In honor of Earth Month, TerraCycle has opened a “green” pop-up shop at Port Authority through May 1. There are more than 200 eco-friendly items for sale, most made from common garbage such as chip bags, food wrappers, yogurt cups and glue bottles. Brooklyn-based RePlayGround will also sponsor DIY craft projects at the store, where little ones ages four and up can make wallets out of food wrappers and drink pouches. Go green!
Next time you purchase a box of Capri Sun drinks, a tube of Colgate toothpaste, a Clif bar etc.. consider hanging on to your trash and sending it to Terracycle!
TerraCycle takes a wide range of different non-recyclable waste materials and then makes affordable, eco-friendly products. Terracycle is hoping to eliminate the idea of waste by finding innovative, unique uses for materials others deem garbage. With over 50 products available at major retailers like Walmart, Target, The Home Depot, OfficeMax, Petco and Whole Foods Market, TerraCycle is one of the fastest growing eco-friendly manufacturers in the world.
Consider what happens when your kids finish drinking a Capri Sun…they toss the empty juice box in the trash which eventually ends up in a dumpster or landfill. Instead of adding the drink pouch to a pile of other pouches at the landfill, TerraCycle converts the used drink pouches into unique fashion bags, tote bags, pencil cases, and other items for kids and adults (check out the adorable Skittles bag below made from recycled Skittles wrappers)!
Greetings New Yorkers! Please come celebrate Earth Month with the Terracycle Green Up Shop, a design and boutique shopping experience springing up for a limited time only, opening March 27, 2010. In honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, it features some of New York’s finest green design and fashion. The shop will showcase a wide range of green products and services and host exciting weekly events like eco-friendly film screenings, lectures, and DIY events. Which brings us to Generation T! Come join us (and Etsy and Green Up vendors RePlayGround and Garbage of Eden, and, and…I’m just giddy thinking about it) for a free-to-the-public DIY Scraptacular on April 8! Come support the green movement and make stuff out of scraps (and in the case of Generation T, scrap T-shirts!).
Oh, and as if you needed anything more, beverages provided by Brooklyn Brewery and Snow.
So, you've picked all the low-hanging eco-fruit. You've changed out your light bulbs and done a variety of home energy saving retrofits. You've put in tap aerators and shortened your showers. You walk and ride your bike instead of drive as much as you can. You've even started using the clothesline in your laundry room to cut your dryer use by two-thirds...now what? Go eco-shopping to celebrate. Here are thre great products that you can use to "pitch in."
Likewise, sustainability keeps growing in the packaging world. I think the packaging question of the century is: How can we eliminate, or at least reduce, the amount of packaging going into landfills?
When Terracycle started making backpacks and clipboards out of used juice boxes and chip bags in 2001, it was one of the first creative ways to “upcycle” waste and keep it out of landfills.
And the solutions are likely only going to get more innovative. This year’s Winter Olympics in Vancouver featured medals made from old computers and TVs. Athletes at this summer’s World Cup will be wearing jerseys made from recycled plastic bottles. And Ecovative Design has created a material made from mushrooms that can replace polystyrene in product packaging.
Innovations like these are giving us a glimpse into the future. Imagine a world where you can’t find plastic bottles in a landfill. Instead, you’ll find them in the fabric of your clothes. Or picture wearing jewelry with a new type of gemstone made from outdated electronics.
