Students at Douglas MacArthur Elementary School put energy and enthusiasm to work on environmental activities. As the school year winds down, so do the many after-school activities offered throughout the year. This week marks the end of the environmental club in which my third grader, Priya, has been participating since February. It has been such a thrill for her to be engaged in a club focused on earth-friendly activities. Priya says it is one of her favorite activities and likes the fact that “we had fun and also learned.”

In addition, the club has launched a number of recycling efforts through Terracycle.net.  Students have created collection stations throughout the school into which things like drink pouches and foil energy-bar wrappers are stuffed. The wrappers are shipped to Terracycle free of charge and are recycled and/or repurposed into new items. In addition to reducing waste, the school receives a donation of 2 cents for each item sent in. The school has collected approximately 4,000 drink pouches!

Green Alternatives in Norfolk has partnered with TerraCycle in a recycling program that will pay you for certain trash items, including 6-ounce and 32-ounce yogurt containers, energy bar wrappers, Starbucks coffee bags, Unilever spread containers, drink pouches, cookie wrappers, candy wrappers, and Kashi packaging. TerraCycle will pay roughly 2 to 5 cents per item collected. You can call 622-1444 for more information or visit greenalternativesstore.com.

Hate grocery shopping after work and on weekends? Try home delivery. You don’t have to wait for Walmart or Amazon Fresh to expand service in order to get groceries dropped at your door right now. Several services already are available to Snohomish County residents. Perhaps most notable in recent upgrade and expansion is SPUD.com <http://SPUD.com> . SPUD absorbed Seattle competitor Pioneer Organics in 2008. Last year, Jones Soda founder and SPUD customer Peter van Stolk took over.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN--What could your school do with $2,500? Plenty, as Malt-O-Meal® and TerraCycle® found out through their Greenest Classroom contest, which invited schools across the country to submit their best ideas on how to make their classroom the most earth-friendly for a chance to win a $2,500 grant. Inspired by Malt-O-Meal's new Bag The Box™ movement and its partnership with TerraCycle, the contest challenged entrants to submit their ideas and then vote for the classroom with the best earth-friendly concepts. The top 10 vote-getters were then narrowed down to four by a judging panel. The top prize of $2,500 went to River Place Elementary School (RPE) in Austin, TX, and the three first place winners included Don Roberts Elementary School in Little Rock, AR; UUCF-Circle of Life Cooperative Preschool in Frederick, MD; and Ridge and Valley Charter School in Blairstown, NJ who were each awarded $500.

 have been interested in recycling since I took an Environmental Studies class in college. The problem was in our area there were no recycling facilities. I saved whatever I could--aluminum, cardboard, and paper products--but otherwise I had to trash everything else.  Finally, a few months ago, our community started their own recycling program. I immediately informed my hubby we were saving plastic, tin, and glass. My husband was a bit daunted by this and asked where I was going to store these items.

Cork can’t be recycled curb-side, but a company called Terracycle will recycle cork to be made into corkboards. You can request a mailer from the company (for 15 lbs. of cork at a time). Also, most Whole Foods Markets accept corks for recycling.

There’s an old Yorkshire expression that says, “Where there’s muck, there’s brass.” Translated into 21st-century American, it means there’s money in garbage. Read how a young Canadian immigrant is making millions from “muck” and saving the environment at the same time.

To enter, comment on this post through 11:59 PM Central on Sunday June 5 and let me know why a baby you know would love to try it. One entry/comment per person, and U.S. entries only, please. If you are reading this through email or Facebook, please click on the title of this post (up at the top where it says “Giveaway — Sprout…”) to go back to the blog. Scroll down to the bottom of the post and you will see a box to enter your comment; just comment there to enter. Email and Facebook entries will not be counted. If you are reading the Mashup Mom homepage on the web, look at the bottom of this post where it says “___ comments.” Click on that to get the box to enter your own comment. The fine print Sprout and TerraCycle provided the information and prizing for this giveaway. All thoughts and opinions here are my own. The winner will be chosen on or around 6/6/11 through random number generation at random.org. The winner will have two days to respond to email notification; Mashup Mom reserves the right to pick a runner up winner in the event I don’t receive a response.