All of the items are machine washable and hand made by terraCycle’s design team in New Jersey.  I love that they keep the line 100% made in the USA which is one of the best ways to shop!

A great place to look for fun and unique products is Terracycle.com. At Terracylce they take old products like juice, chips, and candy bar wrappers, and upcycle them into fun new products.

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)

Did you know you could be raking in the pennies while doing something that’s good for the environment:  recycling?   It all started when I bought five packages of Capri Suns at Kroger to fulfill part of a rebate I was working on. On the back of the package was information about Terracycle, a company that has kept over 1.2 billion pieces of trash out of landfills while fashioning super cool backpacks, pencil cases, tote bags, trash cans, even cork boards! Even more amazing to me was that they would donate $ .02 per pouch collected, to the school or charity of my choice!

Halloween is here, bringing lots of tricks and treats. Each of those tasty treats come nicely wrapped in what will soon become trash. However, there may be a better place for all of those wrappers besides the garbage. TerraCycle is a web-based recycling service with the goal to eliminate waste. Their specialty is creating collection and solution systems for anything that must be sent to a landfill. TerraCycle does this by having teams or groups sign up for a specific program, called the brigades, and start sending them the waste. Each brigade is built on collecting a specific type of item in bulk. The materials are up-cycled into household and office items, and distributed to major retailers including Walmart and Whole Foods.   M&M’S has teamed up with TerraCycle to form the M&M’S Candy Wrapper Brigade, to collect and give candy wrappers a second life. Not only will more trash be kept out of landfills, but participants will also be helping a school or charity of their choice. TerraCycle will reward participants two TerraCycle points per candy wrapper, and each TerraCycle point is worth 1 cent that will be donated to the school or charity selected when participants register. Registration with TerraCycle is free. Just collect enough individual candy wrappers, large candy bags and multi-pack candy bags to fill up a shipping box or bag. Download a pre-paid shipping label from TerraCycle’s website and drop off the box at the nearest UPS location.

My husband looked over at me the other day and said, “Two years ago if you’d told me I’d be washing trash, I would have called you crazy.” Ah, but look at the crazies now. I discovered TerraCycle while writing this blog. When I first started posting over a year ago, I complained about how frustrating it was finding food without the packaging. An intern at TerraCycle wrote back saying he might have the answer to our question. And that we didn’t even have to wash the trash, just send it in. Well, not quite. I’d still rather throw out zero waste than recycle it. But if I hit a weak moment and break down and buy the darn M&M’s (oh no! NOT the sugar!) or a bag of chips, I can at least know it’s being up-cycled and not completely wasted. I watched a video on what TerraCycle does with the products we send them and must say, it was impressive that someone took the time not only to think this up, but actually do something about it. And of course, it was a kid who started it. A 19-year-old kid with an idea. Our future is not lost! I do find it frustrating that maybe the company isn’t big enough to receive all the recycling they wish. If I wanted to send in my items without paying the shipping myself or receive any points to reward myself for my time and effort, I had to be placed on a waiting list. I waited over a year and finally gave up, sending in almost two year’s worth of candy and chip bags (which really wasn’t that much as we’re only two people and not a huge company) to my niece’s school where they collect both chip bags and candy wrappers for TerraCycle. Her science teacher was thrilled. So, I suppose there is good and bad in everything. Hurry up and wait. Hey, at least someone is DOING something and not just talking. And I can give in now to a bag of sugar-filled, evil M&M’s every once in a while—without the guilt. Because life is short, damn it. And I really like M&M’s. I shouldn’t have to give up everything! I bet a kid you knows goes to a school who might just be interested in TerraCycle, if they aren’t doing it already. Just an idea to pass on. To a teacher. A friend. A neighborhood kid…

15. Sweet speakers. A must-give gift for the iPod generation: A set of TerraCycle portable speakers made from upcycled M&M wrappers.

What can you do with candy wrappers, worn out flip flops, or the box from your toothpaste? You can upcycle it! TerraCycle’s goal is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating national recycling systems for previously non-recyclable or hard-to-recycle waste. Anyone can sign up for these programs and start sending them some of your waste on their list. Some of the waste that is collected includes things that a lot of use every day including: energy bar wrappers chip bag wrappers toothpaste boxes corks flip flops cleaner packaging cell phones candy wrappers drink boxes TerraCycle will then use your garbage to make a wide variety of products and materials which includes bags umbrellas, clipboards, plastic planters, and purses. The program has gotten lots of support, and over 20 million people collect waste in over 20 countries. With the programs, TerraCycle has collected billions of units of useful trash and used it to create over 1,500 different products which are available at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods.

Turning worm poop into fertilizer was TerraCycle’s first big idea. Then they transformed discarded drink containers into consumer bling, which made them a world-recognized leader in this hot, new trend of “upcycling.” Upcycling is the conversion of waste destined for landfills into new products of better quality or a higher environmental value. TerraCycle upcycles unwanted trash into messenger bags, notebooks, and the list goes on. “Buy low, sell high” is the underlying business model for upcycling companies such as TerraCycle. They buy raw source materials (waste) at low cost and charge premium prices for their fashionable, environmentally-friendly upcycled products. But that’s not all. The upcycling companies’ business partners also benefit because their scrap waste is being reused. Instead of having to pay someone to haul their waste away, someone is actually paying for it and taking it off their hands.