USF Purchasing has partnered with Terracycle, a company that provides an innovative way of recycling. Terracycle's concept of "upcycling" turns hard-to-recycle waste into eco-friendly products. USF's participation will be to collect used writing instruments in any condition, which will be submitted to Terracycle. In turn, Terracycle will donate 2¢ for every writing instrument collected to Meals on Wheels of San Francisco.

L'Oreal's Garnier brand has swung into action to recycle packaging from all personal care and beauty products, which it says accounts for one third of all landfill waste. A recently unveiled program, called the Personal Care and Beauty Brigade, is a national (and soon-to-be international) program that will collect all hair care, skin care and cosmetic packaging, regardless of brand. This packaging will be upcycled or recycled by TerraCycle into eco-friendly playgrounds as well as other consumer products. The program coincides with the launch of Garnier's new Pure Clean line to emphasize the brand's sustainability efforts. TerraCycle specializes in making consumer products from post-consumer materials. By signing up for the Brigade (www.terracycle.net), individuals or groups can collect packaging and ship it to TerraCycle free of charge.

To help, one company is offering consumers a way to reduce their household garbage while earning money for local schools or charities. Through free collection programs called Brigades, upcycling pioneer TerraCycle is collecting and paying for packaging waste from household staples- from the bathroom to the kitchen to the classroom. Many major brands are getting on board with upcycling. Scott Tissue and Huggies are sponsoring programs to collect plastic packaging waste from paper products and diapers. And since most oral hygiene products aren't recyclable, Colgate and TerraCycle have partnered to collect used toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes.

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Some of the country's largest nurseries are using used butter tubs instead of the typical black ones made from virgin plastic thanks to an initiative by TerraCycle.

That scale that Looptworks' Hamlin is aiming for is already happening on the post-consumer end of the upcycling market. If Etsy is considered the epicenter of do-it-yourself upcycling, then New Jersey-based TerraCycle takes on that same function in mass upcycling. The company turns actual garbage into hundreds of products, like Oreo wrapper backpacks and bicycle chain picture frames. With a large-scale collection infrastructure developed over the past 10 years, TerraCycle nabs about 1 billion pieces of garbage every quarter that ultimately end up on the shelves of big-box retailers like Target and The Home Depot.

About 55 million cases of bottled wine are sold in California each year. Of those, about 70% are closed with cork stoppers, 16% with metal screw tops and 14% with plastic, according to Amorim, the Portuguese cork supplier that runs the cork-reclamation group ReCork. Most wine stoppers are wrapped in “foil” that covers the top of the bottle, some of which is made from a mixture of lead and tin (on some older bottles, because that wrapper was banned in 1996 by the Food and Drug Administration); other covers are made from polylaminate aluminum and most from a heat-shrink plastic — usually polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride, a.k.a. PVC. In L.A., the foils, or wrappers, are not recyclable because the many materials from which they are made are too difficult to distinguish. The only exception is the metal wire cages on champagne bottle tops, which are recyclable.

Because Earth Day Is Every Day

Coming to a local garden center near you: Some of the country's largest nurseries are using recycled butter tubs instead of brand-new black plastic planters this spring as part of a new initiative from TerraCycle, a company that creates fun new products from recycled packaging. Learn more (and find out how you can get involved) at terracycle.net.

11-04-01-- New Jersey F#D60