Most of us try to recycle when we can, but I recently read an article that stated as much as half of what we put in our recycle bins never gets recycled.  Then there are things that can be used again that we throw away all the time:  clothing, wrappers, bags and so many other things that you can’t even imagine.

William & Mary’s Committee on Sustainability has awarded funding to 19 sustainability projects for the fall 2014 semester. Solo Cup Recycling: Number six plastic cups, including but not limited to Solo cups, are not recyclable on William & Mary’s campus. This project is an initiative to collect these kinds of plastic cups on a weekly basis from fraternity houses and recycle them with a company called Terracycle, drastically reducing the amount of potentially recyclable waste that goes to the landfill.

Students at BelovEd Community Charter School of Jersey City learned about recycling and about the power of the vote two weeks ago, after accumulating 178,303 playground credits to win the Recycled Playground Challenge, a contest put on by Colgate, ShopRite, and TerraCycle recycling.

WKOW 27 broadcaster and Dr. Nicole Anderson with Artisan Dental explain TerraCycle's Tom's of Maine Natural Care Brigade and Colgate Oral Care Brigade.

TerraCycle is an international upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products. TerraCycle is widely considered the world’s leader in the collection and reuse of non-recyclable, post-consumer waste. TerraCycle works with more than 100 major brands in the U.S. and 22 countries overseas to collect used packaging and products that would otherwise be destined for landfills. It repurposes that waste into new, innovative materials and products that are available online and through major retailers.

As Alice Staley watched, the contents of her car trunk were tossed into the maw of a recycling truck. Staley, of Bloomington, was among several hundred people who dropped off a variety of household goods at America Recycles Day, held Saturday at Illinois Wesleyan University.

We value recycling in our society because it finds secondary use for materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill. The biggest drawback to this from a material perspective is that the recycled products almost always diminish in quality each time they are processed (or  “downcycled”). Steel, aluminum and glass may be endlessly recyclable, but the virgin plastic in a water bottle is not. This limits the potential for reuse across a wide variety of waste streams, pre and post-consumer packaging included, to the point that the ultimate end-of-life destination is still usually the landfill or incinerator. This is a far cry from what many in the field of sustainability would say is the most ideal reuse model: a circular economy.

TerraCycle is on a mission to eliminate the idea of waste. They do this by creating waste collection programs (each one is called a “Brigade”) for previously non-recyclable, or difficult-to-recycle, waste. The collected waste is then converted into new products, ranging from recycled park benches to upcycled backpacks.

Americans generate about 30 percent of the world’s municipal solid waste, and in 2012, every American produced an average of 4.38 pounds of waste per day. After composting and recycling, more than 18 percent of that waste is attributed to plastics alone. This environmental impact is exacerbated by the fact that much packaging cannot be recycled because it consists of multiple layers of different plastics. What can we, at Beloit College, do about this?

There are many things, that I reluctantly put in the trash, that can be reused: The 50+ a day Capri drink bags, Red Cups and cigarette butts can all be sent to Terracycle. The 4 to 10 plastic food containers- a day can be cleaned up and recycled.