Besides the Centre County Recycling & Refuse Authority, there are local entities that have put many zero waste practices into place: • Park Forest Elementary School has a zero waste committee, composts all lunchroom leftovers, utilizes water bottle filling stations instead of single use bottles and uses TerraCycle for hard-to-recycle items.

Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle, said, "TerraCycle is thrilled to win the Green America People & Planet Green Business Award. Green America is a widely respected organization and we are proud to accept such a respected third-party validation of our work. The prize money will be utilized to help expand our free recycling fundraisers for schools and communities around the country."

Hively Avenue Preschool is competing to win a new playground through the national Colgate and Meijer Recycled Playground Challenge. The preschool is among the top 15 competitors in the program sponsored by the TerraCycle company in partnership with Colgate-Palmolive and Mejier in a contest to win a playground made completely of recycled materials. The competition aims to encourage healthy smiles and environments among school children and consumers, sponsors said.

TerraCycle announced its Recycled Playground Challenge, an initiative in partnership with Colgate-Palmolive (“Colgate”) and Meijer – to help encourage healthy smiles and environments among school children and consumers. Running through September 30, 2015, schools located throughout Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Wisconsin are eligible to compete for a new playground made completely of recycled material by joining TerraCycle’s Oral Care Brigade™ program. Through the Oral Care Brigade™, a free recycling program run by Colgate and TerraCycle, schools will earn one ‘Playground Credit’ for each shipment of empty toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, and floss containers sent to TerraCycle.

TerraCycle is another company that offers Brita filter recycling. With their Brita Brigade, you can send in your filters, earn points for recycling, and use for charitable gifts, product bundles, or a payment of $0.01 per point to the non-profit organization or school of your choice. Each TerraCycle shipment earns points, and there’s no limit to how much you can send in.

If you’re stuck on the single serve packs but have a lingering guilty feeling about all that waste, rest easy knowing that GU will pay for Terracycle to recycle all that packaging for you. Just throw them in a box when you get home until there’s enough worth shipping, then head to their website to get a shipping label.

One of my favorite discoveries in this fascinating world of green innovation is the company Terracycle. Simply put, founder and Princeton-dropout Tom Szaky recycles the unrecyclable. You can participate by signing up for different recycling collection programs, collecting your waste, and then shipping it back to Terracycle.

TerraCycle, Trenton, New Jersey, was one of three small businesses to win quarterly $5,000 “People & Planet Awards” from Green America. The awards have been designed to “recognize innovative U.S. small businesses that integrate environmental and social considerations into their strategies and operations.”

The winning companies are: * TerraCycle, Trenton, NJ. http://www.terracycle.com/en-US/. TerraCycle’s mission is to “eliminate the idea of waste.” We run free consumer recycling programs, called Brigades, for waste streams that are typically considered non-recyclable. From drink pouches, toothbrushes and makeup containers to coffee capsules and even cigarette butts, our recycling programs give new life to waste that would otherwise be destined for the landfill.