We all know that Earth Day comes in April. But since 1997, November 15 plays host to America Recycles Day (ARD)– a new day to stop and evaluate our environmental commitment, with help from the National Recycling Coalition (NRC) and Keep America Beautiful (KAB).  Of course, America Recycles Day is very important to TerraCycle because of our insatiable thirst for new waste to recycle. Yup, you can recycle your old, smelly shoes! Donate them to the Paired Shoe Brigade. In honor of ARD next month, TerraCycle is promoting some of the most unusual and unexpected things you can recycle. Dentures: In each set of dentures there is approximately $25 worth of metals such as gold and silver. By recycling these, the metals are recycled, and the proceeds are donated to UNICEF. Hotel Soap Slivers: More and more hotel chains are recycling their slivers of soap and giving them to the needy. You could also throw them in the heel of a pair of stockings to make your own soap-on-a-rope. Get involved here. Diapers: British company, Knowaste, has been recycling diapers since 1999. Later this year, TerraCycle will launch the first free pilot for dirty diaper recycling in the U.S.! This is definitely a positive development, as the average baby goes through approximately 6,000 disposable diapers by the time they are potty trained. Running Shoes: Recycled shoes can be made into building materials or, if they are not beaten up too badly, can be given to people who are unable to afford shoes for themselves. Check out TerraCycle’s Paired Shoe Brigade. Bicycles: By recycling bikes, people in third-world countries could have the opportunity to have the luxury of basic transportation. About 15 million bikes are thrown away in the U.S. each year. Check out Recycle A Bicycle to get started! Mattresses: A lot of mattress retailers have been taking on the act of recycling your old bed. They are taken apart, and about 90% of the material from the mattresses are being upcycled. Lots of options are out there, including Nine Lives Mattress Recycling. Pantyhose: Pantyhose can be sent to No Nonsense and they will turn the used garments into park benches, playground equipment, carpets etc. No matter what the material, it is important to stop and think about how to rescue it from a life in a smelly, wasteful landfill! Come back closer to America Recycles Day for more wonderfully weird recycling ideas!

[Episcopal News Service] Georgia Army National Guard Capt. Andrew Lane is a man on a mission. If it’s recyclable, “Captain PLaneT” aims to keep it out of the local landfill – and earn cash for his parish while he’s at it.   Lane launched a Tithing with Trash program at St. Gregory the Great Episcopal Church in Athens, Georgia, when he returned home from a deployment in Afghanistan in 2010. Since then, the congregation has earned nearly $4,800 collecting hard-to-recycle items such as empty toothpaste tubes and Solo Cups and sending them to TerraCycle in Trenton, New Jersey, to earn 2 cents per item. TerraCycle, in turn, recycles or “upcycles” the trash – turning it into “green” products such as backpacks fashioned from Lay’s potato chip bags.   “They’re not just doing it to hug trees or sing ‘Kumbaya.’ They’re turning it into artwork or consumer products,” Lane said.   The nonprofit TerraCycle partners with some of the world’s largest companies, who sponsor collection programs for particular waste streams – say, spent writing utensils or empty tape dispensers, explained Lauren Taylor, U.S. public relations director. Some sponsor only collection of their brands’ trash, while others accept any related items. Kraft’s “dairy tub brigade,” for example, takes all manner of dairy-product tubs, lids, foil tops and other packaging.   Individuals such as Lane sign up to join a sponsored trash “brigade,” collecting and shipping specified items via United Parcel Service for free to TerraCycle and receiving “points” they turn into cash. “The money earned needs to go to a charity,” Taylor said. “Somebody can’t just decide this could be a great side job for them.” TerraCycle “upcycles” some trash into useable products such as this backpack created from Lay’s potato chip bags. Photo/TerraCycletoday   “The majority of the people who collect for us are schools,” she said. They set up lunchroom collection points – juice-drink pouches here, candy wrappers there – often after a parent or teacher realizes how much trash is being pitched and thinks, “We’re throwing money away.”   It’s hard to quantify, but churches also participate, and St. Gregory is one of a handful of Episcopal churches signed up to benefit from TerraCycle trash, Taylor said. “We definitely know Andrew because he is just so energetic and just loves our programs and really motivates people to collect. … He is definitely among the most highly motivated.”   Lane is a sustainability evangelist.   “It’s really powerful, because we’re the only creatures in existence that we know of that generate trash that we have to pay someone to haul off,” he said. Without addressing sustainability issues, he said, “for our grandkids it could be deep, deep, deep trouble.”   “We might actually trash this planet and poison its water or run out of water … without an epidemic or a war.”   Lane has given diocesan council presentations about TerraCycle and met Diocese of Atlanta Bishop-elect Robert Wright while separating food waste at the Mikell Camp and Conference Center. “He actually came and shook my hand. He said, ‘I see you’re not actually just speaking; you’re a man of action.’”   In Athens, Lane is lobbying a Kroger grocery store to let the church maintain a collection container for TerraCycle trash. At St. Gregory, parishioners place items in assorted labeled bins.   “I see people carrying in their containers and standing out there and sorting stuff out in Andrew’s elaborate bins,” said parishioner Lois Alworth, a member of the church’s Green Guild/Creation Keepers committee that Lane chairs. “There’s not a whole lot that the church itself uses that TerraCycle takes. What we get is what people bring from home.”   “We all laugh and say because we’re Episcopalians everybody has lots of wine corks,” she said. “TerraCycle takes really odd things, [like] toothpaste containers, when they’re empty, and old toothbrushes.” Every four to six weeks, committee members gather after church for a “box-up event” to package the TerraCycle items for shipping, she said.

