You as packaging designers manage some amazing feats: Simultaneously satisfy picky company leaders, fickle consumers and just plain crazy marketing people! You’re to be applauded–it’s a tough balancing act. But I have something further for you to consider. Your packaging, for the most part, has one use. What you create encompassed countless hours of meetings, designs, redesigns, factory tooling, wrestling matches and so on. It’s the front line of how your company’s products are seen in the world. It’s the final leg of the marathon that began with coming up with the idea for the product, perhaps testing it out with consumers, a final iteration chosen, then finished when someone decides to grab one of your products off the shelf and buy it. But once the wrapping’s off, the bottle’s empty, the usefulness is done, that’s the end of the story. Some of it gets recycled. A lot of it doesn’t. Either way, all that brand equity you’ve put into the product is being wasted. Say again? Yes, when your packaging has no end of life solution, it’s clumsily being made for you, typically. Terracycle since the start has been about providing one that companies have much more control over: Upcycling it into new products, which often directly use the packaging in its original form in durable goods, retaining brand equity for much longer then one use. Designing for recyclability is a noble idea and one to be encouraged but, with a fairly limited range of materials, getting recycled in the U.S., it’s just not always possible. Or, in the case of food packaging, safe. It’s time, both for the sake of saving resources (financial and environmental) to design for reuse where possible, and upcycling by companies like TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net>  where it’s not. In both cases, you’re benefitting the company due to extended presence in a consumer’s life, showing you’re out for more than just the sale, and you’ve done your part to keep waste out of the landfill, or worse, littering the ground. Is there a downside to changing/expanding the way you think about packaging? It could cost more. It could take additional time and resources to implement. In the case of SunChips <http://www.packagingdigest.com/article/510820-Frito_Lay_withdraws_noisy_compostable_SunChips_bag.php> , it could cause consumer backlash. Yes, sometimes we’re great at coming up with reasons why not. In this economy and any time really, I suggest we all get much less skilled in that arena, and start finding ways to say yes. To better packaging solutions that use less, save more, serve customers just as well, and live on beyond first use. It’s, in my opinion, the only sensible thing to do. What are your thoughts? Being in the packaging design trenches, where are some opportunities for improvement? Where are the road bumps? Where are the emerging solutions? What are some recent successes to emulate, learn from? Jump into the comments, below.

Re: Kerrie L. Cortez’ Feb. 16 letter, “Turning trash into cash”: I am writing in response to Kerrie Cortez, who negatively spoke about the article on Ladera Elementary's recycling efforts titled "Recycling program takes off at Thousand Oaks school" People who have negative energy and comments are wasting both their time as well as the time of people who read this paper. I don't know the motives for the response by Kerrie Cortez, but ours at the school are to reduce waste in our overflowing landfills. We are as parents trying to do the right thing for our children by teaching them to respect the earth and the earth's resources. We are doing something positive, not negative, for the earth and for the children. Had you done some research, you would have found out that there are no recycling centers for ziplock bags, juice pouches, chip bags and such on the West Coast. We are fortunate enough to have a company that will facilitate our waste and transform it into something useful. Not to mention it is also generating money to our school at no cost - simply our time. This is a great opportunity for others to participate in such a resourceful organization. Terracycle has brought our school close to $1,000 since we began participating in the program. Mind you, that was $1,000 our school did not have, especially in the extreme deficit our state is currently in. We take pride in helping our children learn that the Earth is not a big trash receptacle, but something that we need to respect and take care of. So next time before you write a comment and say someone is leaving a "negative footprint,” do your research first. - Irene Nelson, Read more:  http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/feb/21/recycling-critic/?partner=yahoo_feeds#ixzz1EcRXr8ml  - vcstar.com

MORRIS TWP. ‑ Woodland Avenue School’s Green Team was given a $10,000 grant award as  winners of the “Trash to Cash Collection Contest” sponsored by the Walmart Foundation and TerraCycle, part of $125,000 in school grants the foundation is handing out.   The contest was free and open to all New Jersey public schools. The schools that raised the most money through TerraCycle's Brigade programs.  The contest began Oct. 1 and ran until Dec. 15. Combined 448 schools in New Jersey helped divert over 1.6 million pieces of packaging in fewer than three months. Walmart Foundation partnered with TerraCycle in order to encourage more schools to get involved in the Brigade program, a socially and environmentally beneficial fund-raising and educational initiative that pays schools to recycle. The hope was that by adding the additional incentive of schools grants, schools would collect more waste, diverting as much non-recyclable material as possible from landfill. "We are extremely pleased with the level of participation in the Trash to Cash Collection Contest,” Jennifer Hoehn, senior manager of Public Affairs for Walmart said. “During a period of just over two months, TerraCycle and Walmart successfully diverted over 1.6 million pieces of waste with the help of New Jersey Brigade participants increasing collections by almost 200 percent during the contest.” For more information, go to www.terracycle.net <http://www.terracycle.net> .

