What began as a watershed victory for environmental activism has grown into a month-long observation of global proportions: April 22nd’s Earth Day has expanded into the April-long Earth Month. Since Earth Day’s origin in 1970, the month of April has continued to be an important time for environmental action, observation, and celebration. The campaigns and initiatives slated for this April have the chance to make long-lasting and considerable impacts, galvanizing activists and conscious consumers into action. See if you can get involved with some or all of the initiatives, events and activities scheduled this Earth Month, and get your family, friends and community to join you.

March For Science

A variety of collaborative international conservation and environmental efforts occur throughout Earth Month each year, using April as a time to heighten public awareness of environmental issues and the need to create realistic, actionable solutions. This year, in the wake of the U.S. presidential election and increased global political activism, there are more opportunities than ever for people to have their voice heard, the old-fashioned way. In over 300 cities across the world and in Washington, D.C., The March for Science is a series of rallies and marches set to be held on Earth Day, April 22 to celebrate science and safeguard the scientific community. Inspired by the 2017 Women's March of January 21, 2017, The March for Science is an international, non-partisan event for scientists, science enthusiasts, and concerned citizens in favor of scientific evidence-based policymaking. You can find a satellite march near you here.

Tom’s of Maine Less Waste Challenge

Manufacturers and major brands are increasingly stepping in to invest in the next generation of environmentalists. This coming Earth Month, we are working with our sponsorship partner and natural care brand Tom’s of Maine to help support their second Less Waste Challenge, which last year saw thousands of individuals and families pledge to reduce a collective 130,000 pounds of waste from their everyday lives. Toys are a waste stream that children understand, adding an element of engagement that brings complex waste management issues to their level. This year, Tom’s of Maine will not only continue to share expert tips and waste-reduction strategies on their program landing page and social media platforms, but run a toy recycling program through TerraCycle during the campaign. Consumers will be able to download a free shipping label directly from the program landing page to solve for old toys. Make the pledge here.

D’Addario Recycle and Restring Events

Did you know that musical instrument strings are not recycled through municipal recycling programs? It is estimated that more than 1.5 million lbs. of instrument string metal could be put into landfill every year. This April, musicians nationwide are invited to attend a free recycle and restring event at their local music supply store.  Sponsored by D’Addario, the instrument manufacturers, 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 powered by TerraCycle. Find your nearest recycle and restring event here.

Rider has been ranked in the Princeton Review’s top most sustainable schools in the country and one of the greenest universities in the world by the UI GreenMetric World University Ranking. But what has Rider done to get where it is today? The university has implemented a number of programs that have quickly moved us up in the ranks. One of those programs occurs in every dorm and has a high percentage of Rider’s residential students participating: the amazing Terracycle health and beauty brigade. Terracycle started as a local company based out of Trenton and now operates globally. The health and beauty brigade, in particular, collects difficult-to-recycle plastics that are commonly found in the packaging of beauty and personal care products and either upcycles or recycles them into new products. Shampoo bottles, for instance, are a perfect example of what Terracycle likes to reuse and recycle. When asked what she thinks of the Terracycle health and beauty brigade, Resident Advisor Talauria Wright says, “I love the health and beauty brigade, it’s super easy. Hill Hall always does a fantastic job recycling. The green bucket is always full of stuff.” With these materials, Terracycle takes the shredded and melted down plastics and either makes amazing new packaging for companies like Garnier, Febreze and Colgate or creates outdoor furniture, garden supplies and tote bags. Rider has sent over 27,300 items to Terracycle through the health and beauty brigade so far. Not only does Rider benefit from the health and beauty brigade, but also from Terracycle’s cigarette waste recycling program. Terracycle upcycles cigarette waste into fertilizer and packing peanuts. Rider has sent a whopping total of 24,000 butts to Terracycle so far. Thanks to the cigarette waste recycling program, the university safely disposes of the toxic materials commonly found in cigarettes. Rider is gearing up to begin a new brigade, the writing utensil brigade, thanks to senior Eco Rep Ambria Dell’Oro. With the writing utensil brigade, students will have a safe and sustainable way to dispose of their used writing utensils. It is estimated that over 2 billion mechanical pencils are sold in the United States alone. Terracycle has begun a program to safely recycle all the different writing utensils students use that typically end up in the garbage at the end of their useful life. When asked why she thought Terracycle’s writing utensil brigade would be a good fit for Rider, Ambria Dell’Oro said,“ If you really think about it, not all that much plastic goes into making a pen or mechanical pencil, but 2 billion pens and mechanical pencils in the trash equals a lot of plastic that will never biodegrade. I wanted to start this program at Rider to ensure that students knew about this unknown problem and to make sure students had a way to dispose of these writing products sustainably.” Thanks to Terracycle, Rider is able to properly dispose of difficult-to-recycle materials. Students and faculty alike can rest easy knowing that they have the opportunity to make a difference.

