Pubblichiamo un intervista pubblicata su City a Tom Szaky, il fondatore di questa associazione che retribuisce i propri iscritti al fine di ottenere spazzatura per trasformarla in prodotti utili.

Pubblichiamo un intervista pubblicata su City a Tom Szaky, il fondatore di questa associazione che retribuisce i propri iscritti al fine di ottenere spazzatura per trasformarla in prodotti utili.

“Eliminate the idea of waste” and “Outsmart waste”. This is the tagline and mission statement of TerraCycle. Although I’m a sucker for a great tagline you don’t need one to have something awesome to offer. For proof, Trails.com provides it. This is a nature edition of Free Resource Friday and I’ll dive into each website to explain how something so simple can be so freakin’ useful.

As I was eating some peanut M&Ms (love ‘em) I looked on the back of the package and saw the message “Recycle this package” and the website. I went to it and it is SUPER AWESOME! All these things you didn’t think you could recycle, well you can!

“They panic if a milk carton lands in the garbage,” she says, noting that she watches as her kids regularly fish Capri Sun pouches, Lay’s potato chip bags and Nabisco cookie wrappers out of the trash to save and send to TerraCycle, a company that converts trash into bags, kites and other products.

• Terracycle.net: Get paid for your trash—TerraCycle pays for everything from Capri Sun drink pouches to Lay’s potato chip bags and Elmer’s Glue bottles, which it turns into other products.

TerraCycle is an ecologically friendly company that takes your garbage and upcycles it into green products and then sells it to many big box retailers, resulting in less trash in our waste stream. The company has developed a process that turns chip bags, cookie wrappers, and other plastic based wrappers into plastic items such as coolers and trash cans, and aluminum is upcycled into pavers, bricks and more. Grow Berlin Green <http://www.growberlingreen.org>  has two collection receptacles secured next to the paper/cardboard recycle containers on Williams Street. Save your product wrappers as you would your glass bottles, cardboard and newspapers and deposit them in the appropriate receptacle bins.  They collect and sort the trash, then send it to TerraCycle. In return, Grow Berlin Green receives will receive a check twice a year based on the amount of collected garbage sent in, and then give it back to the Berlin community.

A friend of mind recently informed me about some cool research she has been doing I've been doing about a (relatively) new social enterprise called Terracycle. Terracycle is one of the fastest growing green companies in the world. Their website shares a bit more about what they do: TerraCycle’s purpose is to eliminate the idea of waste. We do this by creating a national recycling systems for the previously non-recyclable. The process starts by offering collect programs (many of them free) to collect your waste and then convert the collected waste into a wide range of products and materials. With over 14 million people collecting waste in 11 countries together we have diverted billions of pieces of waste that are either upcycled or recycled into over 1,500 various products available at major retailers ranging from Walmart<http://walmart.com/>  to Whole Foods Market <http://wholefoodsmarket.com/> . Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by creating collection and solution systems for anything that today ends up in our trash. My friend noticed yesterday that the company has partnered with another organization to create curriculums for teaching kids K-12 about waste, and thought you might find this interesting! Check out some awesome environmental lesson ideas at: http://www.terracycle.net/curricula <http://www.terracycle.net/curricula> . Enjoy, and help your students be more GREEN today!!

The logic is simple and sustainable. By reusing post-consumer waste, “trash” never makes it to a landfill, and an environmentally-invasive production cycle stops. As we are the most wasteful nation in the world, we should pay attention to this incredible usage of garbage. There are already some American companies who are paying attention. TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net> , a small but successful New Jersey-based company, is pushing the boundaries of reusing waste that is hard to recycle. TerraCycle began in 2001 by two Princeton freshman, who collected Dining Hall waste and used a worm compost to make natural plant food products. Now, TerraCycle is making everything from Capri-Sun drink-pouch backpacks to M&M-wrapper messenger bags.

At first glance, you’d probably mistake this for an expensive designer gown. But it’s actually made of 600 wrappers of M&M Peanuts. It’s equal to five yards of silk. <http://ecofriendlytip.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-28-at-11.09.33-AM.png> This ball gown, which could pass off as something a Hollywood celebrity can wear to an awards show. It’s designed by Christina Liedtke for the TerraCycle Green Up Shop. The gown was presented during Earth Day’s 40th Anniversary. Gorgeous isn’t it?

Maxwell Elementary School pupils are saving the world. And they recently received an award for their efforts. Lynn Davidson/McDuffie Mirror TerraCycle Inc. named the school among the Top 100 in the nation for recycling drink pouches. Lauren Taylor, of TerraCycle, said Maxwell Elementary was ranked because it had collected 44,517 drink pouches by October. "Obviously, the children there are passionate about recycling and aware of what steps they can take to protect the environment," Ms. Taylor said. "It's great to see them taking part in such a large-scale project." A certificate in a frame made from shredded drink pouches was sent to the school and presented during a faculty meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 19. Maxwell Elementary was one of only four elementary schools in Georgia to receive the recognition, according to Ms. Taylor. TerraCycle provides free waste-collection programs for hard-to-recycle materials. The company transforms the waste into affordable green products, according to its Web site. The company recently reached a milestone. It has collected 50 million drink pouches -- the equivalent to 20 school buses in weight, 480 football fields in length, enough to stretch across the Grand Canyon nine times if laid side-by-side. "So, the children at Maxwell Elementary helped because the 44,000 they collected contributed to that," Ms. Taylor said. TerraCycle collects drink pouches, soda bottles, chip bags, candy and gum wrappers, zip-close bags, cheese wrappers, coffee containers and Lunchable containers and turns them into tote bags, lunch bags, book bags, coolers, clipboards, picture frames, bottles, fences and other items, which are sold at Target, Kmart, Walmart, The Home Depot and via its Web site, www.terracycleshop.com.