Earth Day is April 22nd, and it’s time to celebrate! There are many things we do daily like reusable bags and recycle plastic bottles. Then there are some fun ways to get the family involved with doing more for  Earth Day like making some great up-cycle crafts and items for the home. Capri Sun partners with TerraCycle to help keep our Earth healthy and happy. Check out some   amazing inspiration! Like these : Cosmetic Tube Earrings Upcycled Toothbrush Holder or this fun Capri Sun bag

It is the height of irony that Tyson Gersh is shy a handful of credits until he graduates from the University of Michigan-Dearborn. At 24, the president of one the fastest-growing, most successful Detroit nonprofits that hardly anybody (over 30 years old anyway) has ever heard of, is short a French class and another class he could probably teach blindfolded. “Yeah I know,” the collegiate rower and triathlete says, head down, in a rare display of self consciousness. “I failed ‘Urban Entrepreneurship: Doing Business in Detroit.’ ” Judging from the speed at which Michigan Urban Farming Initiative has taken off, Gersh was likely doing business in Detroit during class time. In March 2012, Gersh, and his co-founder, Darin McLeskey, also an accomplished twentysomething who holds a masters in civil and environmental engineering, began the multifaceted nonprofit with a purchase of a uninhabitable three-story, six-unit apartment building on 7432 Brush off East Grand Boulevard. In the span of a little over two years, the nonprofit is transforming several city blocks in the North End community of Detroit. What began as a small experiment in urban farming aimed at tackling food insecurity has morphed into several innovative projects. While 7432 Brush is slated to be the headquarters for the nonprofit, complete with an educational center for nutrition classes and a commercial kitchen, across the street, the once-barren, almost 1-acre lot produced close to 12,000 pounds of fresh, organic last year. The majority of the produce goes to the North End residents and vendors, most notably the nearby Firewater Bar and Grill on John R, which bought them out of collard greens last year. Farm manager Pinky Jones is a long-term resident whose house sits directly across the street from the garden. “At first we bonded over our mutual love of agriculture and then it turns out she’s freaking awesome,” Gersh says. Jones is readily available to harvest produce for customers via a knock on the door; her cell number is posted outside on a sign. Produce is then weighed and “sold” at a suggested donation based on market value. “But,” Gersh says, “it’s strictly based on ability to pay.” In addition to 7432 Brush, five more abandoned homes (most bought at auction from the city for a few hundred bucks apiece) are in the process of being gutted, thanks to young volunteers willing to don hard hats and construction masks. Plans are to convert them into a storm management system and retention pond, a veterans’ center called “Boots take Roots,” a building to train and house interns, a site for a for-profit business to fund the nonprofit, and, thanks to a recent collaboration with General Motors, the city’s first occupied shipping container homestead. “It was never supposed to be this big,” Gersh says, “but we soon realized it just wouldn’t be valuable if we built this little garden and then left.” Amazingly, all of the farming initiative’s projects are accomplished by volunteers, with a capital “V. “MIUFI is 100 percent volunteer-run; 100 percent nonprofit,” Gersh declares. “We have 3,000 who have put in in over 30,000 volunteer hours. No one here has been paid for anything they’ve done here. Not a dime.” To that end everybody at MIUFI — from the volunteer coordinator to the community liaison to the farm manager — wear several different hats, as well as carry day jobs. To wit: when she‘s not learning how to put in electrical wiring and planning crop rotation, Molly Hubbell (who at 28 is the self-described “old lady here”) works as a harbor master at the Grosse Pointe Club. Co-founder McCleskey works full time as an environmental engineer for Soil and Materials Engineers Inc. Volunteer coordinator Shelby Wilson is a behavioral analysis aide at The Children’s Center of Wayne County. Even Gersh, who works for a social psychology research lab in Ann Arbor, has been known to accept odd jobs on Craig’s List, cleaning out elderly people’s attics to pay his rent. Here’s where you come in: the bulk of the farming initiative’s funding comes from online contests sponsored by corporations. With their formidable force of Facebook followers numbering close to 14,000 ready and willing to vote at a moment’s notice, Gersh estimates they’ve been awarded close to $70,000 from companies like Aveda and the granola bar company, Nature Valley. In April, MIUFI was named as one of five finalists in the country to win a community garden from Garnier Green Garden Project. It could mean a nice chunk of change for a really deserving nonprofit that has an inestimable supply of goodwill. Let’s keep ’em going. Vote green If you’d like to help Michigan Urban Farming Initiative win the Garnier Green Garden Project, vote online for at green.garnierusa.com/#/vote/detroit. mkeenan@detroitnews.com