ortland, Maine - After a brief September hiatus, organizers embraced a bigger goal for the weekly Frugal Fridays series and renamed it "Sustain Maine". The Sustain Maine series is designed to raise awareness of local sustainability and community initiatives, and to connect the public with opportunities to become more involved. The 24-week series now culminates in a fundraiser on March 23rd at the Pirates' home game at the Cumberland County Civic Center. Last week's return of the series at Empire Dine & Dance was a huge success featuring Maine game-changers Tom's of Maine and their collaboration with Terra Cycle . Fans of the Portland Pirates, rock 'n' roll, and great local food and beer got together to celebrate sustainable ideas and build community. Judging from the success of this and August's inaugural events, the Pirates' have kicked off this season winning. The series continues this Friday, October 12th. Environment Maine will present on important and timely issues and initiatives.

The scary part about Halloween, for the environment, is all of the candy wrappers that end up in landfills when the trick-or-treating is over. TerraCycle , an organization that upcycles wrappers from all sorts of products, has a solution for this. TerraCycle has created a variety of products from wrappers, including bags, garden products, gifts, office products and supplies, pet products, school products and supplies, toys, and more. Back to the upcycled Halloween costume - Recyclobot - an upcycled robot costume. All you need are some supplies from your recycling bin, a little creativity, the instructions from TerraCycle, and you have a cool costume for your kid. Make sure you let your child get involved in the creating process too so they can have some fun and love their costume.

Hayhurst Elementary in Southwest Portland has gone from using seven 30-gallon bags of waste each lunch period to just half a bag. What’s the school’s secret?   Hayhurst PTA sustainability chairwoman Kendall KIC, (who legally changed her name to all caps), says that back in November of 2009 she discovered a program online called TerraCycle and has since kept 9,000 juice pouches out of the trash.   Capri Sun and other juice pouches had been among a slew of items difficult for schools to recycle, so kids ended up just throwing them in the garbage. But TerraCycle provides Hayhurst’s sustainability “brigade” with prepaid labels to ship out hard-to-recycle items, such as drink pouches, candy wrappers, chip bags and flip-flops.   The New Jersey-based company makes money from recycling the products and shares its earnings by granting points for the brigade to earn cash for the school or a favorite charity.   “Over time, it’s slowly building so people realize that we’re doing this,” KIC says. “My goal is at least 5,000 juice pouches collected during this upcoming school year.”   She keeps them packed in a yard-debris bag in her garage, but recently a school custodian allowed her space in the Hayhurst boiler room, where the juice pouches can dry. Some money comes back to the PTA for funding school activities, but that’s not the emphasis for organizers.   “About $200 a school year is not really what it’s about for us; it’s more about the sustainability piece,” KIC says.   Apparently, the secret is getting out, as this will also be the third year of a TerraCycle program at Sojourner School in Milwaukie. “Sojo” is an alternative magnet school and, at about 186 students, the smallest elementary in North Clackamas School District. Known for a high number of volunteer hours parents put in, it turned out to be a perfect early adopter of a TerraCycle program.   Starting with juice pouches in the first year, the Sojo program added toothpaste tubes, flip-flops, glue sticks and tape rings last year. TerraCycle program coordinator and former PTA Vice President Polly Lugosi says the brigades have extended their reach to neighbors not usually involved with the school. They’ve taken to collecting from soccer games.   “I find that people don’t throw them away even when they’re not at school,” Lugosi says.   At a holiday assembly this year, Lugosi says students will get a chance to vote on charities to donate about $100 collected from the program.   TerraCycle spokeswoman Lauren Taylor says a lot of people find out about the programs through the packaging, such as by seeing the labels on Capri Sun juice boxes, and then they go to the website. “It’s very easy for people to sign up based on the waste stream they’re looking to collect,” Taylor says.   Nationally, TerraCycle says its programs have raised $4.5 million for charity, thanks to nearly 31 million people collecting trash.   All schools are eligible, Taylor says. A tax ID number is necessary so the money can go to charity. The revenue from recycling can go to any charity — even the National Rifle Association (we asked).   The growing list of Portland-area schools getting involved includes Menlo Park Elementary School, David Douglas Arthur Academy, Faithful Savior Ministries, Earl Boyles Elementary, Mount Scott Elementary, Oak Grove Elementary, John Wetten Elementary, Chief Joseph Elementary, Sauvie Island Academy, John Jacob Astor Elementary, Markham Elementary, Laurelhurst Elementary, Parklane Elementary, Lynch Meadows Elementary and Creative Science School.

