Stuart Walker was so disgusted by the smell of recycling bins during his first day as a member of Kemptown Elementary School's recycling club, he said he felt like putting a clothespin on his nose. Now the fifth-grader is signing up for a second stint with the club.

Community of Faith's Stepping Stones ministry participates in TerraCycle, a fundraising through recycling program. The following list of items may be brought to church and droped off in the TerraCycle bin located next to the Stepping Stones registration desk. Last year this program raised over $1,200 for use in commuity and other special projects.

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And there was more: Neosporin tubes, tortilla bags and all types of pen and markers. In all, parents collected and sorted into 37 bins items from both home and school, and sent them to TerraCycle, a not-for-profit New Jersey company dedicated to recycling the previously unrecyclable.

Otsego Baptist Academy is one of nine area elementary schools bringing green into the fall and winter by participating in programs from TerraCycle, a recycling and upcycling company. TerraCycle offers eco-friendly, upcycled and recycled lunchboxes as well as a way to earn money by collecting nonrecyclable food packaging for cookies, chips and juice pouches. In addition, TerraCycle offers lunchboxes made from the wrappers that students have collected, showing students the recycling and upcycling processes in action. Olivet’s expandable cooler, sold at Walmart, has a removable hardliner made from recycled chip bags, while the Capri Sun lunchboxes are crafted from the juice pouches.

With the wide variety of individual-size packaging for food products, creating a portable lunch that will please youngsters’ tastebuds is easier than ever. However, it also causes more waste, which leads to fuller wastebaskets, and eventually, fuller landfills. That’s where the program TerraCycle comes in. The company, headquartered in New Jersey, collects difficult-to-recycle food packaging and turns it into extra money for schools. Three area schools currently are participating in this program: Bad Axe Elementary, Owendale-Gagetown Area Schools and Our Lady of Lake Huron Catholic School in Harbor Beach.

"I like nature and stuff," said sixth-grader Cody Weisensale. "I want to make the world a better place." Classmate Delanie Dennis said, "If no one recycled, the world wouldn't be very pretty." Earthkeepers collect and sort recyclables from all over the school. Several days a week, they sacrifice recess to count and box up empty chip bags, Lunchable trays and Capri Sun pouches. Each box of 500 like items brings the school $10 from TerraCycle, a company that turns the waste into park benches, back packs, flower pots and more.

As students headed back to class this fall in dozens of area schools, they were reminded to think twice before dumping the remains of their school lunch in the trash. The schools- more than 50 of them in Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin Counties- are partnering with TerraCycle, a national "upcycling" and recycling company which comes up with creative ways to reuse non-recyclable or hard to recycle waste.

Vicky Peck has a nickname some might find not so flattering, but she loves it when kids call her the “juice pouch lady” because it means they’re thinking about recycling. And getting kids to think about recycling is the first step. In two years, Peck and the students of Douglas Elementary School have recycled more than 55,000 drink pouches through a nationwide recycling program run by TerraCycle Inc. In return, the school has received $1,105 for enrichment programs, and the students have caught the recycling bug.