Founded in 2001, TerraCycle takes someone’s trash and turns it into someone else’s treasure. The company collects non-recyclable, post-consumer materials and remakes them into other consumer products, including backpacks and flower pots. Fast forward to 2014, when the company’s revenues hit about $19 million. Clearly, there’s money to be made in garbage.

Another important step was finding a company, Terracycle, that will recycle items not normally accepted by recycling companies: “markers, pens, old binders, earplugs, gloves you would wear to change a diaper,” said Kristof. “Through Terracycle you can even get money for your school.” Terracycle works with schools, often larger schools - Dryden school district has a recycling partnership with the company- where they organize “brigades” of students sorting recyclables into separate categories.

Thanks to a Hilton Travel with a Purpose grant, Keep Golden Isles Beautiful now can store and ship designated non-traditional recyclables to TerraCycle for recycling. Items now accepted by appointment at the Keep Golden Isles Beautiful offices include, oral care products, beauty/personal care products, chip/snack bags, tape dispensers, cereal bags, solo cups, pens/markers/highlighters, drink pouches, Brita/PUR products and cigarettes.

The TerraCycle campaign took back from the landfills more than 220,000 waste units that were re-purposed by TerraCycle for a rebate value of $2,218.60. In addition, TerraCycle accepted 102,990 units of cigarette waste for upcycling. While there is no cash value for that portion of the donations, the rewards to the earth are priceless.

As Albe Zakes — the VP of TerraCycle, a global recycling network — led me through the company's headquarters, he stopped in his tracks once we reached a piece of scrap metal inscribed with the company's logo. "Oh, that must be new. Definitely wasn't here yesterday," he said, and we continued our tour. That brief moment perfectly exemplified the innovative, ever-changing company. The brainchild of environmentally minded entrepreneur Tom Szaky, TerraCycle has a mission almost as creative as its office space — a New Jersey warehouse entirely furnished with material that's been reused and recycled.

The school earned the playground after winning the TerraCycle Recycled Playground Challenge earlier this year. Flanders joined schools from across the state and throughout New York, New Jersey, Penn., Delaware, and Maryland, who were participating in the Colgate Oral Care Brigade, a free recycling program offered by Colgate and TerraCycle. All schools participating in the program were eligible to compete for the new playground, and Flanders took first place in the contest by collecting oral care products and casting online votes - tallying up a total of 240,436 "playground credits."

Cascade Ridge Elementary School students have kept thousands of apple sauce and drink pouches out of the landfill since the school joined TerraCycle’s national recycling program. Founded in 2001, TerraCycle is an international company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products to repurpose the material into affordable products. Cascade Ridge participates in two of 30 programs TerraCycle offers, according to the elementary school’s Dean of Students Jennifer Sehlin.

Through a partnership with the upcycle and recycle company TerraCycle, the Superior company has provided 50 meals to people in need, made a donation to support Sandy Hook Elementary following the 2012 shootings there, and brought clean water to 11 adults in Third World countries for a year. Employees have also donated more than 700 eggs cartons since 2013 to a local farmer and about 50 used cell phones to the Red Cross.

With the help of a program called TerraCycle, St. Kate’s students are flexing their creativity and caring for the earth all at once. According to their website, TerraCycle is “a highly-awarded, international upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products.”  Materials like old toys, Capri Sun pouches, and material that isn’t fit for its original purpose are being saved from a trip to the landfill and instead finding their way into participating companies and institutions, including St. Kate’s, so that they can be made into new products.

Your family will probably be generating a little more trash than usual over the next few weeks as you make your way through unwrapping your favorite Halloween treats. Instead of tossing all those wrappers in the rubbish bin, use Terracycle’s Snack Wrapper Zero Waste Box and turn your trash into recycled plastic products like park benches or watering cans. The boxes, which are available in three sizes, come with a prepaid return shipping label, so just fill them up and send them on their merry soon-to-be recycled way.