Method and TerraCycle, Inc have expanded the Method Refill Brigade program to accept pumps, triggers, refill pouches and almost any cleaner product packaging, regardless of brand. Schools, offices, families or individuals can collect traditionally non-recyclable cleaner packaging and send it to TerraCycle to earn money for charity gifts and donations through the newly dubbed Cleaner Packaging Brigade.

Yesterday my son threw away a ketchup bottle and a toothpaste tube. The ketchup bottle had another serving it it, about 1 1/2 Tablespoons. I grabbed it and turned it upside down on the counter and used the rest last night. I took the toothpaste tube and showed him how much product was being thrown away. Americans throw away 1 BILLION toothpaste tubes a year, along with shampoo, conditioner, and lotion bottles. On average, they leave 10% of the product in them. Not only does this waste the earths resources, it wastes your money!

MENALLEN TWP. — Menallen Elementary School has taken this school year to learn to value and respect the environment through recycling. Its efforts in a recycling program called TerraCycle resulted in the school placing among the top 50 schools in the nation. “We’re very pleased with the turnout from the community with the recycling program,” said Principal Paula Work. “It all comes back to our theme of respect. Respecting our planet, respecting our place on our planet, respecting our school, respecting others.” The TerraCycle recycling program started at the school three years ago. Students collect various waste products to be recycled and, in turn, receive money for the school. Products such as snack chip bags, juice pouches and fruit cups from each lunch period are recycled. Various other recyclables, including paper products and plastic wrappings, are brought in from the students’ homes. Each product is given a dollar value (about 2 cents per item) by TerraCycle and, when collected, the efforts add up to the school’s total. Menallen was ranked 36th in the nation.

TRENTON, N.J., June 11, in the year of our Lord 2012 – Computer peripherals are now more readily recyclable, thanks in part to TerraCycle’s Keyboard and Mouse Brigade®. Anyone can send in their broken, outdated, or extra keyboards, mice and webcams for recycling into anything from park benches to lapdesks, compliments of Logitech and TerraCycle®. This is the first collection program for computer peripherals that provides both an incentive for collecting and free shipping from anywhere in the U.S. Participants receive two points for every item they collect through their Brigade and send to TerraCycle. The points can be put toward charity gifts or converted to cash for donation to a charity or school of the participant’s choice. The program is ideal for small to medium sizes business, corporations, schools and even families.

Hopefully, Green Mountain will work harder to address this. On its website, it claims it's "actively working to meet the challenge of creating a pack that reduces environmental impact and continues to deliver an extraordinary cup of coffee." Incidentally, the cups for its recently launched Vue brewer are recyclable in facilities where No. 5 plastic is accepted. However, Vue is still a very small part of Green Mountain's business, having launched earlier this year with its original distribution through Bed Bath & Beyond(Nasdaq: BBBY ) and its own site. In February, rumor had it Green Mountain was discussing options with Terracycle, which has agreements for environmentally friendly solutions for Kraft's (NYSE: KFT ) Tassimo system and Mars' Flavia brewers, both of which compete directly with Green Mountain's Keurig.

Upcycle: the process of converting trash into new materials or products of better quality or a higher value. In a time where we are encouraged to recycle, compost, and make superhuman efforts to reduce waste, the concept of making something nice out of what would otherwise be garbage is certainly not foreign. But upcycling is more than just reusing plastic grocery bags to pick up dog poop or dusting with your husband’s old undershirts. It’s creating something of real value out of literal junk. One of the most prolific upcyclers is Terracycle, an organization based in Trenton, N.J., with more than 20,000 volunteers. Participants “choose a waste stream,” collecting packaging from specific products – many of which were previously hard or impossible to recycle - and sending it in to Terracycle, which converts the waste into a wide variety of products and materials which are then sold at major retailers like Walmart and Whole Foods.

Would you believe discarded Ziploc bags and juice pouches could be worth more than $3,000? Students at a Burlington County elementary school believe it now, thanks to one woman's extraordinary recycling efforts and generosity. On Thursday night, the Burlington County Education Association and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection honored retiree LuAnn Doyle for her contribution to both the school and the environment. From Feb. 2011 until late May of this year, Doyle collected waste from school meals during lunch hours at Hawthorne Park Elementary School in Willingboro, N.J. She recycled the items and gave the money made from it back to the school. All told, she saved more than 160,000 items from the landfill and raised $3,274.15. Here's the breakdown of what she collected: 29,145 juice pouches

Kimberly-Clark is known for popular consumer brands such as Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex, and Depend. Yet through its four business segments, the company also makes products for industrial and medical-related segments. In all, Kimberly-Clark markets its brands in more than 175 countries. This summer, Kimberly-Clark Health Care and Kimberly-Clark Professional, two of those four segments, are launching “SmartPULL*” packaging technology for its STERLING* and LAVENDER* Medical Exam gloves that greatly reduce glove waste from previous packaging and fit into the company’s wide-ranging sustainability efforts. Developed internally, SmartPULL packaging technology incorporates a dual glove opening tab for paperboard cartons used in medical, dental, laboratory, and university research environments.

The Garnier Greener Tour, in partnership with TerraCycle, is making stops all over the country to raise awareness about the recyclability of cosmetic packaging, encourage people to think differently about waste, and teach simple ways to have a positive impact on the environment. And yes, it’s actually coming to Corpus Christi. We shall pause for a moment of silence in honor of the sheer awesomeness of this fact. pause On Sunday, June 10th from 2pm to 4 pm – the Garnier Get Greener Tour Bus is going to be at the Calallen Walmart at 3829 US Highway 77. There will be a couple of stylists to do hair, Terracycle bins for recycling used cosmetics containers, refreshments, even games and activities, and for those lucky ones who RSVP’d to the local evite FB blast — special Garnier Goody Bags!

A recycling revolution is going on through the halls of North Andover Middle School. Students, teachers and other staffers have cut the volume of trash from the cafeteria by more than half, according to Craig Richard, one of the teachers who helped get the program going. The three lunch periods at the school used to produce around 30 bags of trash per day, Richard said. "Now it's around a dozen," he said. Tod Workman, school custodian, pointing to a cart that was about half full of trash bags, said it used to overflow with refuse from the cafeteria. The recycling renaissance was spearheaded not by adults, but by two eighth-graders, Douglas Starrett and Harry Ustik, who wrote a letter to the school's online newspaper NAMS Knightly News, in which they took the school to task for throwing away too much trash.