A company founded on worm excrement is turning trash into cash for St. Matthew's Lutheran School. Empty juice pouches, potato chip bags, Snicker's candy bar wrappers all are worth two cents or more to Kay Abts' students and St. Matthew's School.  Abts and the students in her seventh- and eighth-grade class have partnered with TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based firm that purchases the discarded wrappings. The erstwhile garbage will reappear on retailers' shelves as backpacks, pencil cases, totebags and other "upcycled consumer items."

TerraCycle names school one of top 100 America's Best Brigade in the Drink Pouch Brigade A Woodland elementary school has earned $774.12 for collecting drink pouches and is in the top 100 collecting schools among more than 30,000 schools participating nationwide.

There is something pure genius sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot in New Jersey and it is not Jon Bon Jovi (but I’d like it to be). It’s a giant green trash collection bin that will take all sorts of garbage you thought you couldn’t recycle … and pay you for it. This goes into the “why didn’t I think of that” category. TerraCycle, a company started in 2001 by a then 19-year old Princeton student, is partnering with some of the largest retailers in the nation to help people recycle things that were once believed to be true garbage. Then they upcycle them into actual products, and sell them.

Teachers and students at Altruria Elementary used to see a lot of used Capri Sun drink pouches get thrown away. But, once they signed up for a program through TerraCycle, those once discarded pouches turned into hundreds of dollars. The school began earning two cents per pouch as part of a free nationwide program that pays schools and non-profits to collect non-recyclable waste that would otherwise go to a landfill.

Gruma Corp., one of the biggest tortillas and tostadas producers in the United States, has created a partnership with TerraCycle Inc. to collect and reuse Guerrero brand tortillas and tostadas plastic packaging through The Brigade of Tortillas and Tostadas program.

One of the Green Team's big projects involves "upcycling" through TerraCycle, Inc. This company collects colorful trash items, such as juice pouches, chip bags and cookie wrappers, and creates backpacks, pencil cases, folders and other fun products. TerraCycle pays schools for each item they send in. So far, the Lions Park Green Team has kept the following out of landfills: 10,012 juice pouches, 180 cookie wrappers, 2,316 chip bags and 62 tape dispensers. The school has earned $251.94 from these efforts. The Green Team will vote on how to use the funds.

Did you know that this coming Monday, November 15th, is a holiday? A green holiday. Monday is America Recycles Day, an awareness day established 13 years ago. Recycling can be profitable as well. Organizations such as RecycleBank have partnered with corporate sponsors to reward recyclers. TerraCycle has an array of fundraisers for recycled items from juice bags to cookie wrappers. On a more local note, in Our Daily Green's community, the middle school has been raising funds for a few years now to repave their track by collecting aluminum cans. Last year, the students won a $5K national grant for their efforts.

Terracycle is working with Danone yoghurts and they have launched a new programme collecting yogurt pots and they are seeking to engage schools and community groups in Liverpool.

Projected to begin in December, five Walmart stores (Secaucus, Vineland, Deptford East and Lanoka Harbor, New Jersey; Tullytown, Pennsylvania), will be testing a new trash collection system a la TerraCycle. In their parking lots, vistors should see a green converted trailer called a TerraCycle Center (how cool are these things?), which accepts 28 different types of trash, including yogurt containers, juice boxes, glue tubes, pens and more, which TerraCycle will upcyle into tote bags, plant pots, backpacks, pencil cases, portable speakers and more.

I love re-purposing things. If you think about it, as a society we are extremely wasteful. We think nothing of tossing away things that we no longer want even when they're still useful. I hate thinking about all of the juice pouches, vinyl records, old CD's, and who knows what else just sitting there in the landfill for thousands of years. Terra Cycle is a company that takes many average household items and gives them a new purpose rather than allowing them to end up in the landfill.  DwellSmart is proud to partner with TerraCycle to provide customers the opportunity to purchase from the growing range of TerraCycle products. To view their complete TerraCycle collection, please visit TerraCycle Products.