「了解海洋中的塑膠帶來多大的災害是很重要的，因為塑膠會困住動物或被動物吃下肚，我認為人們不知道這是多大的危機。」與P&G合作製造洗髮精瓶的回收公司TerraCycle，其創辦人Tom Szaky如此告訴赫芬頓郵報。

TerraCycle started in 2001 as a simple organic fertilizer company. Founder Tom Szaky, then a freshman at Princeton University, saw an opportunity to use discarded food scraps from the cafeteria to make a product that had value. He fed the leftovers to an army of worms to harvest worm compost, or Worm Poop as it became fondly known, a completely organic, ultra-effective fertilizer. With no money to buy packaging, Tom bottled the liquid fertilizer in used soda bottles collected from recycling bins, unwittingly creating the world’s first product made from AND packaged entirely in waste. The idea of using would-be waste material to make new products grew. Today, TerraCycle partners with major consumer goods manufacturers such as Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay, Mars, Colgate-Palmolive, L’Oreal, Method and many more to collect almost 50 kinds of non-recyclable or hard-to-recycle packaging, such as drink pouches, chip bags, candy wrappers, toothpaste tubes, cosmetics and household cleaner packaging. For each piece of waste sent to TerraCycle through this Brigade program, the collector earns points that can be put toward charity gifts or converted to cash and paid to any school or non-profit. The programs are completely free to join and all shipping costs are pre-paid. The collected material is upcycled or recycled into a wide range of consumer products. By using some of the millions of pieces of packaging that go to landfill every year to make innovative consumer goods, TerraCycle hopes to reduce the need to use virgin materials and show the world it is more sustainable and profitable to use waste as a raw material. Since 2007, more than 90,000 locations and 29 million people have gotten involved in the Brigade program and are helping to collect trash in homes, schools, offices and community buildings across the country. More than 2.5 billion pieces of pre- and post-consumer packaging have been collected and over $4.5 million has been donated to schools and non-profits. For more information, please visit: TerraCycle.com and TerraCycleShop.com

TerraCycle Triathlon of Trash Winner Gets Free UGA Semester Dedicated to the Late Jim McGown of Athens who passed away March 7 of this year. A Veteran of the U.S. Navy, and a tireless worker for the betterment of mankind whose labor and efforts were felt as far away as the Middle East! There is No Waste...Only Wasted Resources! Perhaps Earth Day Should be Every Day as we only have one Earth and without it we would be lost! St Gregory the Great Episcopal Church on the East Side has now earned almost $6,000 by keeping over 260,000 pieces of formally difficult to recycle trash out of the landfill. While Broward College near Ft. Lauderdale has now earned $15,000. Let's be honest how much sense does it make to bury unbiodegradable trash under ground from land we stole from Mother Nature? This is Varsity Recycling: TerraCycle.com is now accepting what we would normally think of as difficult or impossible to recycle. Things like Any & All: Chip Bags, Candy Wrappers, Glue Sticks, Sunscreen  and Lipstick Tubes, and now Any and All Cigarette Trash to include Stinky Cigarette Butts. Here is the Deal: From right now until August 15th, 2013 collect everything you can from the list below placing and separating each category in its own container such as a  Box, Bird Seed, or Pet Food Bag.  Feel free to get as large as you want but make sure a single average person can move the container around fairly easy through average doorways with the assistance of a hand truck. Items can be damp but not soaked and should be shaken or squeezed free of most food and liquid.(No Need To Scrub or Rinse Anything Out) Boxes and Packages will be opened for inspection. The winner with the most by weight wins a free Semester(In-State Tuition estimated to be $3,800)! Participants will meet for a Showdown on August 16th, 2013 at a location To Be Determined. For more information meet Captain PLaneT for a personal demonstration, description, and Q&A in the Odum School of Ecology Courtyard on Tuesday June 11th, 2013 at 4:00 pm! Or schedule me for a briefing at your location! If you are far away I can just email you all the UPS Shipping Labels for free shipping and TerraCycle will do the measuring. Just ask me for a label for specific brigades. The List:

