Do you have a sustainability officer yet? You might need one. It’s probably even more likely that your customers will have one, and you will have to pay attention to them if you want to continue to supply them with plastic parts or products.

Terra Cycle is a pro-recycling/reuse organization that is awarding money or in-kind donations to non-profits that submit recyclable materials to them. For instance, Clif Bar will donate two cents to the nonprofit of your choice when you submit any wrapper from any of their products – twisted fruit, Z Bars, Builder Bars, and Clif Bars included.

Frieberger works with TerraCycle, a non-profit that uses up-cycling where materials such as used juice drink wrappers are kept in their original, chemical state and reused for other items such as reusable shopping bags.

In New London, St.Mary's Star of the Sea School recycles with TerraCycle in the Drink Pouch Brigade.

Kimberly-Clark Professional*, a global leader in contamination control solutions for laboratories and cleanrooms, and TerraCycle, a leading "upcycling" company, have joined forces to help pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities recycle cleanroom garments, including coveralls, hoods, boot covers, hair nets and masks. Through the collaboration, Kimberly-Clark Professional will become among the first to implement a large scale recycling program for non-traditional cleanroom waste streams, and TerraCycle will make its first voyage into the business-to-business market. "We are constantly looking to offer our customers innovations that will positively impact their productivity and profitability while preserving the environment," said Heather Torrey, Scientific Customer and Channel Marketing Manager, Global Scientific Business at Kimberly-Clark Professional. "The recycling program with TerraCycle further extends our sustainability initiatives, saving time, materials and ultimately money."

With the unemployment rate depressingly high, it’s hard to find a job these days.  It can be even harder to find a job you’re really passionate about.  But if the environment is your passion, you’ll be happy to hear there are 2 million “green jobs” and that number is expected to double in the next 5 years. The current administration is putting millions of dollars into creating green jobs and support sustainable industries (the Solyndra debacle aside.)

A number of difficult-to-recycle and non-recyclable items, including more than 500 juice pouches, will get a new lease on life, thanks to Belle Aire School’s Trash 4 Cash program. The Belle Aire PTA decided in the fall of 2010 to collect items to send to Terracycle, a national company that makes new green consumer products out of post-consumer materials, such as backpacks created from drink pouches. Terracycle takes in some 100 materials that would normally get thrown in the trash, and Belle Aire formed brigades to collect three of those items: juice pouches, food storage containers such as re-sealable sandwich bags, and health and beauty product packaging.

TerraCycle, the New Jersey-based company that specializes in upcycling waste packaging into durable consumer products, will soon launch a program for disposable diapers, according to Waste & Recycling News. Ernie Simpson, global vice president of research and development for Terracycle, says the company is 90 percent finished with the development of a continuous process for collecting, sterilizing and processing used diapers. Certain parts of the diaper will be compostable, and the remaining materials will be upcycled into plastic lumber, pallets and outdoor furniture.

One of the dirtiest and most demonized portions of the municipal waste stream may soon be diverted from its centuries-long decomposition site: landfills. Developing a recycling solution for used disposable diapers, a biological amalgam of complexity, has been a top priority of the global research and development team at TerraCycle Inc., a Trenton, N.J.-based company whose mission is to create innovative solutions for any waste stream headed to the landfill. TerraCycle´s team of scientists, led by Ernie Simpson, global vice president of research and development, is about to put a clothespin on its formula that will render dirty diapers into a material suitable for plastic lumber, pallets and outdoor furniture.

One of the dirtiest and most demonized portions of the municipal waste stream may soon be diverted from its centuries-long decomposition site: landfills. Developing a recycling solution for used disposable diapers, a biological amalgam of complexity, has been a top priority of the global research and development team at TerraCycle Inc., a Trenton, N.J.-based company whose mission is to create innovative solutions for any waste stream headed to the landfill. TerraCycle´s team of scientists, led by Ernie Simpson, global vice president of research and development, is about to put a clothespin on its formula that will render dirty diapers into a material suitable for plastic lumber, pallets and outdoor furniture.