Whether at a tailgate or a party, red plastic cups are ubiquitous around UCF. Now they can be reused to help other Florida creatures have a good time. Starting Sept. 1, Volunteer UCF's Animal Awareness and Environmental programs will be accepting No. 6 plastic rigid cups in an effort to help sea turtles. For every cup that is brought to the Volunteer UCF cubicle, TerraCycle will donate 2 cents to the Sea Turtle Conservancy.

We are excited to be doing TerraCycle again at RES this year. Not only does TerraCycle help the environment, it teaches our children to care for the earth. This year, some of the items we are able to collect have changed.

The National Geographic’s “Green Guide” ranked The Willow School as the nation’s second greenest school for its sustainable design initiatives and the Travel Channel’s Show, “Extreme Green” recognized The Willow School as “the most eco-friendly school in the continental United States.” The Willow School is one of the first schools in the nation to adopt sustainability as an integrated concept on its campus and in its curriculum.

Have you seen the store aisle for back to school?  There is so much there and hundreds of little and big sized crayons, papers, notebooks, backpacks, totes, etc... How do you decide what to buy? Do you take the kids and let them pick? Do you tackle the supply shopping solo for sanity? I take my youngest, but my teen can care less about shopping with me for supplies. We just do the clothing. I will find things on my own I know he will need. When in doubt, why not buy a product that has up-cycled the hard-to-recycle waste. Eco-friendly bags, lunch sacks and pencil cases from TerraCycle are fun and sport popular brands your child and teen love.

Last school year, Madison Simis Elementary Green Team students earned money and prizes for their school by collecting and recycling the drink pouches they use at home and in the lunchroom. Madison Simis Elementary students reached the third level of TerraCycle (www.terracycle.com) and Capri Sun’s Drink Pouch Brigade milestone contest by collecting more than 40,000 drink pouches. For their accomplishment, the school earned 50 TerraCycle wristbands and a vinyl banner announcing their achievement.

A floating swimming pool in New York’s Hudson river and a business turning cigarette butts into plastic pellets, hope to change perception of pollution and waste. By definition, a circular economy is a term for an industrial economy that is by design or intention, restorative.

Students and teachers at Sacred Heart School are the top collectors of lunch kits in the Lunch Kit Brigade, a free, national recycling program created by the trademark student lunch and snack company Lunchables Lunch Combinations and New Jersey-based waste recycler TerraCycle.

The kids at the Shawmont School in the Philadelphia School District have earned more than $2,000 by collecting drink pouches and sending them to TerraCycle, the Trenton, N.J., company that takes difficult-to-recycle packaging and “upcycles” it into products.

Holy Family Catholic School students have turned breakfast into cash for their school. They are among the top collectors of cereal bags in the MOM Brands Cereal Bag Brigade, a national recycling program.

Sold as fertilizer in used soda bottles, worm excrement set the scene for the still unfolding Cinderella story of TerraCycle. Founder Tom Szaky began TerraCycle in his Princeton University dorm room, then moved operations into a Trenton warehouse where the quirky company has expanded its recycling mission to include everything from cigarette butts to used diapers.