TERRACYCLE has been reusing waste for over a decade, giving it back to the consumer in the form of backpacks, non biohazardous cleaning products, scrapbooks, enviornmentally friendly fertilizers, and more. Check out this IPAD case made from what TERRACYCLE terms “upcycled” materials (think potato chip bags, and cliff bar wrappers). Triple nice!

Cloth diapering has become popular these days, but cloth toilet paper may be where some people draw the line. Not Christena Little. Little decided to transition her lifestyle to “zero-waste” nearly a year ago, and hasn’t looked back since. One exception Little noted was that her family doesn’t drink cow’s milk, so she still buys almond milk that comes in a container that is only recycled in a few places. However, Little mentioned www.terracycle.com, which lists collection “brigades” that accept items like this. The specific brigade will send you a box to mail them the items and they either make a new product out of the item or find another use for it. While Little admits that she and her family are still working towards becoming as waste-free as possible, she is working to hopefully “get there someday,” she said.

After Sea Angels collects the litter, members reuse the materials to create recycled artwork before dumping it. And any material that is not accepted by the Solid Waste Authority, goes to TerraCycle — a company that makes textiles out of recycled products. The Halaszes plan to add an educational element to the beach cleanups through the Sea Cherub program for children. “We want to expand our efforts and speak to classrooms. If we can get the kids excited about beach cleanups then they can change the future,” Robyn Halasz said.

We hear a lot of buzz about different social media networks and which one works better than another. In reality, using a combination of sites together is a solid strategy for reaching the greatest number of fans. Individual fans each have their own preferences as far as which sites they like and the types of information they prefer to receive on each. Having a presence on different social networks and understanding your audience is incredibly important. TerraCycle is a great example of a company using Facebook and Twitter together for a cohesive social strategy that addresses the needs of their audience. The New Jersey-based recycling company has won over 39,800 fans on Facebook and earned an additional 19,600 Twitter followers.

Students at Oakmont Regional High have raised money selling craft items like bracelets made from soda can tabs. They also have an account with TerraCycle and collect 2 cents for every snack wrapper they turn in. "That's our cash cow," said Archangelo. She said the school has embraced the program and every classroom has a box to collect wrappers for chips, granola bars, yogurt, along with glue sticks and tape dispensers. Club members spend a lot of hours sorting, folding and stacking the empty plastic wrappers.

Kubiak has placed four cigarette butt collection buckets in the outdoor smoking areas of Christkindlmarkt with a sign that says, "Make your butt useful." Smokers have responded and the buckets were brimming with butts last week. Kubiak will send the butts he collects to TerraCycle, a Trenton, N.J., company that specializes in finding ways to recycle items that previously were only sent to landfills. It launched the cigarette recycling initiative in the United States last month, company spokeswoman Lauren Taylor said.

Sustainable packaging: The reduction by 0.56 ounce in one of Honest Tea’s cartons resulted in the conservation of 354,000 pounds of material, not to mention the decreased fuel consumption needed to haul all those drinks from plant to store. Those incrementally smaller cartons, which encased the Honest Tea’s drink pouches for kids, was the equivalent of the amount of trash that 300 people produce in one year. As for those pouches, Honest Tea partnered with TerraCycle to upcycle them into consumer products.

Tom Szaky, 30, is the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, Inc., one of the world’s foremost leaders in eco-capitalism, recycling and upcycling. In 2006, Inc Magazine named TerraCycle “The Coolest Little Startup in America.” That same year Szaky was named the “Number-One CEO in America Under 30.” Szaky came to the U.S. in 2001 when he matriculated as a Princeton University freshman. In 2002, he took a leave of absence to dedicate himself full-time to starting TerraCycle, which began as a two-man outfit in a dorm room in Princeton. Today, TerraCycle runs packaging reclamation and post-consumer waste solution programs for major CPG companies, such as Kraft Foods, Nestle, L'Oreal, Mars, GSK, Kimberly-Clark Professional and many more. TerraCycle has expanded these recycling and upcycling fundraisers — which pay schools and non-profits to collect used packaging and products — into 20 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, the UK, Ireland, Israel and Turkey. In 2010, TerraCycle was named the 288th fastest growing privately held company in America in Inc Magazine’s annual listing, the Inc 500. In four years of running free recycling programs, TerraCycle has collected over 3 billion units of waste and donated over $4 million to schools and non-profits. In 2012, TerraCycle is projecting roughly $15 million in revenue.

Conrad Kubiak, an environmentally-conscious smoker, hates the sight of cigarette butts littering sidewalks, parking lots and roadways. "It makes me sick," he said. So now the well-known drum vendor, a regular at Musikfest and Christkindlmarkt in Bethlehem, is taking matters into his own hands. The merchant is collecting cigarette butts in sand-filled buckets this year at the popular holiday market so that they can be recycledinto plastic lumber, shipping pallets, lawn furniture and ash trays. Kubiak has placed four buckets in the outdoor smoking areas of Christkindlmarkt with a sign that says, "Make your butt useful." Smokers have responded and the buckets were brimming with butts last week. Kubiak will send the butts he collects to TerraCycle, a Trenton, N.J., company that specializes in finding ways to recycle items that previously were only sent to landfills. It launched the cigarette recycling initiative in the United States last month, company spokeswoman Lauren Taylor said.