Jenny Bruno’s fifth-graders at Oak Grove Primary School were challenged to reduce their carbon footprint after studying the human impact on the environment. Students wore crazy hair and hats to help raise nearly $500 to begin an upcycling or recycling program at Oak Grove Primary. Using the Web-based Terracycle program, which turns trash into other products, students set up an upcycling center in the school’s cafeteria and in hallways to help with the collection of items. Terracycle upcycles items such as lunch kits, chip bags, drink pouches and cereal bags. “Not only does this program help reduce our carbon footprint, the program in turn for the goods sends funds to the school,” Bruno said. The funds will be used to purchase new library books. “The students are very excited about reducing their carbon footprint and keeping these items out of our local landfills,” Bruno said. After a month of collection, the students collected 573 lunch kits, 1,216 chip bags, 1,835 drink pouches and eight cereal bags.

Can Faith Middle School make it to $1,000 before the end of the school year? May 30, the last day of school, is fast approaching, but Faith’s ecology club and recycling coordinator, Julie Deckard thinks it can be done if people send in their drink pouches. From box tops to toothpaste and even mp3 players, Faith Middle School has been collecting items from the Fort Benning community for the past two years. By doing so, Faith has raised money for its school and for charity. Through recycling, she said, people can help with clean drinking water, meals and schools supplies or the environment by planting trees. Deckard has put in more than 650 hours to sort items and package them to be shipped to Terra Cycle, but it’s always easier with a team of people, she said. For those simply wanting to send in recyclables but think it may be tedious or complicated — it’s not, Deckard said.Simply rinse out containers and put them in plastic bags. You don’t even need to sort them by type.     

Terracycle's CEO Tom Szaky is featured as a guest expert for a new CNBC show called "Crowd Rules". Tom will visit 3 small businesses during the show and be part of a celebrity panel to determine the winner. Please tune in or share with your contacts. Below please find links to an advert and a profile of Tom on CNBC.com. Meet Crowd Rules Expert Tom Szaky  

St. Paul Lutheran School was one of two schools in Florida to receive the U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Award. The students, staff and families exhibited environmental awareness in student lessons and numerous student-led initiatives to make the campus "green." Fourth graders lead the way through weekly recycling efforts, including Terracycle, which involves recycling packaging from food products. A campus wide recycling effort in the fall kept more than 11,000 pounds of materials out of landfills.  Students are raising money from their recycling efforts to stock the school's ponds to help encourage more wading birds to return to campus.  

So there has to be other options right? Correct. Back in 2011 TerraCycle and Solo teamed up to create the Solo Cup Brigade, a disposable solution for the millions of single-use cups sold each year.

“Creating a soda bottle requires huge energy,” says Tom Szaky, CEO and founder of TerraCycle. “Then you drink from it, and it’s only gets one use after all that energy that goes into making it.” “People think that just because it’s plastic it’s recyclable,” says Tom Szaky, CEO and founder of TerraCycle. “I think [the PIC is] one of the most misleading symbols that exists in the recycling system.”  

Jubilate Childcare Center is working with Kimberly-Clark's Huggies branda nd upcycling/recycling pioneer TerraCycle to keep as much diaper packaging out of landfills as possible.

TerraCycle featured on WLTX (CBS)

A large gathering is usually where you’ll find them and when you throw the "handy dandy, easy clean up, red solo cups away" the cups will sit in the landfill for 14 years. Back in 2011 TerraCycle and Solo teamed up to create the Solo Cup Brigade, a disposable solution for the millions of single-use cups sold each year. Getting involved is incredibly simple. Individuals, schools, offices, non-profits and pretty much anyone signs up on the TerraCycle website. After you’ve collected plastic Solo cups you return them to TerraCycle, who will recycle them into playground equipment, park benches and outdoor furniture. For every cup received, Solo will donate two cents to Keep America Beautiful or the member’s charity of choice. So you get to help save the environment AND raise profits for a charity. That sounds like a fantastic deal! Want to get involved and start recycling your Solo cups? Find out more by visiting www.TerraCycle.com. By taking this step today we’re taking a step toward a better future.