There’s a movement underway at Highland Park High School to make sure chip bags are recycled properly. Students have setup special bins around the school for disposal and are encouraging their peers to take advantage of the new recycling program. “I really wanted to get involved,” Natalie Oxman, HPHS student, said about why she signed up for the Green School Initiative (GSI) at the beginning of the year. Shortly after, Oxman teamed up with other GSI club members Samantha Shafer and Zacko Brint to develop and promote the chip recycling program. “Once people knew that it was around, most were all for it,” Shafer said. During the week, students dump their chip bags into the bins, which are then collected by GSI students. The trash is sent to TerraCycle. The company provides free waste collection programs for hard to recycle materials. TerraCycle converts the collected waste into a variety of reusable products ranging from park benches to backpacks. For every unit of waste sent in, TerraCycle awards Highland Park High School $.02 to a charity of its choice. GSI students plan to donate the money to an environmental organization at the end of each school year. “We have seen a significant decrease in the number of chip bags thrown away,” Brint said about GSI’s effort. “When you see the quantity of chip bags that we are collecting, you say ‘Wow, why aren’t we doing this everywhere?’” So far this school year, more than 5,000 chip bags have been collected at Highland Park High School.

Es gibt viele Kultgetränke im Beutel. Seit einiger Zeit auch als Bio-Variante mit Früchten aus ökologischem Anbau, ohne Zusatzstoffe und so auch kein Zuckerzusatz. Doch Beutel aus Aluminium und Kunststoff macht auch die Bio-Variante nicht wirklich nachhaltig. Das soll sich nun Dank Terracycle ändern.

Des élèves traquent les stylos usagés pour constituer une collecte écologique qui les aidera à partir en voyage.

O Projeto Escola Sustentável já começou a ser desenvolvido na escola em 2012. Os monitores do recreio já estão em ação e os alunos responsáveis por conduzir o projeto, sob  orientação da professora Luciana Suzin, já estão elaborando atividades para o ano. A primeira ação é a divulgação do recolhimento de lixo reciclável para o Projeto Terracycle. Todo pacote de salgadinho e sucos, que contenham alumínio dentro, podem ser levados à escola para reciclagem.

“First things first: Call a plumber immediately if you have a leak, no matter how small. People often assume that little drips will stop on their own, but most get worse. And when water seeps into your walls or damages your floors, the repair can run up to several thousand dollars. If you have a number of nonurgent issues besides the leak, like a slow-draining sink or a faucet that needs to be installed, ask that all the repairs be made in one visit; your bill could be up to 25 percent lower than if the plumber makes multiple visits. And tell him if a family member or a friend referred him. He may do a small fix gratis, which he wouldn’t do for a cold-call customer.

Thermoformed packaging such as blister packs and clamshells typically end up in landfills, even though many of are made of PC PET, the usually recycled material that is blow molded into soft drink and water bottles. That’s a problem for manufacturers concerned about sustainability and product packaging. And the economics of recycling will probably prevent widespread recycling of thermoform-grade RPET for some time. (The “R” of RPET means the polymer comprises virgin material plus regrind, or recycled content.) In a pilot study conducted by thermoform-packaging maker Dordan Manufacturing in Woodstock, Ill., the company shipped 50 of its RPET clamshells to a local recycling facility to determine how well the containers could be sorted. The waste-management facility uses optics to sort different kinds of polymers. “The equipment could not distinguish the difference between PET bottles and RPET thermoforms,” saysDordan Manufacturing’s Sustainability Coordinator Chandler Slavin. Theoretically, the two could be recycled together, but that depends on a lot of factors, many of which are a result of the sorting equipment used. In manual sorting, there are problems because clamshells and blisters come in all shapes, sizes, and materials, making it difficult to train workers to sort packages by material type via visual cues in package design. Most clear, thin-neck screw-top beverage bottles are PET, for example, making it easy to identify this recyclable from those destined for landfills, says Slavin.

Mainz -- Die Landbell AG wird sich am US-amerikanischen Unternehmen TerraCycle® Inc. beteiligen. Landbell ist eines der neun Rücknahmesysteme in Deutschland zur Sammlung und Verwertung von Verpackungen. TerraCycle hat sich auf das Sammeln, Recyceln und Wiederverwerten schwer zu recycelnder Abfälle, Konsumgüter und Verkaufsverpackungen spezialisiert und ist seit 2011 auf dem deutschen und schweizerischen Markt vertreten und wird ab 2012 auch in Österreich aktiv sein.

Students at Meadowview Public School in Addison have earned a little green to help make their school grounds a little greener. Members of Meadowview's EcoSchools Team have been recognized by TerraCycle Canada as a winner of the company's 2012 Winter Trash to Cash contest.