One of those goals is to reduce the percentage of virgin materials used in their packaging from 60 to 40 percent by 2020. Innovations like moving from aluminum tubes to recyclable laminated BPA-free plastic tubes, their partnership with TerraCycle and their switch to stand-up dispensers for children’s toothpaste that don’t require cartons, all improve their packaging performance. Water savings has a goal to reduce their consumption per metric ton of product made, from 4.3 to 2.5 cubic meters, a 42 percent reduction by 2020 through a comprehensive program that includes every drop that comes into their facilities.

Ella’s Kitchen has four different categories for foods. Ella’s 1 for 4-6 month olds, Ella’s 2 for7 months+ , Ella’s 3 for 12 months+, and Special Diets for gluten-free, lactose-free and vegetarian options.  Within each category, there are fantastic assortments of pouches in fruit, fruit+rice, smoothies, cookies and “nibbly fingers” made of whole grain oats. Aside from the choices they offer, they have teamed up with TerraCycle for a recycling program with their pouches that allows people to donate points earned to local charities.  Having two kids, I remember the days of carrying around glass baby food jars, with occasional breaks, which were always a huge mess.  The pouches are much more user-friendly, plus, you never have to worry about forgetting a spoon!

I signed up Dominic's school with a program called www.terracycle.com. You can even print a mailing label, so there are minimal shipping costs (just the cost of a padded envelope or box). Right now, I send them used Capri Sun pouches. The next time you think about throwing something out because you think it's "junk" take a few extra minutes to determine if it really can't be recycled or reused. You just might be doing something good for the environment!!

One company that I greatly admire is Terracycle. What they do is get teams (brigades) together to recycle things that normally go in the trash. They turn around and reuse them to make all sorts of eco-goodies.

Eliminate the idea of waste: Wat begon met de verkoop van wormpoep verpakt in oude Pepsi flesjes, is nu een wereldwijd miljoenenbedrijf. Door het creëren van inzamelingsprogramma’s van typisch niet-recyclebaar afval probeert TerraCycle de perceptie van afval te veranderen. Welke oplossingen ziet Tom Szaky, CEO TerraCycle vandaag de dag voor alles wat op de afvalhoop belandt?

There is a popular topic that I like to tackle every so often. It's how to recycle items that may be a bit tricky. Never fear, you can Do Your Part to find eco-friendly solutions. Here are few items that I get asked about and ways you can get them all responsibly recycled. Toothpaste Tubes and Toothbrushes How many tubes of toothpaste do you think you've thrown in the trash after you've gotten that last squeeze? What about old toothbrushes? Once you're done with them there are ways to get them recycled. In fact, Terracycle will pay for you to send them in. From there, they are made into plastic pellets that can then be molded into everything from playground equipment to garden tools. Do Your Part and to get your trickiest of items recycled. It's actually a whole lot easier than you might have thought.

Alfredo Robles, the school custodian, has spent many hours coming up with a new layout for the area and has even built a scale model to show how beautiful and shady the eating area will be for the students to enjoy lunch. To raise money for the project, the students will collect old cell phones for the entire month of March and will send them to TerraCycle, which will recycle the phones and send the school a check. Proceeds from the cell phone drive, along with additional funds from Nipomo Elementary School PTA and other events in the works, will allow them to get started on the project in April. They hope to have much of it completed by the end of the school year. So, go through your drawers and find your old cell phones to donate for this good cause. Old cell phones can be dropped off in the school office during school hours in March.

Candy Wrappers – Candy wrappers cannot be recycled in your bin, but they don’t have to be thrown out with the trash. TerraCycle, a national mail-in recycling program, allows large organizations such as schools to collect and mail-in certain types of waste for points that can be redeemed to benefit non-profit organizations and schools. To learn more about candy wrapper recycling through TerraCycle, visit http://www.terracycle.com/en-US/brigades/candy-wrapper-brigade-r.html.

Candy Wrappers – Candy wrappers cannot be recycled in your bin, but they don’t have to be thrown out with the trash. TerraCycle, a national mail-in recycling program, allows large organizations such as schools to collect and mail-in certain types of waste for points that can be redeemed to benefit non-profit organizations and schools. To learn more about candy wrapper recycling through TerraCycle, visit http://www.terracycle.com/en-US/brigades/candy-wrapper-brigade-r.html.

While opening in a new country presents an opportunity for growth and revenue, it is also an opportunity to lose ours shirts — through unexpected issues and complications. As such, it is important for small businesses that don’t have gobs of cash to manage each opening carefully. That said, we now live in a world where opening abroad is much easier than it used to be. With Internet phone service, long-distance calls are cheaper than ever and flying to Australia from New York can cost little more than flying to Fayetteville, Ark. Most important, while there are certainly cultural differences among foreign markets, they are far less problematic than many presume. TerraCycle, for example, is basically operated the same way in every country where we have operations, from Brazil to Turkey. We do adjust for each location, but we try as much as possible to avoid making adjustments in order to maintain coherence in a small organization of just more than 110 employees. For TerraCycle, the first step in choosing a new market is to evaluate the legal, financial and language issues to make sure we have a good fit. The next step is to look at the market opportunity. Will our business model — in our case, recycling waste that has been considered nonrecyclable — work in that market, and is the market big enough to make the effort worthwhile? These issues are connected. Big markets — Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany — tend to have relatively simple legal and financial requirements, and they tend to use English as a primary (or, worst case, secondary) business language. This is not as true in Asian markets like Japan or South Korea, which are immense but handle business very differently (and not in English).