Farmington residents Danielle and Randy Hall started collecting trash about two years ago and cashing it in through TerraCycle to help the Farmington Pet Adoption Center, their favorite charity. It requires a collective effort to accumulate enough trash for a sizable donation so they’ve turned to social media to spread the news, recruit volunteers and collect a lot of trash. The Halls collect accepted waste and ship it to TerraCycle to earn points, which are then redeemed for cash and donated to FPAC.

TerraCycle them! TerraCycle makes consumer products from pre-consumer and post-consumer waste and by reusing other waste materials. It's free, simply join a baby food pouch brigade, collect your pouches in a box, print their free shipping label and mail them your waste. It's actually quite easy.

Amy Hash, a Portland parent at Northside Elementary, works with TerraCycle to collect waste and prevent it from going to the landfill.

TerraCycle, Inc. was founded in 2001 by then 20-year-old Tom Szaky who produced organic fertilizer by packaging liquefied worm poop in used soda bottles. “Along the way, we developed into this totally different company of recycling the unrecyclable,” Taylor explained. “We haven’t found anything yet that we can’t recycle.” The company takes products like plastic gloves, used coffee filters or empty deodorant tubes and recycles them into materials used to make backpacks, coasters, benches and more.

The New Jersey based Terracycle organizes programs for hard-to-recycle items, like baby food squeeze packs, Tetra Paks, toothbrushes, wisp flossers, Tupperware, Nespresso Capsules, Scotch Tape, shoes, wine boxes, pet food bags, pens, and more. While a few of these items can be recycled curbside, their mail-in system is a great option if your municipality doesn’t allow it.

Dixon Elementary hopes to win a playground in the Drink Pouch Brigade Milestone program with TerraCycle. To win they just need 200,000 more pouches and they have collected 110,000 pouches so far.

Brita and PUR have partnered with TerraCycle to create recycling programs for their pitchers, bottles, filters, dispensers, faucet mounts and all packaging, effectively making the water filtration products 100% waste-free. For every recyclable Brita water filter used, 300 plastic bottles are saved. Not only is water filtering a more sustainable choice than the use of bottled water, it is more cost effective for consumers as well.

Highland Rim School has just reached the first level of TerraCycle and Capri Sun’s Drink Pouch Brigade® milestone contest by collecting more than 10,000 drink pouches. The students have earned over $1,500 for their school by collecting the drink pouches. The Drink Pouch Brigade® is a free recycling program that rewards people for collecting and sending their waste to TerraCycle® to be recycled or upcycled. Since 2007, Drink Pouch Brigade participants have kept almost 235 million drink pouches out of landfills and raised more than $4.5 million for charity.

As with GU’s recent partnership with TerraCycle® to make 100% of their packaging recyclable, the new bulk packaging is designed to reduce litter: fewer packages mean less trash, less material used, and a cleaner environment. Titled GU Energy Gel 15-Serving Pouch and Roctane Energy Gel 15-Serving Pouch, the jumbo-scaled GU will debut in November 2015 in the following flavors at an MSRP of $30.00 for both Roctane and Energy Gel: • Salted Caramel Energy Gel • Strawberry Banana Energy Gel • Sea Salt Chocolate Roctane • Blueberry Pomegranate Roctane