One of the eye-opening things you quickly learn as a parent is how expensive child car seats are.   Spoiler alert for the childless: Car seats are super-expensive. Also, your growing child will cycle through various car seat stages. Take it from me, a father of two.   These days, the average convertible car seat price is roughly $175 — although it ranges from $75 to $400 or more, depending on your needs, taste and budget.   One way to save money here is to take advantage of car seat trade-ins. Babies R Us, Toys R Us and Target have these in-store events every once in a while.   Right now, it’s Target’s turn. Target is holding a nationwide car seat trade-in event April 17-30.   It’s basically a two-week window to bring in your old car seat and get a coupon for 20% off a new one, good through May 31.   Once or twice a year, Toys R Us and Babies R Us do the same thing, usually offering a 25% discount. This usually happens near the beginning of the year.   The Car Seat Cycle of Life   These car seat trade-ins are especially useful because at some point, your child will outgrow their current car seat, or it’ll expire.   The federal government offers car seat guidelines based on your child’s age and weight. Here are some useful guidelines:   Infant seats: Newborn to 2 years, or 30-plus pounds. All-in-one seats: Newborn to 12 years, or 120 pounds. Convertible seats: Newborn to 6 years, or 65 pounds. Booster seats: 6-12 years or 120 pounds. What happens to the car seats that Target collects? It’s teaming up with recycling company TerraCycle to have them recycled into new products. They expect to keep 700,000 pounds of car seat materials out of landfills.   Consumer Reports has good tips on when to trade in your car seat:   When your baby is a year old. When your baby gets too big for their infant seat. It’s simply time for the next step. When your car seat expires. Yes, car seats have expiration dates. Check your car seat’s manufacturing label. They’re typically good for six years. After that, you can’t resell them on Craigslist or at a consignment store. Your Turn: Have you ever traded in a car seat?

Did a waste audit reveal your company’s recycling program isn’t exactly where you want it to be? Don’t be discouraged. Most companies hit pitfalls along the way, but those that stick with it can emerge as industry leaders. Take Procter and Gamble (P&G) and Microsoft, for example, which lead the consumer packaged goods and electronics industries in recycling. Procter and Gamble (P&G) set a goal to send zero manufacturing waste to landfill by 2020. So far, 56 percent of its global production sites send zero manufacturing waste to local landfills. Although it has less than three years left, the company is optimistic it can meet its 2020 goal — an achievement P&G says will keep about 65,000 metric tons of waste out of landfills. That is equivalent to the weight of almost 350,000 mid-sized cars. Manufacturing waste makes up about 95 percent of the waste P&G produces, with the remainder coming from its offices and tech center programs. The company works toward its 2020 goal by looking at waste through a new lens. As it states on its website: “The key is to not see anything as trash, but material with potential use.” Part of a successful recycling program is to reuse waste whenever possible. P&G offers a number of examples of reusing waste across its supply chain, including in Hungary where employees collect production scraps and send them to a local cement company that incinerates them to make energy for bricks. How a partnership can help a company Sometimes a company needs to partner with key recycling industry leaders to overcome plateaus and achieve their goals. P&G recently partnered with TerraCycle and SUEZ to produce a shampoo bottle made from up to 25 percent recycled beach plastic. The bottle of Head and Shoulders shampoo will debut this summer in French retailer Carrefour. And the rollout will eventually represent the world’s largest production of recyclable bottles made with post-consumer recycled beach plastic. The idea for the shampoo bottle came about a year ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, when the Ellen MacArthur Foundation challenged P&G to “drive greater recovery and reuse of plastics,” Helias told us. P&G felt Head and Shoulders, the “the leading shampoo brand in sales,” should be the label to “lead in sustainability innovation,” Helias said. P&G’s partnership with TerraCycle and SUEZ “brought about the largest solution to ocean plastic to date in terms of volume and percentage used in the package,” Tom Szaky, CEO and founder, TerraCycle told TriplePundit. The “problem of ocean plastic is immense,” Szaky explained. Over 25 percent of global plastic waste winds up in marine systems. “Only with a project that provide business value will we be able to clean up the plastic clogging our beaches, rivers, inlets and other waterways,” he said. P&G will also include up to 25 percent post-consumer plastic in over half a billion bottles in Europe by the end of 2018. That will represent over 90 percent of all P&G’s hair care bottles sold in Europe. P&G has used recycled plastic in its packaging for over 25 years — and it used 34,100 metric tons in 2016. Helias said the company “committed” to using post-consumer recycled material and helping to “build a marketplace by providing consistent end markets.”