Tom's of Maine is partnering with the recycling experts at TerraCycle again this spring to promote its #LessWasteChallenge and Toy Recycling Program. Tom's of Maine is providing families with free shipping labels to mail broken toys to TerraCycle for recycling. Susan Dewhirst, goodness programs manager at Tom's of Maine, says, "The act of recycling a toy together can be a way for parents to start a conversation with their kids about what we can all do to take care of the planet for generations." Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle adds, "Toys are a waste stream people don't think about that often, but the amount of broken toys sent to landfills is significant and there hasn't been a way to dispose of them. Parents can now feel good knowing that broken toys can be 100% recycled or reused, which helps planet Earth." Zero Waste By 2020 Tom's of Maine is taking its own #LessWasteChallenge by having a goal of zero waste to landfills by 2020 at its manufacturing facility in Maine. The company has also partnered with TerraCycle to create the Natural Care Recycling Program, which now has 8,590 participating locations. The program collects personal care packaging from any brand, helping to keep 700,000 pieces of packaging out of landfills since the program began in 2012.

Tom's of Maine is partnering with the recycling experts at TerraCycle again this spring to promote its #LessWasteChallenge and Toy Recycling Program. Tom's of Maine is providing families with free shipping labels to mail broken toys to TerraCycle for recycling. Susan Dewhirst, goodness programs manager at Tom's of Maine, says, "The act of recycling a toy together can be a way for parents to start a conversation with their kids about what we can all do to take care of the planet for generations." Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle adds, "Toys are a waste stream people don't think about that often, but the amount of broken toys sent to landfills is significant and there hasn't been a way to dispose of them. Parents can now feel good knowing that broken toys can be 100% recycled or reused, which helps planet Earth." Zero Waste By 2020 Tom's of Maine is taking its own #LessWasteChallenge by having a goal of zero waste to landfills by 2020 at its manufacturing facility in Maine. The company has also partnered with TerraCycle to create the Natural Care Recycling Program, which now has 8,590 participating locations. The program collects personal care packaging from any brand, helping to keep 700,000 pieces of packaging out of landfills since the program began in 2012.   

GLOUCESTER — Local environmental groups are gearing up for an ultimate spring cleaning event in five locations across the city next month. The Gloucester Clean City Commission, One Ocean One Love Shop, the One Hour at a Time Gang and Cape Ann SUP are partnering for the city-wide clean up. The Great Gloucester Cleanup is scheduled, appropriately, for Earth Day on April 22 from 9 to 11 a.m.  The five locations to be cleaned include Cripple Cove, Pavilion Beach, Main Street, St. Peters Square and the Eastern Point Lighthouse. Volunteers will meet at the site of their choice at 9 a.m. There will be a party with free food afterward for all volunteers from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at One Ocean, One Love Shop at 47 R Parker St.  Each site will have a point person to help organize volunteers and keep track of the number of bags collected.  “We are excited to bring these groups together and we would love to see good turnout from different neighborhoods and different groups. I think this has potential to be a great event and hopefully we can make it an annual event in the future,” Clean City commissioner Ainsley Smith said. This year, the groups are partnering with TerraCycle, and all hard plastic debris will be collected and upcycled to produce Procter & Gamble’s new line of recycled bottles. In January, Procter & Gamble announced a partnership with TerraCycle to make its Head & Shoulders shampoo bottles both recyclable and made of up to 25 percent “beach plastics” — trash removed from waterways including beaches, oceans and rivers.

We’re following the progress of the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative’s conversion of their North End land into a fully sustainable urban agrihood. The next project on the list includes building a new community space and water harvesting cistern this summer. The cistern will be located on Horton street where a formerly blighted and recently decommissioned home sat abandoned. The home’s foundation was saved and will be transformed into a 16,000-gallon, 25’x40’x2.5’ cistern. The cistern will be used to prevent water run-off into Detroit’s sewer system, reduce the reliance on the grid, and irrigate MUFI’s adjacent two-acre urban farm. The cistern is made possible by grants from Garnier in partnership with TerraCycle and Target Corporation. Aaron Scarlata, active water scape architect who specializes in the planning and use of water in the landscape, is donating the installation of the cistern. After completion of the cistern, MUFI will create an outdoor gathering space for the community and visitors with four eight-foot picnic tables, 10 square picnic tables, four gazebos, and 45 pieces of plastic lumber. The materials are made from recycled beauty packaging collected through Garnier and TerraCycle’s Personal Care and Beauty Recycling Program. The gazebos will be used as MUFI’s street side market. MUFI, the all-volunteer nonprofit, won the materials and a $25,000 grant last year during Garnier’s Green Garden 2016 Giveaway contest. MUFI is currently working on transforming a vacant three-story building into a community center and healthy food cafe. They currently have a Patronicity campaign to raise funds for the urban agrihood. “We look at abandoned properties in our neighborhood as opportunities to build community assets, said Tyson Gersh, president of MUFI. “By using creativity to solve a problem, we can demonstrate how innovations in agriculture can be applied to improve neighborhoods.”

