Lee Elementary School students turned juice pouches into pencil cases, chip bags to lunch boxes and candy wrappers into backpacks as part of a national initiative that combines fundraising and recycling. Students collected nearly 6,000 pieces of non-recyclable waste, such as bags, wrappers and bottles, and shipped them to TerraCycle, a company that makes new products from lunchroom garbage. TerraCycle turns food packaging destined for the landfill into products for home, school and the office. The company’s tote bags, trash cans, picture frames and more are made from the waste and sold at major retailers like Target, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Home Depot.

Why aren’t you doing anything eco with the packaging [the wrappers or the cardboard display boxes]?

Well, first of all, the packaging foil—what the condom is actually in—is regulated by FDA. You can’t do anything green there, really.

You could work with Terracycle to collect condom foil wrappers. Foil is valuable resource, totally recyclable or reusable, terracycle could make backpacks out of condoms. Don’t tell me with your awesome design some teenage punks wouldn’t love toting a condom backpack to school, pissing off the teachers. Plus, it’s free marketing.

The second grade students at Bonner Elementary School in Phoebe Bradberry, Amanda Kirkman, Wendy Bradberry, and Sloan Dills’ classes recently worked hard to earn money for the Summerville Miracle League. They found an awesome company named Terracycle that reuses empty juice pouches and chip bags to create new school supplies such as pencil pouches, book bags, lunch boxes, and folders. Juice pouches are made out of aluminum and pouches and chip bags are laminated with a plastic layer, which make them non-recyclable. This program still benefits the earth because it is preventing these items from piling up in the landfills.

Recycling in the workplace goes beyond a bin for unused paper and containers for aluminum cans and empty bottles of water. There are also pens, markers, tape dispensers and even cell phones that can be recycled. These items may not be the first things that come to mind when thinking of office recyclables, but they can definitely be put to good use at the end of their life. One company is working to take these types of products and upcycle them into new items: TerraCycle. TerraCycle works in a series of brigades. These brigades are designed to collect items that aren’t traditionally recycled and then upcycle them into new consumer goods. In addition to keeping these products out of landfills, the brigades also serve as fundraising tools for schools, churches and nonprofit organizations.

ROANOKE RAPIDS — Making moves to enrich the environment and their education is what some 4th graders at Belmont Elementary School in Roanoke Rapids have been up to lately. Working with a company called TerraCycle, the Belmont students help turn some of their trash into useful products and help raise money for a program bringing them closer to the environment their recycling efforts help protect. “It’s teaching them a lot about recycling,” said Heather Karns, a teacher involved in the program at Belmont. “After their soccer games, the kids will bring back a pile of the Capri-Sun pouches and instead of throwing them out, they bring them in for recycling.”

Fourth-grade teacher Stephanie Gawbdzinski’s worried that she’s going to be asked how to spell her last name. But Gawbdzinski had an easier task on Tuesday: describing how Thomas Obbink, her student at Sunrise Elementary, came up with a plan that would save the environment and earn money for the school. “Thomas is our class recycling expert,” she said. The student hates to see anything thrown out that might be recycled or put to work with a new use, Gawbdzinski says. An empty Kleenex box in the trash is likely to be retrieved and turned into an impromptu pencil box.

TerraCycle and Colgate are both offering their own FREE curriculums; Colgate seeking to teach kids how to keep their mouths clean and TerraCycle seeking to teach kids how to Outsmart Waste! Both curriculums can be used at school or in the home and both meet national education standards. For the past 15 years, the Colgate curriculum, which is a part of the award-winning Colgate Bright Smiles, Bright Futures® global oral health education program, has reached over 50 million children annually and their families in 30 languages and 80 countries throughout the world. Stop by Colgate and Terracycle to sign up!