Dropps is teaming up with TerraCycle to search for the largest laundry pile. All you have to do is submit a photo by October 25th, 2011 of that huge pile of laundry that been that just seems to keep growing. The top 10 photos will be voted on by TerraCycle fans. Then on November 11th, you will vote for the grand prize winner from the remaining 10 finalist.

Les élèves de la classe de 5ème 1 mettent en place la collecte des instruments d’écriture !

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State is participating in a new "green" initiative by collecting candy wrappers that are recycled and converted into various products. Through a TerraCycle program called the Candy Wrapper Brigade, which awards points for each wrapper collected, the Center for the Performing Arts wants to accumulate enough points to provide clean drinking water for a year to a family of four in a developing country. Patrons attending Center for the Performing Arts and other presentations at Eisenhower auditorium are encouraged to place used candy wrappers in lobby collection boxes. Eligible waste -- from auditorium concession sales or from home or office use -- includes individual candy wrappers, large candy bags and multi-pack candy bags.

Students at Pine Creek Elementary sort through boxes of wrappers and other recyclables for a program called TerraCycle in which students earn points that are redeemable for cash for the school, or they can choose o donate the money to charities. Now, Pine Creek students and staff are raising money for their school while keeping hard-to-recycle items out of landfills. TerraCycle eliminates waste through upcycling, the process of converting waste or useless materials into new products of better quality or a higher environmental value. Through the program, students at Pine Creek upcycle a majority of their food wrappers, such as chip bags, granola bar wrappers and Capri Sun pouches and send them to TerraCycle. With 44 different brigades, or waste streams, schools and other organizations can recycle items from cellphones to toothpaste tubes to writing instruments. Pine Creek participates in more than 20 of the brigades.

Otsego Baptist Academy is one of nine area elementary schools bringing green into the fall and winter by participating in programs from TerraCycle, a recycling and upcycling company. TerraCycle offers eco-friendly, upcycled and recycled lunchboxes as well as a way to earn money by collecting nonrecyclable food packaging for cookies, chips and juice pouches. In addition, TerraCycle offers lunchboxes made from the wrappers that students have collected, showing students the recycling and upcycling processes in action. Olivet’s expandable cooler, sold at Walmart, has a removable hardliner made from recycled chip bags, while the Capri Sun lunchboxes are crafted from the juice pouches.

Today, I have some exciting news to share with you. Have you heard of Terracycle? Well, they are a company devoted to upcycling, so in other words, they find “trash” and turn it onto new products. Perhaps you’ve seen kites made from Skittles wrappers or bookbags made from Capri Sun pouches. Several schools and organizations participate across the country, and they actually receive money from Terracycle for collecting and sorting their trash! Just recently, they started a new recycling brigade with Sanford Brands, a division of Newell Rubbermaid,to collect used writing instruments like Paper Mate & Uniball pens, Sharpie Markers, and Expo dry erase markers, and here’s why: Americans alone purchase over 106 billion ballpoint pens every year, and eventually, every single one ends up in a landfill. Not to mention the billions of markers that dry out every year and get tossed. That’s a LOT of plastic, but Terracycle found a way to create a second life for writing instruments. TerraCycle will convert the depleted Paper Mate, Uniball, Sharpie, and Expo® writing instruments into other fun and innovative products.

TerraCycle started as a project in my dorm room, a bunch of friends getting together every once in a while over a beer and talking about our first product, plant food made out of worm waste . I guess I was officially the chief executive and given that my friends didn’t get a salary — no one did back then — they were perhaps best described as interns. Back then, no one would have thought twice about the chief executive having a romantic relationship with one of the “interns.” We were friends, we were the same age, and the company wasn’t even incorporated. Today, of course, I suspect the reaction would be very different if I were to have a similar relationship with an intern — even if we were friends and even if we were the same age (which, surprisingly, is still often the case).

TerraCycle is an inspired company that began with the simple concept of eliminating everyday waste. Ten years ago, emboldened by this idea of “outsmarting waste,” Princeton student Tom Szaky started selling cartons of worm casting in plastic bottles. Now, a decade after its humble humus-based beginnings, TerraCycle is a multimillion dollar company with a global waste recycling program that turns common trash items into products like purses and swing sets. In partnership with companies such as Kraft and Nabisco, Tom has seemingly done the impossible— he has gotten some of the biggest corporations in the world to sponsor the upcycling and recycling of their own trash. Here’s how it works: Everyday people throw away consumer packaging and other odds and ends that could easily be reused and recycled into something else. TerraCycle works by providing the means for anyone to collect and recycle these products. Schools, neighborhoods, or even individuals can sign up for a “Brigade,” or recognized cotillion of trash collectors. Each Brigade is provided with Collection Kits for goods like juice pouches and yogurt cups. Once their kit is full, a Brigade sends the box back to TerraCycle, earning money to donate towards the charity of their choice. From there, TerraCycle takes each waste item and upcycles or recycles them into products like kites, backpacks, and benches. These products are available online and from retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, and Wholefoods, thus bringing the whole circle back around. The same juice pouch purchased from Wal-Mart the previous year can now sit on the self as a CD case.