Carelessly tossed plastic water bottles eventually go somewhere, and that somewhere might be a hidden cove off Plum Point on the Delaware River, a few miles north of Center City, that snags mighty amounts of trash as it flows downstream. Enter Jay Kelly’s class, determined not only to clean up the mess on the Jersey side of the Delaware, but also to log each and every one of the 7,917 pieces of debris found Saturday morning before the 60-mile bus ride back to Raritan Valley Community College. The students' mission, in collaboration with the nonprofit Clean Ocean Action, was scientific: Where does all the trash come from? What types of debris are most common? The garbage not only is ugly, it also may be swallowed by animals, killing or injuring them. And some chemicals, scientists fear, can end up in the food chain, contaminating other creatures. On Saturday, the class from Somerset County, N.J., found so many plastic water and soda bottles, it was impossible to take a step in a 75-foot length of the cove’s shoreline without the crinkling, crunching sound of collapsing plastic. In all, the students collected nearly 4,000 plastic bottles. But the bottles were just the start. Three dozen car and truck tires were wedged in the muck so densely they looked like headstones poking out of a graveyard. A rubber traffic cone stuck up like a warning. Two giant green plastic barrels, a playground slide, assorted combs, and a child’s tricycle were among trash snarled in nearby brush. Even after 2½ hours of work, the group could only pick up most of the larger items. The plastics were placed in large bags provided by TerraCycle, a Trenton company that specializes in hard-to-recycle items, such as severely degraded plastics. Rudy Sanfilippo, TerraCycle's manager of partnerships, said much of the plastic picked up in Cinnaminson could end up as packaging for new Procter & Gamble products. Items that couldn't be recycled were placed in a dumpster provided by the New Jersey Lands Trust. Left behind were the little bits and pieces that scientists call microplastics, left from decades of decomposing trash and small enough for animals to eat, Henry said. “We see little fish eating plastics and bigger fish eating the little fish,” she said. “So it ends up in the food chain. And the little plastics release toxins.” In just one nine-square-foot area, she said, the group found 152 drinking straws. “A lot of people are not aware of the problem along the river,” said Swarna Muthukrishnan, a scientist with Clean Ocean Action.  “If you got to the ocean beaches, it’s really visible, so people take notice. But lots of these river shorelines don’t get visited.” Kelly doesn’t think people are hurling their unwanted water bottles directly into the river. Rather, he thinks that trash tossed along roadways gets into storm drainage systems that are then overwhelmed during heavy rain, or melt from snowstorms. “It seems to me that most of this trash is coming from upstream during major storm events,” Kelly said. Coves such as Plum Point catch and trap the debris. He believes booms could be set up along the river above covers to funnel the debris into one area where it could be scooped out by heavy machinery. But, for now, he said, that’s just a wish. The more practical solution: Picking up and properly disposing of trash before it becomes a college class project.

Target is looking to make your Spring-cleaning efforts a bit easier this year by offering to take old car seats off your hands. In exchange for the used seats, the company will give you a 20 percent discount on a new seat of your choice. The trade-in program, which will take place in Target stores from April 17 to 30, 2017, is in partnership with TerraCycle — a company that recycles hard-to-recycle waste — which will work to upcycle the old car seats into new products. Through the initiative, Target believes it will "keep more than 700,000 pounds of car seat materials out of landfills." "In honor of Earth Month, we wanted to make it easy for guests to do something positive for the planet and their communities," says Target's chief sustainability officer, Jennifer Silberman. "We love this opportunity to give families an environmentally friendly way to dispose of unwanted car seatsand get the new ones they need just in time for Spring." If you're excited about this program and are planning to take full advantage of the coupon that comes with the trade-in, check out Target's lineup of car seats available to choose from while you wait for April 17 to roll around (your coupon will only be valid until May 31, 2017, so be ready!).

Has your little one outgrown their carseat, or perhaps you want an upgrade. Whatever the case, trade it in by taking it to your local Target starting April 17–30, for a coupon for 20% off any car seat in our stores or online, good through May 31. What happens to all those car seats they collect? Target has teamed up with TerraCycle to make sure they get recycled, or upcycled into new products. Through the partnership, they expect to keep more than 700,000 pounds of car seat materials out of landfills.