The site of a razed home in Detroit's North End neighborhood is being transformed into a rain water harvesting cistern and recreational space. The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative project at 325 Horton St. is being supported by $100,000 in corporate grants. Minneapolis-based Target Corp. provided the all-volunteer nonprofit a $25,000 grant to convert the roughly 2,300-square-foot property into a cistern using technology produced by Saginaw-based Blue Thumb Inc., MUFI President Tyson Gersh said. France-based Garnier LLC also provided a $25,000 grant, in addition to a $50,000 grant in conjunction with New Jersey-based TerraCycle, to develop outdoor recreational space and supporting infrastructure, he said. "This is important for urban agriculture as a whole, which struggles to get water as a whole. Through the automated system, we've optimized our own irrigation practices that cuts the amount of time that it takes to water our crop," Gersh said. This blighted home in Detroit's North End neighborhood was razed by Michigan Urban Farming Initiative for $5,000 to make way for a cistern and outdoor community recreation space to be completed this summer. With the city of Detroit spending about $13,000 on average to tear down homes in its demolition program in 2016, MUFI found a less expensive option. The organization spent roughly $5,000 to knock down the dilapidated superstructure while preserving the foundation. Gersh said MUFI will repurpose the foundation and the home's utilities. The 16,000-gallon cistern will be installed in the foundation to feed the irrigation system for the nonprofit's 2-acre urban farm next door while preventing water runoff into Detroit's sewer system. This is a part of the organization's plan to create America's first sustainable urban agrihood. "The goal of the project is to make it a cost-competitive model for deconstruction," he said. "For about the same cost, we want to convert those blighted properties into something functional, specifically blue infrastructure, that adds value." Blue infrastructure refers to the practice of diverting rainwater and melting snow from a city's sewer/storm water system into ponds, fields and other natural settings. Once the cistern is complete, MUFI plans to use the Garnier and TerraCycle grants to create outdoor leisure space for the neighborhood. The space would include more than a dozen picnic tables and four gazebos made from recycled personal care products packaging collected through Garnier's and TerraCycle's recycling program, the release said. The Personal Care and Beauty Recycling Program is an initiative to create green gardens, Garnier senior vice president of marketing Ali Goldstein said in a statement. "We applaud the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative for their hard work and dedication to beautifying the North End Detroit neighborhood," he said. "We are honored to grant the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative with a Garnier Green Garden and look forward to watching the community continue to flourish."

If you’re a part of a student group at your school, you may have to fundraise for your organization. But how do you go about raising the money? Asking people for donations can be totally intimidating and awkward. Luckily, there are plenty of creative ways to raise the funds you need sans begging, and HC has listed seven of the best. Hello, major cash! 4. Recycle Cosmetics, snack bags, Scotch tape, Solo cups and more Ashley Offenback, a senior and a member of an honors club at Penn State Berks, fundraises for her club through TerraCycle. This website lets you send your waste through different “brigades,” one for each type of recyclables. For instance, the Snack Bag Brigade, the Solo Cup Brigade and the Scotch Tape Brigade each accept the items they’re named after. Once you’ve collected a certain amount of waste (there is a minimum weight requirement), you register for a free TerraCycle account and download a shipping label. Then, you place your waste in a box and send it to the company free of charge. When they receive your recyclables, you are awarded TerraCycle points, which can be redeemed for a donation to your organization. You will receive $0.02 for each piece of waste, which can really add up if you make a collective effort to assemble items to send the company. You can also set up a Facebook event explaining why you’re collecting specific products and place collection bins for them in different areas around campus. Make sure to get permission from your school first, though!

