Spring is here, and with it comes the task of spring cleaning. This can mean emptying closets, de-cluttering your home, or ridding the air of any germs. Whatever you choose, the objective is the same: to live clean. Traditional standard cleaners contain harsh chemicals that can be hazardous so to keep them out of your home, you can make your own green cleaners by using inexpensive ingredients. Here is some information that may help you to weigh the opposing benefits and risks:

The Naples Christian Academy received the Waste Reduction Awards Program, or WRAP, award from the Collier County Board of Commissioners in December. The WRAP award recognizes businesses, institutions and multi-family properties for enhanced and innovative recycling programs.

For local students, collecting cans and bottles is more than a lesson about recycling, it’s about giving back to their school and community while helping the environment. Students at Poston Road and Paragon elementary schools have been hard at work collecting cans, bottles and other recyclables as part of a project for their high achievement class. The Poston Road program, a collaborative effort between students and recycling organizations TerraCycle and the Dream Machine Recycle Rally, combines the best of both worlds: Helping the environment while working toward the purchase of school equipment, program sponsor Donna Lehmann said. “Our high ability students are the ones really getting it up and going,” Lehmann said. “One of our students, Asher (Markita) and I were the only ones scanning the cans and bottles to start.” The program began with TerraCycle, a recycling company based in New Jersey, which allowed the students to collect normally non-recyclable trash such as Caprisun juice pouches, lunchables and chip bags, and ship them to TerraCycle for free and earn money for the school.

On December 13, 2011, Naples Christian Academy was awarded a WRAP (Waste Reduction Awards Program) award by the Collier County Board of Commissioners. The WRAP award recognizes businesses, institutions and multi-family properties for their enhanced and innovative recycling programs. The Academy was recognized for their increased recycling efforts and the message of the importance of recycling that they are advocating to their staff, students and families, through their regular recycling efforts, upcycling through Terracycle and their participation in the Dream Machine Recycle Rally contest. Naples Christian Academy received a beautiful framed certificate and trophy and was honored for their service to the community and for doing what they love to do most - serving and honoring God! This story is contributed by a member of the Naples community and is neither endorsed nor affiliated with Naples Daily News

Students at Tharptown Elementary School have traded in Mother Goose for Mother Earth with their “Recycle Race” program that has had students thinking about the environment all year long. TES guidance counselor Brandi Gholston said the program, which was incorporated this school year as part of the guidance curriculum, has been a great success so far and serves a two-fold purpose: to earn money for the school and to compete in a nationwide recycling contest with other schools. With the economy in the shape that it’s in, Gholston said they have to get creative with the ways the school earns money and being able to help the environment while simultaneously helping the school was just an added bonus.

Nicole Patrick has a passion for recycling that she's not afraid to share with others. The Westover resident is a brigade administrator for several TerraCycle projects and recently brought Pepsi and Waste Management's Dream Machine Project to Purchase Line North Elementary School. TerraCycle, Patrick explained, is a national organization that offers programs called brigades that allow individuals or groups to send in waste to be recycled. Its goal, she said, is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating a recycling system for anything that must be sent to a landfill.

Are Dream Machines the Answer to America's Recycling Woes? by Tom Szaky of TerraCycle, Trenton NJ As the head of a company focused on reducing waste, I spend a lot of time finding new ways to do it. While we've had increasing success getting people to send us their waste to put to work in new products, the overall rate of recycling in the US <http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/how-to-go-green-recycling.php> , how do I say it? Sucks. With 40 years of efforts to increase recycling, from the 70s where you had to bring everything to a recycling center, to the curbside blue bin <http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2009/03/recycling-bins-from-around-the-world.php>  making even the laziest of us able to easily do our part, we're now barely pushing 30% recyclable waste recovery as a country. What's it going to take? RecycleBank <http://www.recyclebank.com/>  seems to be getting traction, with more than two million people signed up for a program where your curbside waste gets weighed, credits awarded, redeemable for local goods. It's a step forward, as it goes beyond relying on people's self motivation to help the greater good, and adds a direct incentive to recycle more, resulting in something tangible. Especially in this tough economy, people appreciate getting deals and even better, something for free. Now comes a new contender in a shiny polished package that I'll be interested to see how well it works: Greenopolis <http://greenopolis.com/> . Greenopolis is in a way a hybrid of that 70s model of recycling with the data rich, customizing model of business many take these days: You bring your recyclables to their "Dream Machine" <http://greenopolis.com/goblog/revolutionist/7-11-launches-dream-machine-west-virginia>  kiosks, and scan each item, one at a time. In return you get points, which are redeemable for things like discounted movie tickets, pizza, travel, and interestingly, helping post 9/11 disabled veterans. Perhaps taking a cue from TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net> , they're amplifying the impact and quantity recycled by engaging in schools, listing which school has collected the most <http://www.dreammachinerecyclerally.com/leaderboard/> . Nothing like competition to boost motivation! Like supermarket reward cards, the data on what you scanned into the recycler is likely used to garner localized insights on what people are buying, and I'm guessing make Greenopolis users offers based on these. To some, giving away their private information and purchase habits to companies is no biggie. It's become the norm. But I have to wonder, what's your take? Do you think it's wrong for companies to use your personal information for marketing aims? My guess is most people would appreciate having offers that are better suited to them made. And as recycling has become increasingly commoditized by the big players in China, finding ways to both increase the quality of what's brought in and monetize in ways not dependent on the recycling market sounds like a wise path to go down. Readers: What do you think it will take to substantially increase recycling in the US? What can we learn from other countries? What's your opinion about the Greenopolis model?