Last month my fascination with how values and purpose can drive corporate culture, products and brand took me to Trenton, New Jersey to visit a company called Terracycle [www.terracycle.net ]. Terracycle, it turns out, is an incredible example of how staying true to your values and purpose can translate into a robust business.
Terracycle has pioneered a business model that is not only helping solve our garbage crisis; it's also fueled their exponential growth over the last several years. Now with revenues of $20 million a year, they are rapidly creating a new asset class—garbage.
Battle Creek's St. Joseph Middle School and Purdy Elementary are participating in the TerraCycle Brigade recycling program, according to a news release from the Trenton, New Jersey-based company.
Through the program, schools can recycle lunch wrappers from chips and crackers and more and send the recycling in to earn points toward cash, according to the release.
TerraCycle said schools can sign up for free at terracycle.net.
With the wide variety of individual-size packaging for food products, creating a portable lunch that will please youngsters’ tastebuds is easier than ever. However, it also causes more waste, which leads to fuller wastebaskets, and eventually, fuller landfills.
That’s where the program TerraCycle comes in. The company, headquartered in New Jersey, collects difficult-to-recycle food packaging and turns it into extra money for schools.
Three area schools currently are participating in this program: Bad Axe Elementary, Owendale-Gagetown Area Schools and Our Lady of Lake Huron Catholic School in Harbor Beach.
TerraCycle and Partners Provide Upcycled Costume Ideas and Free Collection Programs for Halloween Trash
Halloween is one of the best times of the year for creative people as they set out to make their own eye-catching costumes and bags. Halloween lovers can now create costumes out of used candy wrappers and other non-recyclable packaging commonly found this time of year, all thanks to TerraCycle’s do-it-yourself costume ideas. Then, after Halloween, families can send their candy wrappers back to TerraCycle (for free!) and earn money for a local charity or school.
TerraCycle and Partners Provide Upcycled Costume Ideas and Free Collection Programs for Halloween Trash
Halloween is one of the best times of the year for creative people as they set out to make their own eye-catching costumes and bags. Halloween lovers can now create costumes out of used candy wrappers and other non-recyclable packaging commonly found this time of year, all thanks to TerraCycle’s do-it-yourself costume ideas. Then, after Halloween, families can send their candy wrappers back to TerraCycle (for free!) and earn money for a local charity or school.
Are you making your Halloween clown costume from candy wrappers? Your dragon mask from drink pouches? If so, we want to see it! Enter your upcycled costume into our Monster Mash your Trash costume contest by November 4th and you could be one of four contestants to win a gift card for cool TerraCycle upcycled products.
If you’d like to donate some of your pouches, there are boxes in the office and cafeteria to place empties.
What happens to them? The firm Terracycle turns them into cool bags and pencil cases for kids.
We are thrilled to partner with
TerraCycle to give away six exclusive, upcycled school supply items. Up for grabs is a large tote bag made from a large potato chip bag, spiral notebook created from smaller chip bags, pencil case and homework folder made from drink pouches, circuit board clipboard, and a package of eco-friendly printer paper. Total value? $50! Read below to see all the ways you can enter to win. One winner will be selected at random. Entries will be received through 11:59 PST on October 27, 2011. Good luck!
GENESEE COUNTY, Michigan — Some schools are finding cash in an unlikely place: Students’ lunch boxes.
A handful of Genesee County schools have supplemented in-school recycling efforts by teaming up with TerraCycle, a New Jersey company that pays them for reusable and recyclable materials like empty juice pouches and potato chip bags.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- No one knows where good ideas come from. In some cases, the answer may simply be to throw a bunch of brains together in a room and see what happens.
That was the approach favored by the Jefferson Innovation Summit, a conference hosted by the University of Virginia this Tuesday and Wednesday. Named for Thomas Jefferson, who founded the university, the summit was aimed at kick-starting American entrepreneurship and encouraging new forms of thinking.
