Elizabeth Seton High School students are recycling in a new way–recycling the unrecyclable. Due to the plastics and metals contained in CapriSun and Kool-Aid drink pouches, these products cannot be conventionally recycled. However, a New Jersey-based company, TerraCycle - with the assistance of the all-girl school's ecology club - collects these pouches, which the company repurposes into bags and backpacks.

A company founded in 2001 by a 19-year-old Princeton University freshman is increasingly finding a home for "un-recyclable" plastics and bridging the gap between consumers of everyday items like drink pouches and the brand owners that create them. Now, Tom Szaky, a grizzled 28-year-old that was named to Inc. magazine's 30 under 30 <http://www.inc.com/magazine/20060701/coolest-startup.html>  list at 24, and his company, TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net/>  (Trenton, NJ), are reaching out to the plastics industry.

The night before, when we were setting up, I noticed that volunteers were putting cookies in small snack sized Zip-Loc bags.   Of course, my "trash-radar" went up and since I could not avoid the baggies, I could gather them and send them to Terracycle.  So, I prepared a box with a sign asking for the empty baggies to be put in the box. While I still had to raid the trashcans, there were many baggies put in the box!  (mind you I had to take baggies out of the 'plastics' recycling can and cardboard boxes out of the 'plastics' recycling can!)

The Wall Street Journal featured three start-up companies with plastics connections over the weekend: e-book company Plastic Logic, recycler TerraCycle Inc., and plastic wine closure maker Nomacorc LLC.