Recycling is confusing, even for the most well-intentioned and informed conscious consumers. Capabilities of municipal recycling facilities vary from region to region, and items that are difficult-to-recycle sometimes get looped in with regularly accepted items.   Not all paper, metal, glass and plastic packaging is created equal, and many common items that seem to fall in the “recyclable” category are far from it. Knowing to “watch out” for these common household waste items will help you prevent contamination at your local municipal recycling facility (MRF) and ensure that the items you do recycle are kept at their highest value at all times:   1.         Black plastic Plastic is plastic, right? With regards to the types of plastic accepted curbside in general, we know this to be vastly untrue, but black plastic is a big recycling “watch out” that many people are unaware of. The optical scanners used to identify types of plastic at municipal recycling facilities using the reflection of light deem black plastic unrecyclable in the current infrastructure. Why? Black plastic does not reflect light. Thus, the rigid plastic of black microwave food trays, takeout containers and other items are not accepted by most MRFs, even if the resin number on the bottom is accepted in your bin.   2.         Gradient glass Glass is one of the most highly recyclable materials accepted by MRFs, but depending on where you live, some curbside programs require residents to sort colored glass from clear glass, or only accept clear and brown (both of which generally have high market demand). Once colored, glass cannot be turned into another color, so when it comes to gradient or multi-colored glass, the material is not recyclable because these colors cannot be separated.   When contaminants (i.e. different color glass or other materials) are mixed in with glass, it decreases the value of the recovered glass, increases costs and slows production. Gradient and multi-colored glass, then, is basically a contaminant to itself in the current recycling infrastructure. But on the up side, this discarded glass, if captured, is often milled and ground for use in concrete.   3.         Natural and synthetic packaging combos Multi-compositional packaging configurations (i.e. flexible plastic) are a recycling “don’t” due to the need for separation at the material level, but items comprised of entirely separate, recyclable waste streams become difficult if not isolated. For example, a coated paper coffee cup with a plastic top would not be recyclable if thrown away as a unit—the lid must be separated from the cup (which is generally not recyclable due to the plastic lining) and tossed in the recycling receptacle on its own.   Other examples of unrecyclable natural and synthetic combinations are paper blister packs with foil and single-serve beverage pods.   4.         Biodegradable and bioplastic Bioplastics can be broadly broken down into two categories: durable and biodegradable. For instance, the PlantBottle is a durable bioplastic alternative to traditional PET bottles made by Coca-Cola. Made with up to 30 percent ethanol sourced from plant material, the PlantBottle won’t decompose, but it can be recycled with traditional PET containers and bottles. It is important to note that this is an outstanding example, as not all bioplastics are recyclable.   Biodegradable bioplastics on the other hand, like increasingly popular PLA (polylactic acid), are exactly as they sound: in theory, they break down naturally in the environment or may be composted. However, in most cases, biodegradable bioplastics will only break down in a high-temperature industrial composting facility, not your average household compost bin. Plus, these are not recyclable.   5.         Post-consumer recycled content (PCR) The whole point of recycling is to capture the value of materials like discarded metal, paper and plastic for use in the production of new items. But the inclusion of post-consumer recycled content (PCR) in the production of these new items does not always equal recyclability. PCR plastic content is often multi-compositional and has little traceability, which means that once aggregated, it is difficult to know where exactly it came from and what types of plastic it is comprised of.   However, integrating PCR can result in a fully recyclable product. For example, Procter & Gamble teamed up with TerraCycle and SUEZ in Europe to create the world’s first fully recyclable shampoo bottle made from PCR beach plastic. Special sorting and processing logistics mean the right kinds of PCR content is used in the production of a bottle that can go in the blue bin.

In a move that could increase consumer awareness about marine plastic pollution — and thus, consumer willingness to pay more for products made from recycled marine plastic — recycling company TerraCycle plans to expand its beach cleanup programs to collect up to 1,000 tons of plastic waste globally. Earlier this year TerraCycle, in partnership with Procter & Gamble and Suez, developed the world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle made from up to 25 percent recycled beach plastic. The Head & Shoulders shampoo bottle will debut in France this summer. TerraCycle told Plastics News that the partners have major expansion plans. The initial beach cleanups collected 15 tons of material in Europe; Brett Stevens, vice president of material sales and procurement at the recycling company, told the publication that the company plans to expand collection efforts to North America and Asia. “The collection goals we’ve set forth in total approach I would say probably 500 to 1,000 tons coming off beaches over the next 12 months,” Stevens said. “It is very much not a fad. I think that we’re investing the staff and resources and building our programs with our partners, making this a long-lasting impact.” TerraCycle’s statements come as other leading companies are turning their attention to plastic waste ending up in oceans and other waterways. Last month Dell said it has developed the technology industry’s first packaging trays made with 25 percent recycled ocean plastic content. In January, Unilever CEO Paul Polman called on the consumer goods industry to address ocean plastic waste and employ circular economy models to increase plastic recycling rates. Adidas is also working to solve the problem of plastic pollution in oceans by turning this waste stream into new material for its shoes. But as environmental groups like Greenpeace and circular economy advocates like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation have shown in recent reports, more needs to be done. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, one-third of the plastic packaging used globally ends up in oceans and other fragile ecosystems. An earlier study by the foundation found there could be more plastics than fish in the ocean by 2050. However, as Waste Dive reports, the cost associated with collecting and cleaning marine plastic for reuse in products and packaging means virgin material is cheaper. “A coordinated global campaign that can demonstrate the path from cleaning beaches to putting new products on store shelves might help drive consumer interest in paying a little more for packaging made from this content.”