For those organic gardeners and divas who don't have the time, space or guts to build and maintain your own worm bin, products like TerraCycle Worm Poop can become your new best friend. It's all natural, eco-friendly plant food made from organic garbage. Fertilize your yard with worm poop each season and I guarantee your flowers will stay healthy all year long. Try it! It's fun. About the Author: Master gardener and author Annie Spiegelman, attracts a whole new generation of women, girlfriends & moms to the joy of working in nature. For more tips on how you can keep your flowers healthy all year long while building a better future, go to http://www.dirtdiva.com

Posted by admin on February 20, 2011 under 2011 <http://www.blytheparkpta.org/?cat=57> ,  2011 February <http://www.blytheparkpta.org/?cat=70> ,  Fundraising <http://www.blytheparkpta.org/?cat=25>  |              Keep sending your upcycling items for Terracycle!  We have sent off another box of over 1,500 ziploc bags.   Save your Chip Bags (Fritolay and similar other similar chip bags), drink pouches (Capri Sun and any other similar pouches) Storage Bags (Ziploc and any other brands) and newly added Ink Cartridges.  We currently collect Printer Ink Cartridges but now we will be sending them to Terracyle.   Bring them to school and deposit them in our collection center located right outside the school office. Blythe Park School will earn 2 cents for every bag we send to Terracyle and $.25 for every ink cartidges. Any questions, please contact Lisa Gaynor or Josie Diaz-Pope.     Comments are closed.                home <http://www.blytheparkpta.org>   top <http://www.blytheparkpta.org/?p=2194#>

<http://www.blaircandy.com/candybars1.html> The best thing about candy bars will always be eating them, but the fun doesn’t have to stop there. We recently came across an awesome DIY project on TerraCycle.com that shows you how to make a candy wrapper bracelet <http://www.terracycle.ca/31?locale=en-CA>  in just a few simple steps! Is it a coincidence that each bracelet requires 24 rectangles formed from chocolate wrappers, and our new Custom Candy Bar Box <http://www.blaircandy.com/custom-candy-bar-box.html>  comes with 24 candy bars of your choice? Well…yes, it probably is a coincidence! But we think it’s a rather nice one.   We don’t recommend that you try to eat all 24 candy bars <http://www.blaircandy.com/candybars1.html>  in one sitting – afterward you won’t feel up for much of anything, let alone crafts! But we think it will be deliciously possible to have a new bracelet by spring, and much sooner than that if you ask friends to open their candy bars <http://www.blaircandy.com/candybars1.html>  carefully and share their wrappers with you. While this is primarily a colorfully creative project, I can’t help but be reminded of a belief that many people hold – that the energy put into something becomes the energy of the end product. For example, if you angrily make a pot of soup that you didn’t really want to make, the soup might taste bad or bring about an upset stomach. Similarly, if you take something from its rightful owner, that object will bring you ill fortune one day as it is now ‘charged’ with negative energy. The good news is that energy works the other way, too! And what better positive energy resource is there than candy <http://www.blaircandy.com/> ?! Imagine how light, bright and positively charged a bracelet will be when made from the wrappers of 24 thoroughly-enjoyed candy bars. It might just be the happiest bracelet on Earth! If a candy wrapper bracelet isn’t a style statement you’re ready to make, you can still make a difference. TerraCycle offers an upcycling program sponsored by Nestle Canada – the Chocolate Wrapper Brigade <http://www.terracycle.ca/brigades/8-Chocolate-Wrapper-Brigade-Sponsored-by-Nestl-Canada> . For every empty wrapper you send in for upcycling into an ingeniously useful and fun product, including tote bags and backpacks, 2 cents will also be donated to your favorite charity. Pretty sweet!

Recycling isn’t new to Mountain View. For the past two-and-a-half years, the school has been part of the TerraCycle Program. Through this program the school recycles empty Capri Sun containers, empty Lunchables containers, dried-up pens, markers, glue sticks and cell phones. Howe said the previous recycling practice has helped with the contest.

