Students at a Forsyth County middle school are among the state’s top collectors of snack bags in a national recycling program. Liberty Middle’s environmental club led the school’s effort in The Hain Celestial Group Snack Bag Brigade, a free program schools can join to promote recycling and gain funding to keep or donate.
Not one Frito Lay bag, big or small, goes to waste after lunch, when students deposit their empty bags to be counted and packaged in packs of 25. The school turns that trash into cash, participating in a Terracycle program called the Snack Bag Brigade that recycles those bags into usable products.
Mt. Carmel Elementary School and Nexus Energy Center were the top collectors in a recent statewide recycling contest. Mt. Carmel students and community residents participated in the Snack Bag Brigade, a free, national recycling program that Hain Celestial Group Inc. and TerraCycle originated. Collaborating with Nexus Energy Center, Mt. Carmel students retrieved 21,000 packaging bags for chips and other snacks.
(Salem, OR) — First Lady Cylvia Hayes learned about the Oregon Department of Corrections’ sustainable practices during a tour yesterday of its Salem facility, which recycles items from the state’s 14 prisons.
"Our precious resources in Oregon should be preserved for future generations," First Lady Cylvia Hayes said. "The Department of Corrections is doing its part by accepting the challenge to change its practices. With inmates' help, our prisons recycle more, save energy and reuse items to be more sustainable and conscientious of our environment."
The Department of Corrections launched its comprehensive recycling efforts in January 2013. Adults in custody at each institution sort through trash to reduce the amount each prison sends to landfills. Recycled items include cardboard, ballistic vests, batteries, five-gallon plastic buckets, plastics and clear shrink wrap film, fabric/textiles, shoes, foam, wood, paper, lead, metals, fluorescent bulbs and ballasts, E-waste and chip bags.
Over the past 15 months, the recycling program has generated cost savings and waste reduction. Highlights include:
• As of March 2014, more than 132,000 snack bags have been collected and processed through TerraCycle, Inc., a recycling company. The Department of Corrections gets cash credit for the recycled items that it donates to local charities.
The Department of Corrections was recently recognized for its sustainability efforts. In March, the department was named Recycler of the Year at the 2014 Mid-Valley Green Awards Ceremony in Salem. The award honors sustainable and green-minded companies, organizations and people.
(Several layers of different plastic and polymers are the nemesis of zero waste. However, if you just can't lay off the salty snacks, check out Terracycle's
Snack Bag Brigade program)...
If your family recycles like mine does, then anything resembling paper, plastic or metal goes into the appropriate recycling bin. However did you know you may be depositing products that cannot be recycled through typical processes? I am guilty of this — I had been mixing in kid food pouches with my regular plastics. Oops!
A solution exists thanks to TerraCycle. It offers national programs (a.k.a Brigades®) to collect previously non-recyclable or hard to recycle waste like drink pouches, chip bags, and water filters. The waste is then made into new products ranging from recycled park benches to backpacks.
