• Chip bags: These aren’t accepted in your blue bin, however you can join or start a local “brigade” of collectors for many hard-to-recycle items including chip bags, and earn cash for your school or nonprofit by signing up at www.terracycle.net If this is not an option, please place them in the trash.

Maxwell Elementary School pupils are saving the world. And they recently received an award for their efforts. Lynn Davidson/McDuffie Mirror TerraCycle Inc. named the school among the Top 100 in the nation for recycling drink pouches. Lauren Taylor, of TerraCycle, said Maxwell Elementary was ranked because it had collected 44,517 drink pouches by October. "Obviously, the children there are passionate about recycling and aware of what steps they can take to protect the environment," Ms. Taylor said. "It's great to see them taking part in such a large-scale project." A certificate in a frame made from shredded drink pouches was sent to the school and presented during a faculty meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 19. Maxwell Elementary was one of only four elementary schools in Georgia to receive the recognition, according to Ms. Taylor. TerraCycle provides free waste-collection programs for hard-to-recycle materials. The company transforms the waste into affordable green products, according to its Web site. The company recently reached a milestone. It has collected 50 million drink pouches -- the equivalent to 20 school buses in weight, 480 football fields in length, enough to stretch across the Grand Canyon nine times if laid side-by-side. "So, the children at Maxwell Elementary helped because the 44,000 they collected contributed to that," Ms. Taylor said. TerraCycle collects drink pouches, soda bottles, chip bags, candy and gum wrappers, zip-close bags, cheese wrappers, coffee containers and Lunchable containers and turns them into tote bags, lunch bags, book bags, coolers, clipboards, picture frames, bottles, fences and other items, which are sold at Target, Kmart, Walmart, The Home Depot and via its Web site, www.terracycleshop.com.

Eco-friendly students at Cape Cod Hill School in New Sharon are collecting food waste off lunch trays to make their own compost and they are collecting empty juice pouches, chip bags and cookie wrappers for Terracycle, a nationwide program that pays schools to collect non-recyclable waste that is converted to other products. So far, the project has made more than $500. Mt. Blue Regional School District board members this week heard from teachers Katy Perry and Patricia Murray and Principal Cheryl Pike on the growing environmental activism. Working on the Terracycle recycling project are, from left, Colton Nason, Hunter Robbins, Brianna Jackson, Ben Christopher, Dawson Adams and Addisyn Davis.

Elisa Mercando of Belle Mead models the 1st place Upper School team design from the Stuart Country Day School “green” fashion show on January 14th, 2011. The dress was crafted from 7 different packs of playing cards, board game pieces and boxes, an old sheet, old buttons, plastic balls from a children’s ball house jungle, yarn, and ribbon. A Lower School team made the accessories. Other members of this team of 10th graders include Nicole Starke of East Windsor and Sara McArthur of Hopewell. The dress will be modeled at the annual Spring Auction, “See How Our Garden Grows” on April 2, 2011 at The Hyatt Regency Princeton. It will also be on display in The TerraCycle Store in Palmer Square through the end of February. (Photo by Kristine Poznanski.)

Schools have been invited to take part in an innovative scheme to help reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill. The Writing Instruments Brigade is a new recycling scheme which pays for used pens and pencils to be collected the turned in to affordable household products, such as clocks and plant pots, rather than ending up as landfill. Schools also get a small donation for every pen that they send in.

he Writing Instruments Brigade is a new recycling scheme which pays for used pens and pencils to be collected the turned in to affordable household products, such as clocks and plant pots, rather than ending up as landfill.

Wetumpka Elementary School received the America’s Best Brigade Award 2010 from TerraCycle for being one of the top 100 collecting schools in TerraCycle's Drink Pouch Brigade. The local effort helped TerraCycle reach the milestone of 50 million pouches collected and $1 million paid to schools and nonprofits. TerraCycle said the total number of recycled pouches is enough to cover the Grand Canyon nine times. The Wetumpka Elementary PTO spearheaded the project, recycling Capri Sun pouches.

When students in Liz Gingrich's second-grade class at Westmere Elementary School aren't learning to add and subtract fractions, they're busy recycling juice pouches as members of TerraCycle's Drink Pouch Brigade. TerraCycle collects hard-to-recycle items -- like Capri Sun juice pouches, candy wrappers, even toothbrushes -- from school and nonprofit "brigades" across the country, donating a few cents per unit collected. The company then turns those used materials into affordable, eco-friendly green products, a process know as "upcycling." Since the spring of 2009, students at Westmere have collected a total of 4,300 juice pouches. At two cents a pop, they've received about $90 from TerraCycle. Money raised through the program will be donated to local nonprofit and charitable organizations, which the students will help choose.

Creekside and Grand Ridge achieved Level 1 in the Green Schools Program, focusing on waste reduction and recycling. Creekside, a LEED certified building, opened in fall 2010 and started recycling from the get go. Today, students and staff have a recycling rate of 55 percent and reduce their waste by recycling not only the usual suspects — paper and plastic — but also milk cartons and food scraps. “The kids are really great about it,” Program Assistant Judy Bowlby said. “They dump their milk cartons out and put the carton into the recycle bin.” Students can participate in TerraCycle’s Capri Sun Juice Pouch Brigade, directing the discarded pouches toward artists that can make them into bags, clipboards, pencil cases, waste baskets and fences. Though staff members led the initial “green” initiative, student leaders plan to get involved soon.

Other Recycling: Check out TerraCycle to find out about setting up recycling to raise money for your group or school.