BENTON HARBOR - Two Twin-Cities area schools are finding a little gold in going green with help from a New Jersey-based recycling business. But perhaps more valuable are the lessons, say organizers.

Princeton Environmental Film Festival - The festival has introduced an incredibly rich selection of films about critical environmental issues to our community. The films are often followed by a panel discussion featuring local businesses or causes that relate to the films. Adam Blejwas - Adam is the World Language teacher at Community Park Elementary School. He has set up, energized and sustained a recycling program with the students and faculty collecting used juice packs, chip bags, markers, glue sticks, tape cores and more ... and selling them to Terracycle, a local recycling company.

Youngsters in Jayme Denis’ second-grade class at the Benton Harbor Charter School show off some of the items they are recycling for a profit. John Madill / H-P staff Students learning to keep more waste out of landfills BENTON HARBOR - Two Twin Cities-area schools are finding a little gold in going green with help from a New Jersey-based recycling business. But perhaps more valuable are the lessons, say organizers. "I think it's a worthwhile project for the students to learn that they can take care of the world they live in, and to promote a better way to treat the gifts that we have," said Principal Dave Snyder at Grace Lutheran School in Royalton Township. Grace Lutheran and Benton Harbor Charter School are working with Trenton, N.J.,-based TerraCycle, which specializes in collecting difficult-to-recycle items and keeping them out of landfills. The company contributes cash or gifts for the material school "bridgades" send in. The company pays for postage.

Perhaps you’re tweaking the holiday décor just a bit. Or you’re embarking on a broader overhaul. But the effect is going to be a new look. To kick-start the seasonal decorating derby, we’ve rounded up the buzz on what’s hot, trendy and adventurous for adding festive glitz and sparkle, indoors and out. RECYCLING Some holiday baubles previously were something else. Some crafty types who like repurposing excess household objects make personalized ornaments by hand-painting holiday scenes on burned-out light bulbs. Perhaps they’ll loop strips cut from old magazines into a fun, funky garland.

FLORENCE, SC -- I have been recycling ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. OK, that might be a slight exaggeration but I know we recycled, at least to some extent, before a law was enacted in 1992 that made it mandatory to recycle certain items where I grew up (Washington County, N.Y.). Plastic bottles and aluminum cans containing carbonated beverages had a 5-cent deposit, which was an incentive to return them, especially for a college student. My family would save the containers and I would take them back when I made the nearly 1,000-mile trip home. It was a messy job, but I was happy to do it. To tell you the truth, I think I would have done it without the monetary reward.

I can’t help it; protecting our natural resources is something I am passionate about, which is why I am so excited about some things going on at Moore Intermediate School. Students, faculty and staff are participating in South Carolina Green Steps Schools, an environmental education and action initiative that recognizes schools in South Carolina that take annual sustainable steps toward becoming more environmentally responsible. One of their projects involves the collection of traditionally non-recyclable juice pouches which are sent to TerraCycle and converted into other products. By participating in program, students are learning, waste is being reduced, and the school receives 2 cents per juice pouch.

What's the Latest Development? A growing number of individuals are using their companies to directly benefit society while also making a profit. Many are innovating low-cost solutions to social and economic problems in the third world. For example, Sam Goldman and Ned Tozun of D.Light Design manufacture inexpensive lamps and sell them in communities that don’t have reliable electricity. Or take Tom Skazy who dropped out of Princeton to create Terracycle, which sells fertilizer and over 250 products made from 60 waste streams. What's the Big Idea? A globalized communication and financial network has given rise to a new kind of entrepreneur. Some call them impact investors, others prefer social entrepreneurs, but what they have in common is trying to empower people using market-based solutions. Popularized by Muhammad Yunus' Grameen Bank, which were awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, social entrepreneurs take the view that risk brings reward, even on the smallest scales. Photo credit: shutterstock.com

MOUNT LAUREL — The Countryside Elementary School on Schoolhouse Lane will be open from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday to celebrate four decades of education. The event will be the culmination of daylong classroom activities. Visitors will be greeted in the main lobby by new mosaic artwork created especially for the occasion by students and Jackie Stack Lagakos, an artist in residence from the Perkins Center for the Arts in Moorestown. The work, which is being dedicated Friday, was designed by Countryside art teacher Jennifer Giannattasio. The project was funded by a grant awarded to the school last year through a TerraCycle "upcycling" contest.

