EAST PEORIA — The Thinkinators are thinking again. The FIRST LEGO League Robotics team — consisting of teammates from Bolin School, Central Junior High School and East Peoria Community High School — presented its five-minute skit to teachers, parents and classmates Dec. 9 at CJHS. First Lego League is a robotics program for 9 to 14 year olds that is “designed to get children excited about science and technology, and team them valuable employment and life skills.”   The Thinkinators decided to focus on the issue of smokers who throw their cigarette butts on the ground, causing excessive amounts of litter.   “The invention we created solves the problem of cigarette butt litter. We’re not saying we support smoking. We’re just trying to find a way to eliminate waste. I think we all can agree that a cigarette butt on the ground is not a pretty sight to see,” said team member Mariah Tippet.   The team’s skit revolved around three high school students, one of whom threw a cigarette butt on the ground. His friend questioned him about his action, and they soon learn about the repercussions and harmful environmental impacts of throwing the butts on the ground.   Some may not realize it is illegal to throw a cigarette butt on the ground in Illinois, and offenders can receive hefty fines for throwing butts out of cars. Yet the Thinkinators said 45 percent of all littered trash are cigarette butts.   The Thinkinators’ solution to cigarette butt litter is called the Aluminator, a cigarette pack with a built-in, aluminum, fire-resistant strip that smokers push to the side, creating an area inside the pack to store the butts inside. After the pack is full of butts, the box can be transformed into a postage-paid package that can be sealed and mailed to a company called TerraCycle, which transforms waste into products.

Open Farm is the first ethically raised and sourced dog food on the market. The company is based in Canada and says it is rooted in the belief that the best ingredients are grown and raised by farmers who respect the land and the animals under their care. Its recipes are prepared with ocean caught fish, locally grown vegetables and meat that is 100 percent certified by the Humane Farm Animal Care Program, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of farm animals.Open Farm wanted to give people a humane option for buying pet food.

• The company’s meat and poultry is 100 percent certified by the Humane Farm Animal Care Program.
• The company uses ocean caught, seasonally sourced fish.
• 90 percent of its fruits and vegetables are grown locally.
• It set up a recycling program for its dog food bags with TerraCycle.

Does 3D printing have promise for reinventing manufacturing, as well as some other specialized tasks? Yes… but, for now, it still strikes me as a way to produce tchotchkes, knick-knacks, and trinkets (the word the Christian Science Monitor chose). But if the plastic that goes into those items comes from plastic that’s been recovered for recycling, that’s not a bad thing – right? Sure: obviously, there’s a demand for those tchotchkes, knick-knacks, and trinkets, so if we’re going to 3D print these things, why not do it from waste plastic? We’ve seen a number of efforts along these lines already; the latest effort comes from Brooklyn-based design firm 3D Brooklyn. After making the connection by looking at take-out containers they were throwing away, the company connected with Terracycle, the New Jersey-based company that figures out how to reuse materials that can’t be traditionally recycled. The answer: potato chip bags. No, not the potato chip bag you toss in the trash: I’d guess the necessary cleaning on those might make them too expensive. But Terracycle has a ton of post-industrial bags that needed to be put to use; using them to print 3D items seemed like a good fit.

When 3D printing and design studio 3D Brooklyn got overwhelmed by the plastic waste the company generated within a short period of time, founder Will Haude wanted to take action and reduce some of that waste by using recycled materials. Haude turned to New Jersey-basedTerraCycle, a company that among other projects for waste that isn’t fully recyclable, turns used potatoes chip bags into pellets. The bags are made of a PP/PE (polypropylene/polyethylene) blend, that can’t be recycled as the individual materials and therefor doesn’t find many applications for re-use. TerraCylce first cleans the bags, before they are shredded and turned into pellets. 3D Brookly then uses these pellets to extrude them into 3D printer filament. The 0.45 kg spool is made of 45 recycled bags and available in 1.75 mm diameter.

CLINTON – The Hunterdon Art Museum is working to conserve the environment by recycling foil-lined wrappers in TerraCycle’s Energy Bar Wrapper Brigade, sponsored by Larabar energy bars. Despite being new to the program, the museum is one of the top collectors of 2015, having recycled more than 4,800 wrappers since signing up earlier this year. “I personally try to live a low waste lifestyle at home and was very happy to bring that effort to my work place,” said Jennifer Brazel, director of education at Hunterdon Art Museum. “As an art school, we generate a lot of waste. Our staff eats a lot of Larabars and other foil-lined on-the-go bars due to our busy schedules and our summer camp students bringing snacks daily. “I really appreciate that TerraCycle makes the entire recycling process easy, plus the points program makes recycling a very appealing as a fundraiser for our nonprofit organization.” Through the recycling Brigade programs from TerraCycle, collectors can earn points that can be redeemed as a donation to a nonprofit organization of their choice. The Hunterdon Art Museum has chosen to fund their education programs as well as donate to Charity:Water, an organization that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries. “Everyone can recycle,” Brazel said. “It’s the most simple, efficient and cost effective way each person can reduce waste and play a role in increasing sustainability. Recycling cuts material costs, making recycled items less expensive than virgin material items. Plus, who wouldn’t want a cleaner environment? Recycling is a no-brainer.” Any school, organization or individual looking to reduce waste can find more information on TerraCycle and the Energy Bar Wrapper Brigade sponsored by Larabar at www.TerraCycle.com.”

A 3D printing company sells trinkets made from plastic bags, such as the ones that typically contain potato chips, that can't normally be recycled.

While it's incredibly exciting that 3D printing is a technology that has the potential to change the face of many familiar industries, it's alarming to think that most printer filaments are made from non-recycled plastics. Fortunately there are now several companies that are taking inventive approaches to 3D printing filaments by recycling automotive dashboards or using water-soluble materials that can be used in additive manufacturing. 3D Brooklyn is a company that's also approaching 3D printing from a perspective that fuses sustainability and creativity—its printer filament is made from recycled potato chip bags. The Recycled Potato Chip Bag Filament is a blend of polypropylene and polyethylene that is reported to have the same texture as wicker furniture. The unique 3D printing filament was created in collaboration with TerraCycle, a company that partners with brands on projects that involves repurposing waste.

Potato chips are a guilty pleasure for a lot of people. I hardly ever buy them, in keeping with my philosophy of “if you eat healthy at home, you can eat terribly elsewhere.” I tend to attack them at parties, though. No matter how frequently you buy or eat them, potato chips are everywhere, along with their weird, shiny, crinkly packaging. Is it plastic? Is it foil? It is plastic, but it’s an odd hybrid of polypropylene and polyethylene that makes up those metallic pouches capable of blinding you if the sun hits them a certain way. Unlike most plastics, potato chip bags’ blended plastic properties make them unfit for recycling – that’s a lot of greasy shiny material going to the landfills. Unfortunately, there are a lot of disposable products that are unfit for recycling, and that’s why companies like TerraCycleexist. The New Jersey company collects nonrecyclable or hard to recycle waste and figures out ways to recycle or repurpose it. They were the first resource that came to mind for Will Haude, founder of 3D Brooklyn, when he began to feel bothered by the amount of plastic waste his company generated. He wondered why his company, which manufactures custom 3D printed items from electronic accessories to planters, couldn’t start reducing rather than generating plastic waste.

A 3D printing company sells trinkets made from plastic bags, such as the ones that typically contain potato chips, that can't normally be recycled.