Target Stores, including the one in Vallejo — at 904 Admiral Callaghan Lane — has launched a car seat recycling/upgrade program, “just in time for Earth Day,” company officials announced. “It’s spring cleaning time and if an old car seat is on the toss list, Target has you covered,” the announcement says. “Target is teaming up with TerraCycle for a car seat recycling program from April 17-30.” Durign that time, people can drop off an old car seat at their local Target store to be recycled, and then receive a coupon for 20 percent off any car seat purchase in store or at Target.com, good through May 31, officials said. “After receiving positive guest feedback on a test of the program in 90 stores last September, Target is kicking off its first trade-in program available at most stores across the country,” they said. “The program encourages guests to upgrade car seats to the appropriate size for their child to meet car seat safety standards, and Target expects to keep more than 700,000 pounds of car seat materials out of landfills through the partnership.” Bins will be located either in the store’s “baby” section or near the front of the store, and guests can then locate a team member to receive the coupon, they said.

Admit it: You have at least one outgrown car seat moldering away in a closet or the garage. Everyone does, because you paid good money for it, used it daily, and then when you didn’t need it anymore, soon realized that no one wants a used car seat. Charities generally won’t take them, they don’t sell at yard sales, friends don’t want them, and if you had thoughts of recycling them so that the plastic and metal would get reused, you soon realized that was unlikely, if not impossible. (For more on that, see BabyCenter’s story Can you recycle car seats? Why that’s a tough question to answer) So what are you supposed to do with your old car seat? Just throw it in the trash? Well, yeah — unless you live in one of the rare communities that offer a car seat recycling program, that’s what experts generally advise: cut the straps so the seat can’t be used again, recycle any parts you can, and dump the rest in the trash. Not many people are comfortable doing that, and so the car seats in garages continue to wait for their final destination. But if you live near a Target, you have another option: Target is teaming up with nationwide recycling company TerraCycle to launch a massive — and unprecedented — car seat recycling program. Bring in your old car seat(s) (you can bring 4 per day!) from April 17-30, and you’ll get a coupon for 20 percent off any car seat purchase, in-store or online. You can use the coupon until May 31, 2017. Sharp readers may be wondering why I called the Target Take Back “unprecedented,” when Babies”R”Us and Toys”R”Us have been hosting their Great Trade-In events for years. Though both programs do exchange used baby gear for discounts on new stuff (and you may have believed/hoped that what you brought there was recycled), the store merely safely disposes of used gear instead of recycling it. And no shade on these stores, either, the principal problem with recycling baby gear is that it simply isn’t made with recycling in mind. It’s made to be safe, useful, and cute — not to be used again. Target expects to get more then 700,000 pounds of donated seats, based on what the company received in a test for the program that was held in 90 stores in September. Look for bins in Target’s Baby section, or near the front of the store. Don’t see one? Ask, and it shall be found for you. Veronica Rajadnya, a representative for TerraCycle, says that the donated seats will be collected at Target’s distribution center and shipped to TerraCycle’s third-party recycling partners in various areas of the country. There the seats will be pried apart, their components separated, the plastic melted and “pelletized,” and from there sold to manufacturers to make into new products, like “plastic wood” pallets, park benches, playground equipment, and furniture: “In [TerraCycle’s] courtyard we have a chair made entirely out of old Capri Sun packets, it’s the most comfortable chair ever.”

Want to help Hillcrest Elementary School win a new playground and help keep the town green at the same time? From today until June 30, you have a chance to do both by participating in a contest run by TerraCycle, and sponsored by Colgate and ShopRite. TerraCycle is an international upcycling (to reuse discarded objects or materials) and recycling company that takes difficult to recycle packaging and turns it into affordable, innovative products. To help click the link below and vote for Hillcrest Elementary PTO Somerset, NJ. http://www.terracycle.com/en-US/contests/colgateshopriteplayground2017 Students and school staff will recycle waste that would usually be thrown away, such as potato chip bags, candy wrappers, cereal bags, beauty product containers, and other clean trash. At the end of the year, the collected waste is sent to TerraCycle and they send back a check. Empty toothpaste tubes, boxes, old toothbrushes, and empty dental floss containers can be sent to the school. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received. So the community is encouraged to share the link above or the flyer below to help spread the word. Last year Hillcrest Students won toothbrushes and toothpaste of each student.  

