For the Earth loving person on your gift giving list, consider a couple of gifts from Terracycle. I personally think that Terracycle is just a wonderfully brilliant company, who produces beautiful items from recycled trash. I myself own one of their tote bags and a few of their pencil cases. They are made ridiculously well and are always a conversation starter.

It is called TerraCycle. TerraCycle recycles everyday products and turns them into new products. It helps the environment and your school at the same time. So far TerraCycle has collected $1,476,863.02 for charities and schools count as charities. The empty CapriSun packets collected each earn .02 cents and with every 500 collected you can send them to TerraCycle.

Beginning this month, Fairhaven, Diamond Lake and West Oak Middle schools will collect empty Capri Sun and Honest Kids drink pouches from student lunches, classroom parties, etc. Once the district has 500 pouches, it can send them to TerraCycle, a company which will re-purpose the drink pouches into items like backpacks, messenger bags, folders, clip boards and laptop cases, which the company sells on its website www.terracycle.net. The district will receive two-cents for every pouch it provides to TerraCycle.

When it comes to eco-mindedness, throwing anything away can be an anxiety riddled experience.  Every product is rigorously analyzed guaranteeing the trashcan is the only option.  In steps Tom Szaky, an innovate man with an earth changing idea, Sponsored Waste. Tom Szaky started TerraCycle in 2001 as a Princeton University freshman, with the hopes of winning the Princeton Business Plan Contest.  His idea was to address the environmental issue of trash by using worms to eat organic waste thus producing fertilizer.

TerraCycle has a more unusual model. It collects all kinds of hard-to-recycle stuff by mail — drink pouches, candy wrappers, plastic bags, wine corks, toothpaste containers — and then turns them into other things. “In 2011, you’ll see a playground made out of Capri Sun and Honest Kids drink pouches,” said Jo Opot, TerraCycle’s vice president of business development. Consumers who send trash get rewarded with donations to schools or charities, and they get the psychic satisfaction of knowing that something useful was made out of their garbage. You’d think that few people would bother to send their trash in the mail to New Jersey, Terracyle’s home base, but the company says 12 million people have participated, returning 1.8 billion items. The company gets paid by brands whose products it recovers, by manufacturers who buy its materials and by marketers who use its logo on finished products. There’s lots more about how this all works at the TerraCycle website.

TerraCycle has a more unusual model. It collects all kinds of hard-to-recycle stuff by mail — drink pouches, candy wrappers, plastic bags, wine corks, toothpaste containers — and then turns them into other things. “In 2011, you’ll see a playground made out Capri Sun and Honest Kids drink pouches,” said Jo Opot, TerraCycle’s vice president of business development. Consumers who send trash get rewarded with donations to schools or charities, and they get the psychic satisfaction of knowing that something useful was made out of their garbage. You’d think that  few people would bother to send their trash in the mail to New Jersey–Terracyle’s home base–but the company says 12 million people have participated, returning 1.8 billion items. The company gets paid by brands whose products it recovers, by manufacturers who buy its materials and by marketers who use its logo on finished products. There’s lots more about this all works at the TerraCycle website, here.

TerraCycle has a more unusual model. It collects all kinds of hard-to-recycle stuff by mail — drink pouches, candy wrappers, plastic bags, wine corks, toothpaste containers — and then turns them into other things. “In 2011, you’ll see a playground made out Capri Sun and Honest Kids drink pouches,” said Jo Opot, TerraCycle’s vice president of business development. Consumers who send trash get rewarded with donations to schools or charities, and they get the psychic satisfaction of knowing that something useful was made out of their garbage. You’d think that  few people would bother to send their trash in the mail to New Jersey–Terracyle’s home base–but the company says 12 million people have participated, returning 1.8 billion items. The company gets paid by brands whose products it recovers, by manufacturers who buy its materials and by marketers who use its logo on finished products. There’s lots more about this all works at the TerraCycle website, here.

SOUTHBOROUGH, MA, October 20 – The teachers at the Woodward Memorial School used to see a lot of Capri Sun drink pouches get thrown away.  Once they signed up to recycle them through a company called TerraCycle, the school began earning two cents for every one of those pouches and became part of a nationwide effort that has just reached an impressive milestone of keeping 50 million pouches out of landfills.  In addition, TerraCycle, which makes affordable, eco-friendly products from packaging waste, and Capri Sun have paid one million dollars to schools and non-profits in return for the recycled drink pouches.

October 20, 2010 - NORTHBOROUGH, Mass. - The Lincoln Street School PTO is continuing its Drink Pouch Brigade this year. There is a collection bin located in the cafeteria for drink pouches. The Lincoln Street School will receive $.02 in donations for all brands of drink pouches that we send in. Please ask your children to make sure that they remove the straw from their finished drink pouches and place them in the collection bins in the cafeteria.

The Village of Orland Park Recreation Department is accepting no longer usable pens, markers, highlighters and mechanical pencils. For every writing instrument collected, Terra Cycle will donate two cents to Open Lands of Orland Park. Terra Cycle will upcycle or recycle the depleted writing instruments into other fun and innovative products.