1. Any & All Drink Pouches(Such as Capri-Sun, Kool-Aid to include the straws and straw wrappers)
2. Any & All Coffee Pouches(Such as Maxwell House, Equal Exchange Organic, and Starbucks)
3. Any & All Cookie and Cracker Wrappers(Such as Oreo and Keebler)
4. Any & All Energy or Breakfast Bar and Energy Food Wrappers(Such as Granola Bars, Breakfast Bars, Cliff Bars, Oddwalla Bars, Nut Bags, Kashi Bars)
5. Any & All Candy Wrappers(Such as M&Ms, Hershey, and Snickers) and Gum Wrappers(Such as Trident, Bubblicious, and Wrigley)
6. Any & All Chip and Salty Snack Bags(Such as Frito Lay, Pepperidge Farm, potato chip, crackers, pretzel, cheeto, nacho, and any that look and feel similar)
7. Any & All Lunch Kit Trays, Wrappers(such as Lunchables)
8. Any & All Dairy Tub Containers(Such as Stonyfield Farms, Chobani, Dannon) Butter Type Spread Containers (Such as Country Crock, Promise, and yes even the little baby single serve sizes along with baby coffee creamers) Sour Cream and Cottage Cheese, etc.
9. Sprout Brand Baby Food as well as Any & All Crushed Fruit Bags and Containers and Wrappers(GoGo Squeeze, Plum Organics, Gerber,  Chiquita, Ella's Kitchen, etc)
10. Any & All Cereal Bags(Such as Malt-O-Meal, Rice Crispies, and Honey Nut Cheerios)
11. Bear Naked Brand Granola and Cereal Product Wrappers
12. Any & All Corks Real and Fake Plastic from wine and other liquor bottles
13. Any & All Disposable Household Tape Dispensers (Such as Scotch Tape)
14. Any & All Home Storage Bags and Containers (such as Zip Lock Type Bags, sandwich bags, and temporary tupperware plastic containers)
15. Any & All Paper Towel and similar Paper Product Wrappers (Such as Scotts Paper Towels, Tissue Paper, Paper Napkins etc)
16. Any & All Tooth Paste Tubes, Dental Floss Devices, and used Toothbrushes (Such as Colgate, Crest, etc)
17. Any & All Glue Containers and Glue Sticks (Such as Elmer's)
18. Any & All Human Writing Instruments except Chalk and Crayons (Such as Used Up or Broken Pens, Sharpies, Markers, Highlighters, Magic Markers, and Mechanical Pencils, Wooden Pencils)
19. Any & All Beauty and Skin Care Product Tubes and Containers (Such as Aveeno and Aveda Skin Product Tubes, Neosporin Medicine Containers, Lip Stick Tubes, Cosmetic Cases,  Chap Stick Tubes, Shampoo Bottles, Deodorant Sticks and Sun Screen Tubes and Bottles)
20. Any & All Diaper Wrappers (such as Huggies, Pampers, g-Diaper and any sort of Baby Sanitation Wipe as well as Incontinence Pad Wrappers)
21. Any & All Cell Phones, MP3 players, Digital Cameras,  GPS Systems, Calculators, Printer and Toner Cartridges, and Laptop Computers including all cords and chargers
22. Any & All Cheese Wrappers (such as Kraft, Kroger, Sargento)
23. Any & All Tortilla, Tostada & Bread Wrappers (such as Mission Tortillas)
24. Any and All Home Cleaning Containers and Items (such as Method Packs, Windex, Pledge, Ajax, and Toilet Brushes, Tubes, Pistol Squeezers)
25. Any and All #5 & #6 disposable plastic drinking cup (Solo Cups)
26. Any and All Laundry and Dish Wash Detergent Briquette Bags (Dropps, Tide, Cascade)
27. Any and All Wine Pouches
28. Any and All Hummus Products (like Athenos Hummus)
29. Any and All Shoes
30. Any and All Cigarette & Cigar Waste including all the ashes, unburnt tobacco, filter stubs, plastic outer wrap, aluminum paper inner wrap. (Please place in an airtight plastic bag inside the outer package)