Area cigarette smokers now have a way to help keep Galesburg’s downtown area clean and help the environment while taking a smoke break. The Galesburg Downtown Council will finish installing a total of 25 cigarette recycling receptacles in the downtown area this Monday, and the organization may order 20 more in the future. The council installed the first five containers earlier this spring, and they were so well received that the council decided to order more for placement on streets including Main, Seminary, Ferris, Simmons and Cherry. TerraCycle, a small business headquartered in Trenton, New Jersey, provides the containers for $70 apiece. Once the plastic bags inside the containers become full of cigarette butts, the council can ship up to 10 pounds worth of them to TerraCycle. The company then melts down the cigarettes and packaging into a hard plastic that can be remolded to make products such as plastic pallets, and converts the leftover tobacco into compost, according to TerraCycle’s website. Keith Legge, operations director for the Downtown Council, said he has collected about 4 pounds of cigarette butts from Galesburg’s receptacles so far. He plans to send the waste off to TerraCycle when he collects about eight or nine pounds. “The (more) cigarette butts we can get off the ground and into any sort of container, that’s great,” Legge said. “They don’t end up in a landfill anywhere, so that’s a big plus.” The council installed the receptacles on streets in the Downtown Special Service Area, which runs approximately from Chambers Street to Cedar Street (running east to west) and from Ferris Street to slightly past Simmons Street (running north to south), according to a Galesburg Economic Development Districts map. The council focused on placing the containers in spots where its maintenance team noticed a plethora of cigarette butts, such as outside of restaurants and bars. Bob Bondi, board member and past president of the council, had the idea to bring the containers to Galesburg when he visited New Orleans for Thanksgiving last year and saw the containers in the French Quarter. The council installed one of the containers outside of his Bondi Building, and in a matter of weeks he could already see a difference. “It went from being kind of bad to being pretty cleaned up,” Bondi said. “I think the only cigarettes we see there is something that blows from another part of the street. The tenants in our building have been very respectful with using the container, and we appreciate their cooperation. “A total of 9,886 locations currently participate in the cigarette waste recycling program, according to TerraCycle’s website. In addition, for every pound of cigarette waste collected, TerraCycle donates $1 to the Keep America Beautiful Cigarette Litter Prevention Program. The Downtown Council will host a meeting this upcoming Wednesday, and its members could discuss the possibility of buying 20 more receptacles. “I think we as a council and a board are so far pleased with how well it’s been received, and the opportunities to clean up our downtown in a positive way,” Bondi said.

