TerraCycle and Honest Kids joined together back in 2007 to create the first Drink Pouch Brigades, helping to make a positive impact on the environment by reducing waste throughout our communities while teaching kids about sustainability.
Mashpee - For the students at Quashnet elementary school, it's easy being green
. Every lunch period since August, the 520 third-through-sixth graders at the school have eschewed the trash can in favor of the recycling bin, collecting food wrappers in order to transform them in eco-friendly products through a partnership with new Jersey based comnpany Terracycle.
TerraCycle: We're a society of convenience which means we have a lot of trash. That's where TerraCycle comes in. The company founded by a college student less than a decade ago takes non-recyclable stuff (plastic goodies like juice boxes, candy wrappers, lunch kits, chip bags, tape, pens etc) and gives them a second chance. They're refashioned them into useful consumer goods like bags, cork boards, flower pots and backpacks.
Eco Boombox Skittles : Another product made by TerraCycle. As reported on its website, "Upcycling takes unused rolls of wrapping material that would otherwise go to waste, and turns it into a variety of useful, eco-friendly products
Wal-Mart (NYSE:
WMT) could play a big role in helping Earth-friendly start-ups survive.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Terracycle, a small, private company that fashions products out of difficult-to-recycle packaging, is hoping that large retailers like Wal-Mart will take up its cause more consistently -- and help the tiny company finally turn a profit.
Wal-Mart carried Terracycle's wares during a promotion for last month's Earth Day. In one clever touch, the retailer stocked Terracycle's backpacks, crafted from
Kraft's Capri-Sun packages, next to the actual Capri-Sun beverages
After reading an advertisement on the wrapper, she learned about a company called TerraCycle, which pays groups to collect foil- and plastic-lined bags, as well as other types of trash, and then turns them into other products.
Wal-Mart (NYSE:
WMT) could play a big role in helping Earth-friendly start-ups survive.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Terracycle, a small,
private company that fashions products out of difficult-to-recycle packaging, is hoping that large retailers like Wal-Mart will take up its cause more consistently -- and help the tiny company finally turn a profit.
Wal-Mart carried Terracycle's wares during a promotion for last month's Earth Day. In one clever touch, the retailer stocked Terracycle's backpacks, crafted from
Kraft's Capri-Sun packages, next to the actual Capri-Sun beverages.
Plastic bag and container maker S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. has teamed with TerraCycle Inc. to increase recycling of its products.
Racine, Wis.-based S.C. Johnson will sponsor the newest TerraCycle Brigade, which allows schools to collect Ziploc bags and containers and then send them back to the company. For each bag or container collected, Ziploc and TerraCycle will pay 2 cents to the school actually doing the collection.
The school signed up for the brigades, an upcycling program started by TerraCycle that is now in more than 50,000 schools nationwide. It's an easy thing to do," said Paul Stone, the school's adjustment counselor who found the program on the Internet.
TerraCycle was founded in 2001 by then-19-year-old Princeton University student Tom Szaky, who gave empty drink pouches a second life by turning them into tote bags, backpacks, pencil cases, and lunchboxes.
Other companies' trash is Terracycle's treasure. Back in 2006, we dubbed Terracycle the "coolest little start-up in America <http://www.inc.com/magazine/20060701/coolest-startup.html?partner=newsletter_news> ." At the time, Terracycle was focused almost exclusively on their core product, a garden fertilizer made from composted worm poop, packaged in re-purposed soda bottles. Today the company is still turning trash into new products, only on a much larger scale. As the Wall Street Journal <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575214431306540058.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_smallbusiness> reports, Terracycle has greatly expanded their product line to include everything from backpacks made from reused drink pouches to kites made from old candy wrappers. That expansion, however, hasn't come without some difficulties. To house the mounds and mounds of garbage they collect for their products, the company has had to lease five new storage warehouses. Terracyle's execs have even begun sharing offices and moving their desks into the hallways to make room for trash piles. Terracyle is now banking on increased orders from big-box stores like Wal-Mart <http://www.inc.com/topic/Wal-Mart+Stores+Inc.> and Target <http://www.inc.com/topic/Target+Corporation> to jumpstart their business and keep their warehouses full of trash out of landfills. "The pressure is as high as I can think of," says the company's founder, Tom Szaky <http://www.inc.com/topic/Tom+Szaky> .