Simplifying package design can directly benefit your business by reducing production costs and increasing branding opportunities. You can streamline clumsy designs by reducing materials, or you can promote closed-loop packaging by reusing recycled/recyclable materials like companies such as TerraCycle and Method home products. There is a wealth of opportunities to profit from smart, sustainable package design. Just remember: transparency, clarity, and accessibility can help make sustainable business profitable! Note: Tom Szaky (CEO of TerraCycle) will present a webinar on April 17, 2013 entitled: "Turning waste into Massive Equity". Free registration to this i2live webinar on www.i2live.net

I speak for many of our eco citizens and dedicated environmentalist when I say that it pains me to throw anything away, but unfortunately, there are just some things that just can’t be recycled. Chip bags, candy wrappers, tape dispensers and used pens all have to go into the trash… or normally would… Thanks to the company TerraCycle, hard-to-recycle items like those listed above are not trashed, but are actually recycled, or even upcycled. TerraCycle partners with the companies that produce these items, and works with them to create an environmentally friendlier end of life- which means that for many of them, they are turned into something completely new-for example, pens and sharpies are turned into dry erase marker holders, and cookie wrappers are turned into backpacks. Awesome, right? Wait- it gets better.

Terracycle is an organization that will collect often otherwise un-recyclable items and also pay a small amount for the items you send. I have set up a stack of four plastic bins in the hall across from the Kitchen, where the other recycle bins are. Each bin has a sign that lists what it can collect. Please gather as many of these items as you can, from your house or work or elsewhere. In addition to raising a little money, it will be great to have a place to send these things other than the trash heap. Here is a run down of what you can bring in: Elmer's Glue and Scotch Tape: Empty glue sticks or other Elmer's glue product containers, any brand of empty tape rolls and dispensers. Cleaning Supply Packaging: Containers, lids, triggers, and refill bags (like Method brand bags) for all kinds of cleaning supplies, any brand.

Method and TerraCycle, Inc have expanded the Method Refill Brigade program to accept pumps, triggers, refill pouches and almost any cleaner product packaging, regardless of brand. Schools, offices, families or individuals can collect traditionally non-recyclable cleaner packaging and send it to TerraCycle to earn money for charity gifts and donations through the newly dubbed Cleaner Packaging Brigade.

No botes tus flip flop o clogs viejos a la basura! Recolectalos y envíalos para que sean re-usados y además ganes puntos para contribuir con una escuela o casa beneficiaria que tu escojas. Esta es una iniciativa de Terracycle.com. Es fácil dar a la ropa y los bienes del hogar una segunda vida cuando las puedes donar al Ejército de Salvación, Goodwill o Habitat Reuse Centers. Pero, ¿Qué pasa con las cosas que no se pueden donar y sólo  terminarían en el relleno sanitario si las desechas? Fashionistas ecológicos por todo el país pueden transformar accesorios usados y calzados en plata para un fin benéfico. Además puedes  recaudar fondos  al  vaciar tu hogar o armario.

Household cleaner products firm Method Home has expanded its recycling program in collaboration with TerraCycle to cover all brands of pumps, triggers, refill pouches, and packaging for other cleaner products. Schools, offices, families or individuals can collect traditionally non-recyclable cleaner packaging and send it to TerraCycle to earn money for charity gifts, reported greenerpackage.com. Method co-founder Adam Lowry said Packaging said sustainability is a core priority built into the design of every Method product. According to the firm, by expanding partnership with Terracycle to accept packaging from all cleaning product companies, they can work to reduce landfill waste and carbon emissions

After launching the Method Refill Brigade® in 2011, Method, a leading innovator in premium, environmentally-conscious household and personal care products, and upcycling/recycling pioneer TerraCycle, Inc. have now expanded the program to accept pumps, triggers, refill pouches and almost any cleaner product packaging, regardless of brand. Schools, offices, families or individuals can collect traditionally non-recyclable cleaner packaging and send it to TerraCycle to earn money for charity gifts and donations through the newly dubbed Cleaner Packaging Brigade. The collected packaging will be turned into trash cans, coolers and other home goods.