In my house the laundry never ends. There are only three people in my house yet somehow I always have a load in the washing machine. It is a never ending chore that according to my husband only I am qualified to do.

The Girl Scouts of the USA turns 100 years old today and is celebrating "Green Forever." The Girl Scouts Tioga Service Unit has teamed with terracycle. com to minimize waste and earn a Celebrating 100 Forever Green Patch. They will collect personal and beauty products such as shampoo bottles and makeup cases to be recycled on Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the United Methodist Church, 899 Yosemite Parkway.

Tom Szaky, CEO of Terracycle, grew up watching Captain Planet. In 2001, as a Princeton University freshman he started his company, Terracycle. TerraCycle’s purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste. They do this by creating national recycling systems for previously non-recyclable or hard-to-recycle waste. You can send Terracycle your difficult to recycle waste, and they will turn it into any myriad of items, from handbags to raw materials. Szaky’s story is really inspiring, regardless of setbacks or diversions he has stayed committed to his vision – eliminating waste. In this CNBC video he makes a great point, nowhere in nature is there the idea of garbage, only in the human cycle does garbage exist.

GARWOOD — Beginning April 2, in addition to clean, empty yogurt cups and lids, the following items may be dropped off at the Garwood Public Library for recycling with Terracyle: Cream Cheese tubs and lids, Ricotta Cheese tubs and lids, Sour Cream tubs and lids, and Butter tubs and lids. Only yogurt containers that are flared at the top are acceptable. Brands with tapered tops, La Yogurt and Yoplait, are not accepted by the company. You may bring the clean, empty items to the Library any time during the Library’s business hours. Please do not place them in the book-drop. The Garwood Library also continues to collect used, empty inkjet cartridges to send to Terracycle for recycling, as well as the dairy tubs.

Fourth-graders at Pine Street Elementary School are collecting empty drink pouches for an environmental project. Teacher Tyler Frantz said the students are collecting Capri Sun and Honest Kids pouches to "up-cycle" them. "TerraCycle is a web-based program run by a company that collects consumer products and recycles them," Frantz explained. TerraCycle offers waste-collection programs to turn the collected waste into new products, such as recycled park benches or backpacks. TerraCycle operates around the world, according to the company's website www.terracycle.net. The project started at the suggestion of fourth-grader Faith Coburn's mother, he said. "My mom was reading the back of the Capri Sun box and said, 'Oh, look at that, you could raise money for your school," said 9-year-old Faith. "I think it's cool because then we can keep the pouches out of the landfill and also get money for the school."

There’s a movement underway at Highland Park High School to make sure chip bags are recycled properly. Students have setup special bins around the school for disposal and are encouraging their peers to take advantage of the new recycling program. “I really wanted to get involved,” Natalie Oxman, HPHS student, said about why she signed up for the Green School Initiative (GSI) at the beginning of the year. Shortly after, Oxman teamed up with other GSI club members Samantha Shafer and Zacko Brint to develop and promote the chip recycling program. “Once people knew that it was around, most were all for it,” Shafer said. During the week, students dump their chip bags into the bins, which are then collected by GSI students. The trash is sent to TerraCycle. The company provides free waste collection programs for hard to recycle materials. TerraCycle converts the collected waste into a variety of reusable products ranging from park benches to backpacks. For every unit of waste sent in, TerraCycle awards Highland Park High School $.02 to a charity of its choice. GSI students plan to donate the money to an environmental organization at the end of each school year. “We have seen a significant decrease in the number of chip bags thrown away,” Brint said about GSI’s effort. “When you see the quantity of chip bags that we are collecting, you say ‘Wow, why aren’t we doing this everywhere?’” So far this school year, more than 5,000 chip bags have been collected at Highland Park High School.

“First things first: Call a plumber immediately if you have a leak, no matter how small. People often assume that little drips will stop on their own, but most get worse. And when water seeps into your walls or damages your floors, the repair can run up to several thousand dollars. If you have a number of nonurgent issues besides the leak, like a slow-draining sink or a faucet that needs to be installed, ask that all the repairs be made in one visit; your bill could be up to 25 percent lower than if the plumber makes multiple visits. And tell him if a family member or a friend referred him. He may do a small fix gratis, which he wouldn’t do for a cold-call customer.

Thermoformed packaging such as blister packs and clamshells typically end up in landfills, even though many of are made of PC PET, the usually recycled material that is blow molded into soft drink and water bottles. That’s a problem for manufacturers concerned about sustainability and product packaging. And the economics of recycling will probably prevent widespread recycling of thermoform-grade RPET for some time. (The “R” of RPET means the polymer comprises virgin material plus regrind, or recycled content.) In a pilot study conducted by thermoform-packaging maker Dordan Manufacturing in Woodstock, Ill., the company shipped 50 of its RPET clamshells to a local recycling facility to determine how well the containers could be sorted. The waste-management facility uses optics to sort different kinds of polymers. “The equipment could not distinguish the difference between PET bottles and RPET thermoforms,” saysDordan Manufacturing’s Sustainability Coordinator Chandler Slavin. Theoretically, the two could be recycled together, but that depends on a lot of factors, many of which are a result of the sorting equipment used. In manual sorting, there are problems because clamshells and blisters come in all shapes, sizes, and materials, making it difficult to train workers to sort packages by material type via visual cues in package design. Most clear, thin-neck screw-top beverage bottles are PET, for example, making it easy to identify this recyclable from those destined for landfills, says Slavin.

Every weekday at lunchtime, a curious scene plays out in elementary school cafeterias at lunchtime. Students unpack their lunchboxes and hawk their dietary wares with a fervor that would make a Wall Street broker blush.  A Fruit Roll-up for a Chewy bar here, a Yoo-hoo for a Juicy Juice there.  Chocolate bars are worth their weight in gold.

Three years ago, while Tina Bauer was a classroom assistant at the Oceanville kindergarten in Galloway Township, she and a co-worker decided to improve the school's recycling program. A quick web search turned up Princeton-based TerraCycle, and the simple, four-word tagline it was using at the time. "'Get cash for trash' was their little blurb on it," said Bauer, of the Absecon Highlands section of Galloway Township. "So I clicked on it and said, 'Hey, we can do this at Oceanville.'" The idea behind TerraCycle - which collects and "upcycles" less conventionally recyclable items, such as potato chip bags and juice boxes into tote bags and other items - is a simple one. Nevertheless, Bauer said, the plan was initially met with confusion by the staff. Bauer had signed up to lead a brigade, a group that collects a specific item - Capri Sun juice pouches, in this case - for TerraCycle in exchange for points, which can be redeemed for cash donations to schools or participating nonprofit organizations. After the first few shipments, that confusion gave way to enthusiasm for the project.