A company founded on worm excrement is turning trash into cash for St. Matthew's Lutheran School. Empty juice pouches, potato chip bags, Snicker's candy bar wrappers all are worth two cents or more to Kay Abts' students and St. Matthew's School.  Abts and the students in her seventh- and eighth-grade class have partnered with TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based firm that purchases the discarded wrappings. The erstwhile garbage will reappear on retailers' shelves as backpacks, pencil cases, totebags and other "upcycled consumer items."

St. Joseph School As part of the TerraCycle program, St. Joseph School collects and gets cash for various brands, including all Mars brands candy wrappers. After Halloween (and anytime), people can send those empty wrappers to school. Collection boxes are the main foyer and cafeteria. The following brands are accepted: M&Ms, Skittles and Twix, Mars and Dove bars. Also, before people dispose of this year's Halloween costumes, they should consider donating it for next year's Green Halloween Used Costume Sale.

St. Joseph School As part of the TerraCycle program, St. Joseph School collects and gets cash for various brands, including all Mars brands candy wrappers. After Halloween (and anytime), people can send those empty wrappers to school. Collection boxes are the main foyer and cafeteria. The following brands are accepted: M&Ms, Skittles and Twix, Mars and Dove bars. Also, before people dispose of this year's Halloween costumes, they should consider donating it for next year's Green Halloween Used Costume Sale. The

With TerraCycle, one person's trash is another person's eco-friendly retail product. The brainchild of a 19-year-old Princeton University freshman in 2001, TerraCycle uses a wide variety of non-recyclable items to make more than 50 diverse products that are sold at major retailers, including Target, The Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Office Max, Whole Foods Market and Petco.

Terracycle recycled products, Terracycle.netThe next time you throw out that bag of potato chips or box of M&Ms, it could end up in your next consumer electronics gadget. Terracycle.com offers a whole bunch of cool items made from recycled material, and the company sent us a bunch of fun stuff. My favorite was the pair of speakers made from a box of Peanut M&Ms, which created a nice pair of portable speakers for my iPod. The cool part? The passive speakers required no batteries! We also got a clipboard made from a recycled motherboard, a set of circuit board coasters, and photo frames made from old circuit boards.

Before those Halloween candy wrappers end up in the trash, you may want to know about a free way to give them a second life as purses, kites and other items. TerraCycle, a company that makes products from non-recyclable waste materials, has partnered with Mars/Wrigley and Cadbury for the "Candy Wrapper Brigade." It collects the wrappers and upcycles them into products. It's organized many such brigades and sells more than 50 items at major retailers such as Walmart, Target, The Home Depot, OfficeMax, Petco and Whole Foods Market.

Yesterday I bought a bag of M&Ms. I know that sounds exciting, right? Well, when I got home, I noticed that on the back of the bag there was an infinity sign and the name Terracycle.  Next to that it says, "Mars is turning used candy wrappers into eco-friendly products," and gives the website terracycle.net <http://terracycle.net/> . I proceeded and checked out the website.

For the everyday sweet-eater, Terracycle is your best bet. Founder Tom Szaky made the once-kitschy term “upcycling” into a legitimate process, and since its humble beginnings in 2001, Terracycle has become one of the No. 1 upcycling companies in the U.S. We’ve seen Szaky and his team create usable (and fashionable) materials for the home, garden, school and office from almost-impossible-to-recycle items like Capri Sun pouches, Skittles bags and Starburst wrappers, just to name a few.

BOOM BOOM POW TerraCycle makes mini Speakers ($13.99) and Boomboxes ($18.99) from upcycled M&M’s, Skittles and Starburst candy wrappers. Upcycling means using materials that would otherwise go to waste—in this case, excess packaging. Light, portable and super-colorful, the speakers and boomboxes are a natural complement to any iPod or MP3-player gifts this Christmas. They’re also battery-free, drawing power from your device to boom your sweet sounds—and packed and shipped flat to reduce pollution. —Brita Belli CONTACT: DwellSmart.

TerraCycle: We’ve already mentioned TerraCycle–a company that collects potato chip bags and food wrappers to make useful products. Join their Candy Wrapper Brigade to turn in your wrappers for some cash! Just sign-up and they’ll send you prepaid postage labels–for each wrapper you send it, TerraCycle will donate $0.02 to your favorite charity or school.