Last night I went to hear Tom Szaky <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Szaky> , the first lecturer in the University of the Arts’ nifty new series, Periodic Lectures on Design <http://www.uarts.edu/about/8260.html> , and I learned many new things, including: • Trenton-based TerraCycle is the only company with a license from Coke and Pepsi to package poop in those companies’ 20 oz. bottles. • Szaky filled the first 100 bottles of the worm-poop plant food that got TerraCycle off the ground from his Princeton dorm room, using funnels to guide the, er, matter and hairdryers to heat-seal the labels. • Juice pouches are indestructible, which is why they can’t be recycled. Quilt them together and they create a nifty fabric. TerraCycle also breaks down the pouches and uses their base elements to make pavers, and they’re developing a line of rolling luggage made from juice pouches that will debut at Wal-Mart in six months. • Everything on its own is recyclable. So, a garbage can full of yogurt cups, candy wrappers, toothpaste tubes, and juice pouches is not recyclable. Separate the different waste streams and they’re all recyclable on their own. Check out the 36 different wastestreams <http://www.terracycle.net/brigades>  TerraCycle collects (and will help you collect) in the U.S. • It’s possible to wear jeans, a t-shirt, sweatshirt, and a John Deere cap and still come off as totally brilliant. (Darn kids upending the social order.) Next up in the series is Susan Szenasy, Editor-in-Chief of Metropolis magazine. Reserve <http://corzocenter.ticketleap.com/>  your spot for the March 1 lecture—it’s free, but seating is limited!

EAST AMWELL TWP. — Where most people see trash, the township school’s Environmental Club sees cash. That has won $50,000 for the school, the top prize in a TerraCycle-Walmart contest for New Jersey public schools. It did so by blitzing TerraCycle with 52,640 plastic wrappers and containers during the two-and-a-half-month contest. “You can’t get much greener than this!” exclaimed the club’s adviser, fifth-grade language arts and science teacher Sharon Ernst. It all started in 2008 with Ernst casting about for a way to raise money for an Environmental Club for fourth- and fifth-graders. She wanted to do something applicable to stewardship, which ruled out fundraisers such as bake sales. She considered selling seeds, then a parent mentioned TerraCycle, which pays nonprofit groups that send it hard-to-recycle items for reuse or recycling. Since then, the club has gathered, for instance, more than 30,000 empty Capri Sun containers. The money was spent on plants that allow Ernst to raise Monarch butterflies. She uses the pollinators in her lessons on ecosystems.

When left to her own devices, nature will execute a perfect cycle of reuse and compost by which no bi-products are left behind.  Humans, by contrast, execute a cycle of consumption and complex materials that leaves behind billions of pounds of bi-products known as garbage. Eighty percent of what we buy is discarded as garbage just thirty minutes after purchase.  Because it would be nearly impossible to move away from our culture of consumption and convince people to return to a time of patching, mending, and making do, it becomes necessary to scrutinze our garbage. Garbage is the only commodity in the world we pay to get rid of.  The vast majority of our waste ends up in a landfill–five billion pounds per year in the United States–where it has no value.  But what if instead of throwing our money away, we diverted some of the garbage from the landfill and turned it into something of value?  It is with this concept in mind that Tom Szaky led his worm poop empire <http://www.terracycle.net/histories>  called TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net/>  to begin collecting items of garbage and turning them into useful things.  The TerraCycle team of designers is tasked with envisioning new uses for items previously deemed garbage.  Scientists then test the chemical properites of the items and determine the feasibly of the designer’s ideas.  Using these methods, all items collected by TerraCycle are upcycled (made into another product for reuse) or recycled (broken down to their most basic parts and made into something different).  The idea behind TerraCycle is one of those brilliantly simple ones that beg the question, “why didn’t I think of that?”  (Because you lack the business savvy and persuasive charm that Szaky possesses.) Szaky has taken a concept familiar to previous generations (and poor college students) and adapted it to our modern culture of consumerism.  Just as our grandma upcycled a worn button-down shirt into handkerchiefs, cleaning rags, and quilting squares, TerraCycle transforms used juice pouches into a fabric that can be fashioned into a coin purse or a book bag.  TerraCycle does not advertise; its brand partners do.  It is the brands who puts the TerraCycle logo on their products and introduce their consumers to the concept <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RIwGZx-1JTc> .  On its own, TerraCycle generates buzz by averaging 7-15 articles a day, maintaining a high-traffic website, and being invited to participate in television shows.   In just a short few years, TerraCycle has significantly impacted diversion rates and given value to garbage.  They have yet find a product that cannot be upcycled or recycled and have plans to expand their organziation across the world, in AMC movie theatres, Wal-Mart parking lots, in print, and even on Facebook.