Although TerraCycle still has less than $20 million a year in annual revenue, it operates in 21 countries now. That means that my intense domestic travel — Minneapolis to Racine, Wisconsin, to Chicago — has morphed into intense global travel — Newark to Bogotá, Colombia, to Tel Aviv. No matter how you do it, travel is a strain — made worse, I believe, because airlines seem to have a hard time with customer service. Maybe it’s just because there are always so many exhausted travelers complaining. Or maybe it’s something more systemic. Who knows? But I continue to believe there are some easy fixes that airlines could make. Here are my top six. Outlets: How often do you wander an airport looking desperately for an electrical outlet? When I find one, I will even sit on the floor, beside a smelly bathroom, if that’s what it takes. But why is this necessary? Why not put them everywhere? Why don’t the airlines and airports make it something they market: Never search for an outlet! Nonreclining seats: This is almost insulting. The chair has a recline button built into it, but when you push that button and try to recline, it moves half an inch. And then the best part is when you are landing and the airline attendants make a fuss about moving your seat back into an upright position. The cabin P.A.: The cabin public address system, I believe, should be reserved for truly important messages, and they should be made quickly. No banter, no talking slowly, no pressing the button and then not talking. I don’t really care what the wind speed will be where we’re landing in eight hours or even what the weather will be — it will be what it will be. Not only is the chatter annoying, it cuts off whatever entertainment you are trying to enjoy. I’ve had flights where my movie seemed to be interrupted by sales pitches every 10 minutes — in three languages. Checking in: Depending on the airline and the destination, the cutoff time for check-in booths and kiosks to stop giving boarding passes is generally 30 minutes to 60 minutes before departure. Why? Honestly, just give me a chance to run to the gate and make it. I understand that the security and immigration lines are my obstacle – but let me try, especially if I have no bags to check. (Here’s a tip: If you ask nicely, they will often call the gate and have the gate authorize a boarding pass.) Lounge rules: Some airlines let you into the lounge only if you are flying internationally. But since when do Mexico and Canada (my homeland) belong to the United States? Most airlines apply domestic rules to destinations in Canada or Mexico regardless of the length of the flight (Miami to Vancouver, for example, is quite a bit longer than Miami to Bogotá). If you haven’t been to an airport lounge, it’s basically a bunch of nice couches, lots of outlets, free snacks and an open bar. Sometimes there are showers (but rarely). You can get in based on your loyalty-card status or with certain credit cards. But it’s rarely clear. For example, with Star Alliance, if you have a gold status, you can get into the lounge (in certain airports) if you are flying international. And you can bring a guest, but the guest must be flying Star Alliance, as well. These strange policies are especially annoying because you just never know. And, really, what is the incremental cost of allowing one more person into a lounge? Alcohol policy: Having a few drinks can be a nice way to knock yourself out on a long flight and ward off jet lag. But why is it that you can bring a sandwich and a Coke on board from an airport shop but you can’t bring a beer? I don’t think I’m asking for a lot here — although a free snack every now and then would be nice. What would you like to see?

Lots of Items Formerly Known As Trash can be recycled into new, slightly questionable items with TerraCycle.  I’m not sure anyone needs a Capri Sun tree skirt, but they pay cash directly to the school for candy bar wrappers, drink box pouches, and office supplies.

