As trash takes over the planet via overflowing landfills, the growing Pacific Gyre, endless litter, and needless consumption, meanwhile something very important is rapidly disappearing – and you should be concerned. More and more trash, less and less… clean water. I’ve dedicated my entire life to one environmental issue: Eliminating the Idea of Waste. When I met some of the talented folks at Art Takes Over (ATO) andParticipant Media (producers of top films like Food, Inc. and An Inconvenient Truth), and I heard about their new documentary, "Last Call at the Oasis," I realized that while recycling and reuse should remain a top priority and top concern, there’s an environmental issue much bigger facing the 21st Century and that’s clean water. I recently mentioned to you in my post about sustainable fashion that I think art is an incredible medium for pressing messages such as the need to recycle.TerraCycle had the pleasure of speaking with Jessica Yu, the Academy Award-winning director of "Last Call at the Oasis," for our podcast this week.

Let’s be honest – I don’t know a lot about fashion. It’s certainly not my expertise – that would be trash. In addition to knowing a lot about trash, I know a fair bit about changing people’s perception of trash. TerraCycle’s goal is to get people thinking different about trash in order to eliminate the idea of waste. To that end, we do a lot of PR, marketing, and engagement activities to show people that any type of trash can be useful and can be remade into something else when its first life is over. I think fashion and art are two great ways of encouraging this kind of thinking because they’re visual and influential.

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A company called Terracycle, featured last year on National Geographic's series Garbage Moguls, recycles pens, candy wrappers, tooth brushes, and even that supposed scourge of the waste bin: dirty diapers. The materials are remade as park benches. Any young athlete has already noticed the recycled tires in her playground mulch, turf cushioning, and track-and-field surfacing; but tires also appear in cosmetics and in the shock absorbers that now grace many highway guard rails. Even wax-coated cardboard, long considered a contaminated recyclable, can be repurposed as a fireplace wood substitute.

In 2009 a parent volunteer at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Glen Burnie saw an advertisement for a company called TerraCycle. Its “Get cash for trash” headline caught her attention, and before you could say, ‘Sounds too good to be true,’ there was a bin in the school cafeteria for the students to deposit their empty juice pouches at lunch. Since then, the school has collected over 70,000 juice pouches and recycles an average of 1,000 pouches per week during the school year. Founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, TerraCycle began upcycling various products around 2007. An initiative that started with drink pouches, today the company offers more than 40 Brigades® that collect what was previously non-recyclable or difficult-to- recycle waste. A brigade is simply the term TerraCycle uses to designate its donations—so there is, for example, the Yogurt Container Brigade, the Cheese Packaging Brigade, and the Candy Wrapper Brigade. St. Paul’s initally joined the Drink Pouch Brigade. Most of the brigades are free for participants and include free shipping as well as a donation for each piece of waste recycled.

The Maricopa Community Colleges and a national company called TerraCycle want to save the planet one pencil at a time. Ten MCC schools are now part of the Writing Instrument Brigade, a program under TerraCycle, in which they box and ship used writing utensils to TerraCycle and receive a monetary donation in return. Since joining the program in early 2012, MCC has shipped more than 6,000 utensils to the organization. With the used and abused pens and pencil, TerraCycle breaks them down and brings them back to life in the form of park benches, watering cans, and recycling bins. TerraCycle launched its recycling programs in 2007 and has since collected more than 2 billion pieces of waste from being discarded in landfills. Through the Writing Instrument Brigade, they have donated more than $3.5 million to charities and schools. “We are 10 colleges, two skill centers and numerous education centers, all dedicated to educational excellence and to meeting the needs of businesses and the citizens of Maricopa County, Arizona,” said Chanda Fraulino, recycle program coordinator for MCC, in a statement. “The sustainability coordinators and several of our colleges collaboratively participate in the TerraCycle brigades. The best part about the Writing Instruments brigade is that we divert waste from the landfill while earning money to support student scholarships.” TerraCycle has many arms reaching into the field of sustainability. They partner with companies like Sanford, who sponsors the Writing Instrument Brigade, and Frito-Lay, who sponsors another program called the Chip Bag Brigade. Overall, there are 90,000 organizations who take part in the “Brigade” recycling and upcycling programs worldwide. MCC is one of 1,300 businesses and organizations who are a part of the Writing Instrument Brigade. With the money coming in from recycling used utensils, MCC is planning to support the Maricopa Foundation for the Sustainability Scholarship fund. These scholarships will be awarded to a student pursuing a bachelor’s degree in sustainability or environmental science. To find out more, visit www.terracycle.com.

Honest Tea, an organic beverage company, made headlines when it launched an app to recycle Facebook posts last week and set up a 30-foot-tall inflatable recycling bin in New York City's Times Square on Monday. It's all part of a campaign the 14-year-old company, bought by Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) last year, calls "The Great Recycle." The company's goal is to recycle every bottle it produces by 2020. That's a worthy target, especially considering that Honest Tea generates approximately 20 million glass bottles and 60 million plastic bottles annually. It has a long way to go before it's as sustainable as it can be. If I could change one thing about the company, it would be to reduce its use of plastic bottles and single serve juice containers. Studies have shown that plastic bottles leach, and plastic is made of petroleum products, which is not a renewable source. Worse yet is single-use products, which can't be reused.

The saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. For TerraCycle, an upcycling and recycling company in Trenton, N.J., trash from schools in Knoxville and surrounding areas has become its treasure. Items that are traditionally non-recyclable — such as Frito-Lay chip bags, Capri Sun drink pouches, MOM Brands cereal bags and Colgate oral care products — are collected to make products sold in stores such as Target. The company recycles — or upcycles — trash into backpacks, tote bags, pencil cases, notebooks, messenger bags, and binders as well as watering cans and plant caddies.

Last May, I wrote a post about whether a green company, like TerraCycle, should partner with companies that make tobacco, firearms or alcohol. Our business relies on taking waste that has traditionally been considered nonrecyclable and finding ways to recycle it. We do this by running national collection and solution programs for specific types of waste, and we have been partnering with the alcohol industry for a few years now. Our alcohol industry partnerships began with a national wine-cork program that has collected roughly two million corks and recycled them into products such as cork boards, shoes and flooring. This program is financed by a major synthetic cork company, Nomacorc, and will expand into Italy later this year. We also recently began a program to collect wine pouches with the Clif Family Winery. While we have not yet partnered with anyone in the firearms industry — I’m hoping we will collect shotgun shells at some point — we have been attempting to work with the tobacco industry for some time. And I am happy to say that we recently signed our first and second tobacco deals (both programs will start in a few weeks). One is with Canada’s largest tobacco company, the other with one of America’s largest tobacco companies. Both programs will allow TerraCycle to collect and recycle cigarette butts and other cigarette-related waste.

NEW YORK, New York, April 27, 2012 (ENS) - In support of New York City's pledge to double recycle efforts by 2017, a national crowd-source recycling initiative, The Great Recycle, will open in Times Square on Monday, April 30. The campaign's first goal is to recycle more than 45,000 plastic, glass and aluminum beverage containers in 10 hours. A recycling bin in Times Square as tall as a three-story building will receive the containers. The initiative is the brainchild of organic bottled tea company Honest Tea, purchased by Coca-Cola last year. Honest Tea will kick off the Great Recycle by attempting to recycle the same number of bottles the company sells in New York City on a single day. "National recycling rates are nowhere near where they need to be," says Honest Tea co-founder and "TeaEO" Seth Goldman. "Honest Tea is committed to finding ways to help Americans recycle more. We've helped install recycling bins in our hometown of Bethesda, Maryland and now it's time to expand our efforts."