TerraCycle began out of a business plan contest. Tom Szaky wanted to establish a company that would convert waste into fertilizer by feeding it to worms and then utilizing their poop. Apparently he had some success with it previously and wanted to give it a go. I think that is such a completely random idea but certainly helps keep the planet a bit more waste efficient. According to Wikipedia: Upcycling is the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value. This company makes wallets, bookbags, purses, kites, pencil pouches, picture frames, clocks, flower pots and a ton of other household objects out of materials that would have otherwise been rotting in a landfill somewhere. In the beginning, they were approached independently by Honest Tea, Stonyfeild and Clif Bar who all had problems with the disposal of their product wrappers and containers. This is what triggered their "upcycling" shift and pretty soon they became partners with a bunch of huge names like Nabisco, Capri-Sun and Frito Lay. To collect the waste, they set up programs through partnerships through schools and businesses and popular brands looking to promote more recycling of their packaging. These establishments would have collection boxes set up, specified for particular items that TerraCycle is interested in upcycling. People would put their trash in them and then the bins would be sent off and the trash would be converted into something useful. Garbage Moguls was a reality tv show on TerraCycle that aired a few years back on National Geographic. It followed the unorthodox creative processes that make their company successful. I think that this company is taking giant leaps in a direction that might make our planet last a little longer. It's important that we start working now to ensure that we can continue to live safe and healthy lives here for generations to come.

Below are some simple things that your family can do together at home to be earth-friendly: * Use one cup a day. Have each family member use only one cup for the whole day. This helps your household cut down on dirty dishes and reduces the number of times you need to run the dishwasher each week. Explain to your kids how this saves water, detergent and electricity. * Donate home goods. Several animal shelters in the Triangle use old carpeting or carpeting scraps, as well as towels, blankets and linens to make comfy beds for the animals. Your children can also donate worn-out stuffed animals and tennis balls to be used as dog toys. Make the donation in person, as a family. * Flashy trash. You may not think twice about throwing out shiny chip bags, candy and cookie wrappers, or yogurt containers, but maybe you should. TerraCycle (www.terracycle.net) crafts items like these into eco-friendly and stylish products such as tote bags, picture frames and pencil cases. Ask your kids to bring home their lunchboxes with their trash still inside. The donations can even earn your family a bit of cash. * Redeem soda-can tabs. Americans consume more than 180 billion canned drinks per year. That translates into about $64 million worth of aluminum pull-tabs, according to Nicole Bouchard Boles in How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist. Keep a jar in your kitchen that your family can fill with soda can tabs. When it gets full, donate it to The Ronald McDonald House of Chapel Hill or Durham. These organizations will redeem them at aluminum recycling centers and use the money to help fund their programs. * Eat your yard — literally. "Oranges are raised on farms, picked and refrigerated, processed, trucked and refrigerated again," says Nan Chase, author of Eat Your Yard! Edible Trees, Shrubs, Vines, herbs and Flowers for Your Landscape. "By the time you drive them home from the store, that's a huge amount of energy used just to get vitamin C to your door," she says. Chase advises families to landscape their yards with edible plants. Her book offers some easy ideas like planting a few seeds of chard, which looks like a garden plant, amongst your flowers. Landscaping with edible plants can also make children eager to eat fresh food. "When kids get a chance to take something off the tree or vine or out of the ground and put it in their mouth, they will get excited about it," Chase says. Be sure that you and your children wash your hands and edibles, especially if you use pesticides or fertilizers. You should even wash whole produce that will be eaten without the skin or rind so pathogens aren't transferred inside from your hands or knife. via Charlotte Parent