As you look around online, you might notice a lot of references to TerraCycle’s Glue Crew program. It was sponsored by Elmer’s Glue and TerraCycle but has been suspended indefinitely. However, the recycling giant has new options for recycling glue containers and tape dispensers. You can place all of your waste in a Zero Waste Box, which you buy from the company and mail back when it is full.

There are a lot of ways to raise money, but school districts are getting smarter and clever in how they go about doing it. Such is the case with students at Yake Elementary School who figured out a way to soak up the sun — Capri Suns to be more specific — while earning several hundred dollars all at the same time.

We value recycling in our society because it finds secondary use for materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill. The biggest drawback to this from a material perspective is that the recycled products almost always diminish in quality each time they are processed (or  “downcycled”). Steel, aluminum and glass may be endlessly recyclable, but the virgin plastic in a water bottle is not. This limits the potential for reuse across a wide variety of waste streams, pre and post-consumer packaging included, to the point that the ultimate end-of-life destination is still usually the landfill or incinerator. This is a far cry from what many in the field of sustainability would say is the most ideal reuse model: a circular economy.

Sunset School helped divert 3,964 units of lunch-kit waste from landfills this past school year, making it the second-highest collector of such waste in the state. The school has been involved with the Lunch Kit Brigade since October 2012. The Lunch Kit Brigade is one of the programs that TerraCycle, an upcycling and recycling company, offers.