Terracycle upcycles consumer waste into new salable goods. They primarily harvest their raw material from schoolchildren as part of charity drives, though they are now placing recycling stations at certain Walmart stores. At the Walmart centers they pay 3 cents per piece, but only for a narrow range of product packaging; the website supports a wider range of recyclables.

2. Walmart installed TerraCycle recycling and garbage bins outside of New Jersey stores <http://www.causeintegration.com/2010/walmart-recycling-program-pays-cash-for-trash-with-terracycle/> , and may expand the program nationwide. TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net/>  takes an innovative spin on recycling and waste, taking things most people think are garbage -- like empty Capri-Sun juice bags, or Oreo cookie wrappers -- and fashioning them into cool products that kids can take to school as backpacks and more. TerraCycle has successfully "upcycled" $1.85 billion worth of garbage since its inception (and as a plug, TerraCycle is founded by a Fellow of StartingBloc <http://startingbloc.org/> , Tom Szaky).

It is called TerraCycle. TerraCycle recycles everyday products and turns them into new products. It helps the environment and your school at the same time. So far TerraCycle has collected $1,476,863.02 for charities and schools count as charities. The empty CapriSun packets collected each earn .02 cents and with every 500 collected you can send them to TerraCycle.

TerraCycle names school one of top 100 America's Best Brigade in the Drink Pouch Brigade A Woodland elementary school has earned $774.12 for collecting drink pouches and is in the top 100 collecting schools among more than 30,000 schools participating nationwide.

There is something pure genius sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot in New Jersey and it is not Jon Bon Jovi (but I’d like it to be). It’s a giant green trash collection bin that will take all sorts of garbage you thought you couldn’t recycle … and pay you for it.

Teachers and students at Altruria Elementary used to see a lot of used Capri Sun drink pouches get thrown away. But, once they signed up for a program through TerraCycle, those once discarded pouches turned into hundreds of dollars. The school began earning two cents per pouch as part of a free nationwide program that pays schools and non-profits to collect non-recyclable waste that would otherwise go to a landfill.

Nine years later, Szaky, now 28, runs one of the fastest-growing eco-friendly manufacturers in the world. TerraCycle Inc. runs collection programs for what are commonly thought of as nonrecyclable waste materials, saving thousands of tons of waste from landfills and making things like picture frames from old bicycle chains, backpacks from cookie wrappers, and tote and messenger bags from drink pouches.

Princeton entrepreneur wants to rid the globe of most of its trash The heart of Princeton resident Tom Szaky’s $20-million-a-year business empire is an old printing plant at 121 New York Ave. in Trenton, where most of the company’s 75 employees work, at desks made of old doors, with a computer network cobbled together from other companies’ obsolete hardware, with dividers made of old vinyl hip-hop records and empty soda bottles, and in some cases walking on floor tiles made of processed plastic and aluminum juice pouches.

Elementary school joins nationwide recycling effort MAHOPAC: After seeing a lot of discarded Capri Sun pouches, teachers at Fulmar Road Elementary School signed up to recycle them through a company called TerraCycle. The school earns two cents per pouch. The move is part of a nationwide effort that has just reached the milestone of keeping 50 million pouches out of landfills.

A set of New Jersey Wal-Mart parking lots now have a way to turn consumer product waste into profits. (Well, a little pocket change, anyway.)  Terracycle <http://www.terracycle.net/>  has installed what they call "Store Collection Systems," a 20-foot trailer that accepts all kinds of packaging that can't be recycled in the normal blue bin outside your house. Then they take the mostly plastic waste—like Elmer’s glue bottles, toothpaste tubes, Capri Sun drink pouches—and turn them into products to resell in stores and online. They make mostly bags, pouches and coolers, but a few other items like picture frames and fertilizer, too.