Students at Oakmont Regional High have raised money selling craft items like bracelets made from soda can tabs. They also have an account with TerraCycle and collect 2 cents for every snack wrapper they turn in. "That's our cash cow," said Archangelo. She said the school has embraced the program and every classroom has a box to collect wrappers for chips, granola bars, yogurt, along with glue sticks and tape dispensers. Club members spend a lot of hours sorting, folding and stacking the empty plastic wrappers.

PTO is excited to announce that our school is going GREEN! We teamed up with a program called TERRACYCLE.  We are going to be collecting a number of items to recycle and earn CASH.  Each classroom will have a bin to place collected items, which may be brought from home or just saved from lunch/snacks at school.  Please consider getting involved as we strive to make God’s creation a beautiful masterpiece one community at a time.  Below is a list of all items we are going to collect.  PTO will keep everyone informed throw here as to our progress throughout the year.

Some of us are feeling a tad guilty about eating the kids' Halloween treats. Well, here's a way to atone -- we can recycle all those candy wrappers through an ongoing partnership between Mars candy and the eco-friendly company TerraCycle. "It's a free collection program for all kinds of candy wrappers, regardless of brands, regardless of type," said TerraCycle public relations manager Stacey Krauss. In a phone interview, Krauss told us how easy it is to help both the planet and the charity of your choice by joining the "candy wrapper brigade." Simply sign up on the TerraCycle website and designate which nonprofit you would like to receive the funds or points earned.

Hudsonville Christian School released the detailed list of waste to be sent to TerraCycle.

TerraCycle's UpCycling (recycling) Program comes to Franklin County to benefit the United Way of the Tri-Valley Area. The United Way supports non-profit community programs and volunteer efforts across the region; TerraCycle offers a wonderful way to support this organization in its efforts. Are you tired of your trash piling up? Would you like to be able to recycle more products? TerraCycle's goal is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that today must be sent to a landfill. They do this by creating national recycling systems for previously non-recyclable or hard-to-recycle waste. TerraCycle then converts the collected waste into a wide variety of products and materials. With more than 20 million people collecting waste in over 20 countries TerraCycle has diverted billions of units of waste and used them to create over 1,500 different products available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods Market.

A recycling revolution is going on through the halls of North Andover Middle School. Students, teachers and other staffers have cut the volume of trash from the cafeteria by more than half, according to Craig Richard, one of the teachers who helped get the program going. The three lunch periods at the school used to produce around 30 bags of trash per day, Richard said. "Now it's around a dozen," he said. Tod Workman, school custodian, pointing to a cart that was about half full of trash bags, said it used to overflow with refuse from the cafeteria. The recycling renaissance was spearheaded not by adults, but by two eighth-graders, Douglas Starrett and Harry Ustik, who wrote a letter to the school's online newspaper NAMS Knightly News, in which they took the school to task for throwing away too much trash.

Social entrepreneurs create innovative solutions for tackling the world’s most vexing social problems. Whether they’re solving hunger, improving the environment, or fighting for political freedom, these entrepreneurs place social missions at the center of their business activities — aiming to maximize social value instead of profits, though both are important for maintaining a sustainable organization. As a result, social enterprises come in both for-profit and not-for-profit models, though some believe the secret to a successful social enterprise is acting like a business. Raviv Turner, cofounder and CEO of Guerillapps — a startup focused on developing social games to support real-world causes — would agree that successful social entrepreneurs are the ones taking queues from their for-profit counterparts. Passion and drive, though, are also essential components.

Both Chemung and Tioga counties recycle much material, including plastic grocery bags in Tioga. There are some things, however, neither county takes, such as plastic bowls or tubs for yogurt, margarine, Cool Whip, deli foods and the like. I always cringe when I throw those items away. If you'd like to reduce the quantity of waste going into the landfill and at the same time do something for the planet by donating items that will be refashioned into something else, it's now easy in Spencer-Van Etten. Following is a list of many items that you can recycle locally, as long as they are clean and free of food bits: juice pouches, empty chip bags (all sizes), candy bar wrappers from Mars/Wrigley or Cadbury, Lunchables lunch kits (all parts), plastic wrappers from Scott brand paper products, all Kraft cheese bags and cream cheese tubs, Scotch tape rolls and dispensers, shampoo and conditioner bottles, energy and granola bar wrappers, cookie bags and wrappers with the plastic trays, Colgate toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes and cardboard packaging, plastic butter tubs, plastic Solo cups, Elmer's glue sticks and bottles, yogurt cups, cell phones, MP3 players, ink jet printer cartridges, laptop computers, computer keyboards, computer mice and digital cameras.

Both Chemung and Tioga counties recycle much material, including plastic grocery bags in Tioga. There are some things, however, neither county takes, such as plastic bowls or tubs for yogurt, margarine, Cool Whip, deli foods and the like. I always cringe when I throw those items away. If you'd like to reduce the quantity of waste going into the landfill and at the same time do something for the planet by donating items that will be refashioned into something else, it's now easy in Spencer-Van Etten. Following is a list of many items that you can recycle locally, as long as they are clean and free of food bits: juice pouches, empty chip bags (all sizes), candy bar wrappers from Mars/Wrigley or Cadbury, Lunchables lunch kits (all parts), plastic wrappers from Scott brand paper products, all Kraft cheese bags and cream cheese tubs, Scotch tape rolls and dispensers, shampoo and conditioner bottles, energy and granola bar wrappers, cookie bags and wrappers with the plastic trays, Colgate toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes and cardboard packaging, plastic butter tubs, plastic Solo cups, Elmer's glue sticks and bottles, yogurt cups, cell phones, MP3 players, ink jet printer cartridges, laptop computers, computer keyboards, computer mice and digital cameras.

Looking for a fun, recycled craft for your Valentine? Based off a beaded necklace users create in Terracycle's Trash Tycoon game on Facebook, this do-it-yourself project is made from Kraft Cheese wrappers. It teaches kids (and adults) about recycling while preventing one more piece of garbage from going to the landfill, where it would last, forever. Instructions are available for download here: bit.ly/ValentineBraceletDIY.