Every business should be humbled by the limitless effort that Procter & Gamble pours into improving the quality of this world. P&G has published details of the green work it does in a yearly Sustainability Report since 1999, with the name changing in 2016 to the Citizenship Report (now covering the topics of Ethics & Corporate Responsibility, Community Impact, Diversity & Inclusion, Gender Equality, and of course Environmental Sustainability). This most recent report outlines the company’s greatest valuable accomplishments. With regard to the environment specifically, the innovations have been astonishing. For example, 65 percent of the USDA-certified ingredients contained in Tide purclean come from plants and other renewables, and the product is guaranteed to clean as well as the original – even in cold water. It’s also manufactured at a site which only uses renewable wind electricity, and boasts zero manufacturing waste-to-landfill. Another of P&G’s biggest brands, Charmin, sources all of its tissue from responsible forests, with Forest Stewardship Council and Rainforest Alliance Certified labels proudly emblazoned across the brand’s products. Waste from the production of Oral B, Head & Shoulders, and Always is repurposed globally, and Fairy dishwashing tablets will soon become phosphate-free, removing enough phosphate to cover 270,000 soccer fields. It is these kinds of achievements which enabled P&G to reach one of its long-term goals early – to reduce energy usage by 20 percent per unit of production by 2020. Last year, it managed this four years ahead of schedule. Earlier this year, the company made a new announcement which affected one of its most famous brands, and shone the spotlight on a sustainability issue not often discussed: beach plastic. Litter on beaches has been a problem for as long as packaging has existed, and in January this year, Procter & Gamble announced that Head & Shoulders had created the world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle made with PCR (post-consumer recycled) beach plastic. This innovation has been made in partnership with TerraCycle and SUEZ, and the limited edition bottles containing up to 25 percent PCR plastic will be sold in Carrefour – one of the biggest retailers in the world – in France. The aim is that by the end of 2018, in Europe, more than half a million bottles a year (which amounts to 90 percent of all P&G hair care brand bottles sold in Europe) will include up to 25 percent PCR plastic. While the company has in fact been using PCR plastic in packaging for 25 years, this announcement comes at a time when its use is to be vastly expanded across various brands. The Head & Shoulders project alone will require 2,600 tons of recycled plastic a year, and one of P&G’s corporate 2020 goals is to double the tonnage of PCR plastic used. Aside from anything else, this will mean far less waste being swept into the sea, which has been a huge concern; the Ellen MacArthur Foundation stated that there could be more plastic than fish in the ocean (by weight) by 2050 if huge changes are not made. I spoke with Virginie Helias, Vice President of Global Sustainability at P&G, on the day that the Head & Shoulders project was announced. My first question is an obvious one – how was this news received? “Overwhelmingly positively,” Helias replies with a laugh. “I was so thrilled. Our President [Europe Selling & Market Operations] Gary Coombe already posted about it on LinkedIn, and it received over 2,000 likes within a couple of hours. People are saying ‘why are you doing this now? Why not before? You should have done this earlier, this is amazing’. It’s been very positive, but the biggest impact has been within the company because everyone wants to do it, and it’s almost as if we’ve given permission to our staff to branch out and do things like this. It’s quite an unusual project and it hasn’t been easy, but this is the beginning of a new era.” Why now? The reason it hasn’t been done before, Helias says, is because something like this takes a great deal of planning and development before it can be rolled out to the public: “Imagine you’re representing a brand like Head & Shoulders – it’s not something you do lightly. It’s a big deal for us and there was so much preparation involved.” Helias admits that one large reason P&G’s efforts in the use of recycled plastics have escalated recently is the findings by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which triggered a reaction across the industry: “The idea of there being more plastic than fish in the ocean really captures the imagination of people, and the leader of our healthcare business simply said ‘let’s do something – something we can bring to our brand and engage with the consumer about’. It’s imperative that we raise awareness of the responsibility that we have in terms of recycling. The use of beach plastic is a very strong consumer statement, and we have the power to make a meaningful impact.” Partnerships The impact P&G makes is bolstered by its strategic partnerships, one of the most integral of which is the WWF (World Wildlife Fund). In 2010, both P&G and the WWF announced their goals and visions together, and the two organizations have worked together a very long time. “We work with anyone who is willing to help us with what we do,” Helias explains. “We choose people based on whether they have a similar agenda. Recycling is always an interesting topic because it’s something we have to act on. We have many projects with many partners who recycle a lot themselves and have the technology to support sustainability.” Alternative power P&G relies heavily on wind-generated electricity, and it has recently completed work on a wind farm in Texas, which will be an integral part in P&G’s long-term goal of powering all plants with 100 percent renewable energy. “The wind farm is now in operation, and it covers the electricity for all our public and homecare products in North America,” she says. “We are actually commercializing it on some of our products, where we mention on the pack that it’s powered with wind electricity. It’s been quite a milestone because it’s the first time we’re explaining that wind power is part of our vision and we’re on track to meet that vision. We also have a new biomass factory in Albany that will be in operation later this year, and that will provide all the heat for our Bounty and Charmin paper needs, something that is very energy-intensive.” What next? So where can P&G possibly go from here? According to Helias, the company is more committed than ever to its sustainable manufacturing and zero waste-to-landfill vision, and for the latter, it is more than halfway there. “It’s the holy grail,” she says, “and a big challenge for business. We have a pilot project in northern Italy and it’s the first time that it has been technically, logistically, and financially viable. That’s huge, and we’re very proud to have developed this business model. Water, too, is an issue we’re focused on, because people use it in the shower, when shaving, doing laundry, cleaning – hot water is always in use. The most important thing we can do as a company is reduce that, which is why we started working on cold water technology years ago. We’re always working on products that reduce the need for hot water and reduce our footprint.” This vision is endless and incredibly admirable, and the last time Helias spoke to us for one of our sister magazines, Business Review Europe, she told the editor that her personal vision was for her role to be eliminated. Is that still the case? “Absolutely,” she replies with delight in her voice. “When a business shows they can do something super exciting, and also work hard to reduce their footprint, then more and more businesses want to join in and eventually they won’t need me anymore. At that point I can happily retire.”