Some Callaway County schools are participating in an international recycling company's re-purposing program. TerraCycle Inc. collects certain trash items that aren't typically recyclable, such as candy wrappers and juice pouches, and uses them to create products like bags, park benches, ice melt and flower pots.

El Descanso Elementary School student Katelyn Kienitz’s campaign to raise money for her school began when she ran out of pages in her math journal. “I needed a new math journal for school and (my teacher) didn’t have any extra notebooks,” said the 11-year-old fifth-grader. “My school is a very nice school, but we need more classroom supplies.”

Welcome back to Rock Roundup, when we take a look back at Council Rock community happenings and give a sneak peek into what's coming up on the calendar. Here's the latest from Council Rock: Newtown Elementary School TerraCycle is a private business headquartered in Trenton, NJ.. which specializes in making consumer products from post-consumer materials, often reusing waste materials that are otherwise difficult to recycle. The Newtown Elementary School community collected close to 20,000 items for TerraCycle recycling during the 2010-2011 school year.

Helping the environment, animals and people in Bellevue community – these were the accomplishments celebrated by 25 student council Leaders and their parents at Enatai Elementary School on June 13. Since November, the third, fourth and fifth grade students set up donation stations in school to collect more than 200 items for Hopelink, collected more than 40 items for the Humane Society and made cars to send to sick children in the hospital on Valentine's Day. They also set up a juice pouch recycling program with TerraCycle to help reduce waste and raise money for charity with the 1-2 cents raised by each pouch.

An important component of the Elementary Program has been understanding the importance of our community and protecting the environment. Students learned that some of the products we use, like Capri Sun drink pouches, are non-recyclable. As a result, in October of 2010 our class decided to collect drink pouches and send them to TerraCycle, a company that turns drink pouches, chip bags, and candy wrappers into backpacks, coolers, folders, lunch boxes, and other cool products. TerraCycle will give our program 2 cents for every drink pouch collected and we are proud to say that we have collected a total of 1,313 drink pouches! The Elementary Program will continue to collect drink pouches throughout the summer and into the next academic year. If you consume Capri Suns or any other brand of drink pouches we encourage you to drop them off at our Elementary Program Recycling Station.

Creekside and Grand Ridge achieved Level 1 in the Green Schools Program, focusing on waste reduction and recycling. Creekside, a LEED certified building, opened in fall 2010 and started recycling from the get go. Today, students and staff have a recycling rate of 55 percent and reduce their waste by recycling not only the usual suspects — paper and plastic — but also milk cartons and food scraps. “The kids are really great about it,” Program Assistant Judy Bowlby said. “They dump their milk cartons out and put the carton into the recycle bin.” Students can participate in TerraCycle’s Capri Sun Juice Pouch Brigade, directing the discarded pouches toward artists that can make them into bags, clipboards, pencil cases, waste baskets and fences. Though staff members led the initial “green” initiative, student leaders plan to get involved soon.

Other green initiatives in the school include recycling paper and upcycling drink pouches. The pouches are collected and shipped to a company called Terracycle that converts them to tote bags, pencil cases, lunch boxes and book bags. More than 3,500 pouches have been collected since the program started during summer camp in July.  “We’re a Juice Pouch Brigade,” said Jarrell. The school gets 2 cents for every juice pouch sent in. Money collected is put back into green programs for the school. “More importantly, our students are learning how to recycle and making an impact on the environment.”