At TerraCycle, we are often approached by brands vying for the attention of the conscious consumer. In all of this rush, few brands have taken the time to really characterize this new target. Who exactly is the conscious consumer anyway? Conscious consumers can be difficult to classify, as they can’t simply be identified by ethnicity, age, gender, or socioeconomic status. The conscious consumer is not as focused on price. Instead, they are focused on how their everyday purchases affect the larger political and environmental landscape. They are label-readers and fact-checkers; they are the brand-ambassadors and brand-trashers; they are the bloggers and the “sharers” on social media. Aligning brand marketing to capture this consumer segment requires a meticulously crafted strategy that includes a plan for authentic action. When sitting down with partners who are approaching this consumer for the first time, I advise them to think about their PR and marketing campaigns only after nailing down the actual plan of action. That is, what has the brand done, or what is the brand trying to do, to make the world a better place? In other words, organizations boasting environmental or social stewardship are best served when following bold claims with equally bold actions. The oil giant BP is a case-in-point example of what not to do. Back in 2000, the company launched a $200 million campaign to seemingly reinvent themselves as a clean, green brand that considered alternatives “Beyond Petroleum.” This entire campaign, which seemed absurd from the start, came on the coattails of a $45 million acquisition of Solarex, a solar energy company. You read that right: BP spent $200 million to tell the world of their $45 million “green” investment. Conscious consumers were enraged, and they took to blogging and trashing BP’s questionable campaign from day one. The conscious community boycotted BP long before the Gulf of Mexico fiasco, which only added another 150 million gallons of fuel to their fire. This disaster, combined with conscious consumer disgust, even led to BP’s removal from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Had BP followed their campaign with an aggressive strategy to make renewable energy a quantifiable percentage of their overall portfolio, they could have transformed the conscious consumer from a squeaky wheel to a loyal customer. At the end of the day, even a Prius needs to fill up its tank. There is a growing niche of new businesses that have built their organizations with larger social or environmental missions in mind. Brands such as Clif Bar and Tom’s of Maine are prime examples of conscious consumer brands. Each organization was built, from inception, on pillars of social and environmental stewardship. Staying true to this mission has allowed them to grow from boutique brands to national leaders in their category. Founded in 1904, Garnier has a long history of making lines of personal care and beauty products made using all-natural ingredients. However, it wasn’t until the last 10 years that Garnier revamped its marketing platform to communicate to consumers those natural ingredient products and the brand's larger mission of environmental stewardship. Immediately upon launching their Pure Clean product line intended “For a Cleaner, Greener World,” conscious consumers put Garnier under the microscope. These conscious investigators found biodegradable ingredients, more eco-friendly packaging, and the absence of harsh chemicals still common in similar products. After building their marketing platform on the success of their low-impact product lines, they followed with even more real action. Not only did Garnier sponsor a recycling program for their hard-to-recycle product category (cosmetics), but they also turned that waste into the building blocks for a community garden. The key to Garnier’s success was incorporating authentic action, followed by marketing, followed by even more authentic action. When comparing BP to Garnier, BP made no real change in product or mission, but still dove into aggressive conscious consumer marketing. Garnier on the other hand created an entirely new product line just for the conscious community and communicated quantifiable changes to their business platform, both in the formula and in their recycling initiatives. When comparing Clif Bar and Tom’s of Maine to Garnier, we see entirely different business structures that ultimately converge on the idea that the only real way to gain value in the conscious community is through genuine action. Doing good, does good.

Makeup and beauty products might bring out your eyes or add some style to your hair, but the only addition to the environment is more packaging waste. And considering the top 100 personal care, beauty and cosmetic product companies sold an astonishing $195 billion worth of products in 2011.

This is the first year we have done anything like this.  Items will be sent to Terracycle, a recycling company that is collecting hair care, skin care and cosmetic product packaging for their free Personal Care and Beauty Brigade program.

TerraCycle has been collaborating with some brands to fulfill their eco-conscious missions, which has resulted in saving billions of used packages from ending up in landfills

Garnier’s working on its green thumb for Earth Month by partnering, once again, with TerraCycle. After re-building a community garden in Harlem last year post-Sandy, the beauty brand is looking to strengthen the initiative by helping out another location. Best of all, beauty buffs and the eco-conscious can help Garnier choose which of the five finalist community gardens to help out next!

After building a community garden in New York City in summer 2013, Garnier, a subsidiary of L’Oréal, USA, and New Jersey-based TerraCycle, announced plans to donate a community garden made using recycled beauty packaging to one of five candidates across the country.

Tom Szaky is proving that one man’s waste is everyone’s treasure. His company, TerraCycle, Inc. is eliminating the idea of “waste” by creating easy-to-use collection systems and recycling processes that allow people to recycle materials previously considered “non-recyclable.”