The project partners the school with a company called TerraCycle, which pays the school 2 cents for commonly-disposed wrappers for candy bars, potato chips and other items. TerraCycle then turns the garbage into accessories such as backpacks and purse, according to fifth grade teacher Diane Roethler. “These aren’t things that can go in curbside recycling,” Roethler said. “This company has found a specific use for these items and a specific product that they can make from it.” Roethler hopes to use the money earned through the TerraCycle program to raise extra money for the school to purchase supplies. During the three weeks she collected material during the last school year, Roethler collected 2,200 items for more than $44. She expects to earn even more this year now that the parents and students are more familiar with the program.

Tom Szaky, a 28-year-old wunderkind from Canada, wants you to send him your garbage, and he’ll pay the shipping. Oh, and he also wants to make a lot of money and save the world by taking unrecyclable waste like chip bags and juice pouches and turning them into new products like backpacks, kites, coolers and clocks. Now he and his company, TerraCycle, take tons of hard-to-recycle plastics and other waste collected from collection “brigades” formed in schools, churches businesses and service organizations and turns them into products sold at Walmart and Target. They pay the shipping for articles like shopping bags, used pens, whatever, and pay 2 cents per unit to a charity on behalf of the collecting organization. All of it is organized through the company Web site, terracycle.net. The feel-good business model has worked with giant companies like Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay and Kimberly-Clark, who pitch the program on their packaging. Walmart and Target also have joined up, setting up collection points and selling products.

It seems easy, at first, to hate Tom Szaky, who gives the keynote address at Columbia’s fourth annual Green is Good for Business conference on Tuesday, Sept. 14. At 27, Szaky is the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company that he started in his Princeton dorm room. Last Friday, he was driving up the West Coast to a Dave Matthews Band show, having just met with one of his company’s big clients: Starbucks. Other clients include Kraft Foods, Home Depot and Frito-Lay. But the goal of TerraCycle, his nine-year-old company, is so jaw dropping — and so freakishly noble — that scorn and jealousy dissipate quickly.

Capri Sun, partnering with TerraCycle, recycles old juice pouches into fun school items such as back packs, totes and pencil cases. The group also offers a Be Green, Earn Green program for schools and organizations. Schools, non-profit organizations and even individuals can sign up at www.terracycle.net to be part of the “Drink Pouch Brigade” and collect used drink pouches. The minimum number of pouches to collect and send in is 500, but the group pays $0.02 per pouch to the charity, school or non-profit organization of your choice. TerraCycle even provides shipping labels. The colorful recycled items are sold in local stores such as WalMart or online at www.theultimategreenstore.com.

One parent at Lincoln Elementary School has come up with a creative way to raise money for the school while promoting recycling to students. The school is collecting candy wrappers, Capri Sun pouches and other items for TerraCycle, a company that then turns the recyclables into coolers, lunch bags, and other products sold at major retailers. In return for the items, TerraCycle makes a donation to the school. Jammie Esker Schaer, who has two children at the school, discovered the idea at a party.

Newcastle Elementary increased its recycling rate from 50 percent to 60 percent, began recycling food scraps, allowed students to serve as “waste watchers” that monitor lunchroom containers, placed stickers on all recycling containers listing what can and cannot be recycled, replaced wrapped utensils with unwrapped ones and stopped using straws. It also teamed up with TerraCycle — which makes products out of items that typically cannot be recycled — to recycle Capri Sun drink pouches and Lunchable containers.

From the traditional bake sales and gift-wrapping paper programs, fundraisers have become commonplace at a vast majority of schools in our area.

Children are never too young to learn environmental awareness. Teach them the benefits of recycling and re-use with this Drink Pouch Homework Folder from TerraCycle made of recycled juice packs instead of paper. Other recycled juice pack options include: backpacks, binders, pencil cases, totes, coolers and more!

While some entrepreneurs discover their business plans unintentionally contain excrement, Tom Szaky's was designed around the material. Worm dung, in fact. Inspired by the success his friends had using red wiggler worms to process compost, Szaky felt there could be a business in commercially producing and distributing a product he would call ‘Worm Poop'. Emboldened by taking fifth place in the Princeton Business Plan Contest, he quit Princeton after two years to form TerraCycle and devote himself to delivering Worm Poop to households everywhere. THE SMELL OF SUCCESS With $20,000 — the proceeds of Szaky's bank accounts and credit cards — he purchased a worm gin and began shovelling Princeton University's food waste into it to feed an ever-growing colony of worms. A worm can consume twice its body weight each day, so Szaky was soon up to his knees in product. Committed to a fully sustainable offering, he packaged his prized Worm Poop in paper bags and took it to gardening stores inviting them to stock it. The response was that the product looked good, but the aroma was not consumer compatible.