.” After the students empty the pouches and remove the straw, Mrs. Janis slits the bottom, rinses them out with water (to discourage “critters” while the pouches await shipment) and dries them, usually on her clothesline. “I am old-school enough to have two at my home.” Then they are sorted, counted and packaged in boxes for free shipment to TerraCycle in New Jersey. This upstart company, founded by a Princeton graduate, takes this waste and “upcyles” them into cool new products, like juice pouch pencil bags, tote bags, backpacks, and lunchboxes. More importantly, they reward nonprofits with approximately two cents for each pouch they collect.
The Candy Wrapper Brigade is a partnership between Mars/Wrigley, Cadbury and TerraCycle, a company that makes products from non-recyclable waste materials. They're currently asking for you to send in some of your used candy wrappers to use as raw materials for their products.
An in-depth piece on TerraCycle by Brazil's Globo News.
Founder and CEO of TerraCycle, Tom Szaky has been collecting and upcycling refuse since childhood, starting with discarded TVs and computer monitors.
The Evening Star 4-H Club is currently part of the Capri Sun Drink Pouch Brigade, a program that pays schools and non-profit organizations to collect otherwise-non-recyclable waste that would normally go to a landfill. Working with a recycle company called TerraCycle, the 4-H members have been collecting Capri Sun pouches, gum and candy wrappers, toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, tape dispensers, and glue bottles, which they then send in for recycling.
Hi, kids! Have you heard of TerraCycle? TerraCycle is the first company to create every part of its recycled products from trash. For example, TerraCycle takes empty juice pouches and chip and candy bags and makes them into stylish totebags, purses, and cell phone holders.
Você, o meio ambiente e as empresas ganham!
Here is something totally cool I just found out about! TerraCycle <
http://www.terracycle.net> is the world’s leader in the collection and reuse of non-recyclable post-consumer waste. TerraCycle works with over thirty major brands in the U.S. and in a growing number of other countries to collect used packaging and products (chip bags, candy wrappers, juice pouches, pens, toothbrushes, etc.) that would otherwise be destined for landfills.
TerraCycle has a more unusual model. It collects all kinds of hard-to-recycle stuff by mail — drink pouches, candy wrappers, plastic bags, wine corks, toothpaste containers — and then turns them into other things. “In 2011, you’ll see a playground made out Capri Sun and Honest Kids drink pouches,” said Jo Opot, TerraCycle’s vice president of business development. Consumers who send trash get rewarded with donations to schools or charities, and they get the psychic satisfaction of knowing that something useful was made out of their garbage. You’d think that few people would bother to send their trash in the mail to New Jersey–Terracyle’s home base–but the company says 12 million people have participated, returning 1.8 billion items. The company gets paid by brands whose products it recovers, by manufacturers who buy its materials and by marketers who use its logo on finished products. There’s lots more about this all works at the
TerraCycle website, here.