We came across a staggering piece of information recently: nearly half of the containers and packaging that ends up in landfills can be recycled. Half. That’s a lot of every-day items in homes across America that can be re-used. Our Bag The Box friend, Tom Szaky with TerraCycle, recently wrote a great piece for Packaging Digestin which he points out that statistic, as well as some other gems, like how a March 2012 Nielsen study showed that recycling was the most important environmental aspect of a product across both genders and all age groups. Recycling and, our favorite, re-using is so important to people, yet so many items go to waste. Why? Recycling -- or upcycling -- is easier than people may think. Earth911 came out with a list a few years ago that bears repeating. People don’t recycle or re-use because: -       It’s inconvenient, or they don’t have curbside containers to help sort. -       There’s no incentive to do it. -       It’s not economical. Sometimes earth-friendly packaging can be more expensive. While these are valid issues, we here at Bag The Box take issue with the last two. Look at our Malt-O-Meal cereals, for example. We’re priced less than our competitors, and one of the reasons for that is our packaging. And there certainly is an incentive to recycle and reuse; in fact, there are hundreds of them! You can send in used bags to TerraCycle so the team can come up with fun ways to make it into a wallet or gift bag. You can take on DIY projects on your own. You can donate to the Cereal Bag Brigade. But obviously, word needs to get out! If people aren’t aware of the incentives, they can’t take advantage of them. So Tom says in his Packaging Digest article, the frame of mind needs to change. He says the next time you see an empty box or wrapper, don’t just walk on by. Instead, “ask yourself not only where it came from, but also where it can go.” Where have your Malt-O-Meal cereal bags gone? What have you done lately to change your frame of mind?

Tom’s of Maine is partnering with recycling and upcycling firm TerraCycle on the Tom’s of Maine Natural Care Brigade, a free collection program that enables consumers to keep packaging from all Tom’s of Maine products— and other brands—out of landfills. The Tom’s of Maine Natural Care Brigade accepts toothpaste tubes and caps, mouthwash bottles and caps, deodorant/antiperspirant containers, plastic soap wrappers and floss containers, regardless of brand. For each piece of packaging collected and sent in, the collector earns points that can be put toward charity gifts or converted to cash and paid to any school or non-profit organization. Any individual, family, group or school can join for free at TerraCycle.com and all shipping costs are pre-paid. In connection with the launch, the company has announced the Tom’s of Maine Less in Landfills Sweepstakes, through which Brigade participants can earn $1,000 for the non-profit or school of their choice. Through the Less in Landfills Sweepstakes, Tom’s of Maine Natural Care Brigade leaders have up to three chances to earn even more money for their school or charity. Each shipment from a Brigade location received before Nov. 30, 2012, will count as an entry into the sweepstakes to win $1,000, with a maximum three entries per Brigade location.

Candy bars, of all things, could help stop hunger through Feeding America and the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State this 2012-13 play season. The CPA is involved in a program called “Candy Wrapper Brigade,” which is done through TerraCycle –– a company that creates national recycling programs. Lauren Taylor, a spokeswoman for TerraCycle, said anybody can sign up to be involved and wrappers can be collected in any way. Shannon Bishop, the downtown ticket manager for the Center for the Performing Arts said for every wrapper the CPA collects, it gets two points. The points can be redeemed on the TerraCycle website and can be used to “essentially buy things.” The CPA participated in this fundraiser last season and had “enough points to buy clean water for people in developing nations,” Bishop said. This year, TerraCycle is partnered with Feeding America, Bishop said, and the CPA aims to provide meals to malnourished children. The process, she said, is very simple. TerraCycle sends already marked postage and the CPA sends in the wrappers. “TerraCycle works with companies that recycle or upcycle the wrappers,” Bishop said. “They aim to collect items that typically aren’t recycled.” Once wrappers are collected and sent back to TerraCycle, they are shredded, melted and turned into plastic, to eventually be turned into another product, Taylor said. The CPA endorsed the fundraiser pertaining to candy wrappers because candy bars are sold at concessions at the theater and it was an item the CPA felt people would have a lot of, Bishop said. “We wanted to keep the wrappers out of our trash and out of landfills,” she said. This year the CPA’s goal is to collect 5,000 candy wrappers. “Last year our goal was to collect 600 wrappers, we ended up collecting 6,000,” Bishop said. “We appreciate that the [CPA] staff is raising awareness about recycling candy wrappers along with other products and packaging that would normally get sent to the local landfill, and feeding hungry people at the same time,” Taylor said. For those interested, there are two locations to drop off wrappers, Bishop said. The first is at the Eisenhower Auditorium. Bishop said there is a can right inside the front door in the vestibule near the brochure rack. Students can drop their wrappers off during normal business hours or during a performance. The other location is at the ticket window of the Penn State Downtown Theater Center, 146 S. Allen St., Bishop said. “I like to encourage students that they can send wrappers through the inner-office mail, too,” she said. “We’re planning to do it through the 2012-13 season, and hope to continue as long as TerraCycle is in business,” Bishop said. The Office of Sustainability at Penn State has a five-level program that gives a list of things to do campus-wide that are practical and promote sustainability, Bishop said. She said that the “Candy Wrapper Brigade” is more specific to the CPA. According to the Green.PSU website, “Penn State has been a leader in many aspects of sustainability education and operations.” “The Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State is doing an incredible job of helping the planet and other people,” Taylor said