For years, my bulky-but-had-to-have-it backpacking food was a can of tuna fish. I’d dutifully tote it along, eating it straight from the can and relishing its toothsomeness after a few days of freeze-dried chow. It reminded me of when I was a kid and my dad would fry fresh-caught trout over the campfire. Then, about ten years ago, tuna in packets showed up on grocery store shelves. My years of hauling cans and can openers came to an end. “What luxury!” I thought while forking flakes of fish into my mouth at the bottom of Grand Canyon. Little did I know that things were only starting to get good.

Do you know what Tom Szaky thinks of everything you own, eat, wear, poop and drive, from the plastic container that contains your hair product to the pricey phone you tuck into your back pocket to the discount drone you use to wage drunken dogfights with your next-door neighbor? It’s garbage. Really. Pick a spot on the space-time continuum, and the material world ultimately becomes junk. If necessity is the mother of invention, this is one inventive mother. “Garbage is such a good topic because everything in the world, one day, will be owned by the garbage industry,” says Szaky, 35, CEO and founder of TerraCycle, a Zen-like startup that specializes in finding the value in processing the most unrecyclable stuff on the planet.

The city has installed 110 cigarette butt disposal canisters to help keep cigarette waste from entering the streets and waterways. Keep New Hanover Beautiful has joined forces with the city of Wilmington, N.C., to tackle cigarette butt waste. To help keep cigarette butts off the streets and out of the waterways, the city has installed 110 cigarette butt disposal canisters. Once the containers are full, volunteers from Keep Hanover Beautiful will mail them to N.Y.-based TerraCycle, which will melt the materials down into hard plastic that can be used to make products like plastic pallets and building materials.

Tone Shop Guitars is Dallas-Fort Worth’s newest full-service and independently owned guitar shop. TSG was founded by two local musicians: Grant Sheffield and Tommy Roberts. In addition to being musicians themselves, Grant and Tommy are passionate about providing a world class selection of instruments, accessories and information to fellow music lovers. You can find all the gear you need to make great music, including acoustics, electrics and amps at Tone Shop Guitars. Further, TSG has the largest acoustic showroom in the DFW area featuring one of three Taylor guitar rooms in the county. And they are proud to be area’s premiere dealer for leading brands including Taylor, G&L, Guild, Martin, Takamine, Reverend and more.

This June 5-9 is the Ocean Conference, the high-level United Nations Conference to support the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. Coinciding with the global World Oceans Day, the Ocean Conference designed an official program for discussion around creating policy that ultimately enhances the conservation and sustainable use of oceans.

Local musicians are invited to attend a free recycle and restring event at Village Music Shoppe in Mastic Saturday, June 3 at 12 p.m. Sponsored by D’Addario, musicians can bring any old instrument strings for recycling and get their electric or acoustic guitars restrung with D’Addario NYXL or Nickel Bronze Acoustic strings. Old strings collected during the event will be recycled through Playback, D’Addario’s free, national recycling program.

Local musicians are invited to attend a free recycle and restring event at Village Music Shoppe in Mastic Saturday, June 3 at 12 p.m. Sponsored by D’Addario, musicians can bring any old instrument strings for recycling and get their electric or acoustic guitars restrung with D’Addario NYXL or Nickel Bronze Acoustic strings. Old strings collected during the event will be recycled through Playback, D’Addario’s free, national recycling program.

This June 5-9 is the Ocean Conference, the high-level United Nations Conference to support the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. Coinciding with the global World Oceans Day, the Ocean Conference designed an official program for discussion around creating policy that ultimately enhances the conservation and sustainable use of oceans. While the UN has the significant task of galvanizing nations, government agencies and NGOs, creating discussion and initiative at the community level is key to reducing ocean pollution. But getting people working to solve environmental issues can take some strategy, especially for one this vast. Rising marine temperatures, ocean acidification and a seemingly insurmountable ocean plastic problem are topics that can be intimidating and are largely out of sight, out of mind for the average consumer.

Who knew that when I joined TerraCycle, that I would end up adopting and protecting 16 acres of land. Let me start from the beginning… I first joined TerraCycle in an attempt to recycle my beauty products, this included my makeup and bathroom product bottles. They offer programs that will collect certain kinds of trash and recycle them. They have free recycling programs, large scale recycling programs as well as zero waste boxes, which are not free. There were about 28 free recycling programs when I first joined in 2015 and they now they have about 36 free recycling programs. The programs all have a different point reward system for how much trash you’re able to return to the program. They also offer a variety of contests and promotions for different programs at different times. You can collect points and either receive a cash reward, collect point for a specific school or organization or donate the points to a good cause.  The organizations can provide resources such as clean drinking water, provide a meals, adopt wildlife land, reduce two pounds of carbon from the atmosphere, provide education or even help disaster victims. As for me, I donated my points to adopting 1,800 square feet of wildlife land and I wanted to know more about the program so I visited National Wildlife Federation’s Adopt a Wildlife Acre Program.