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Local schools and organizations are doing their part to reduce, reuse and recycle with the help of TerraCycle, a unique company that collects items that would otherwise end up in landfills and recycles them into fun merchandise.
Last year, more than 70 million juice pouches, 11 million cookie wrappers and 500,000 energy bar wrappers were kept out of landfills with the help of TerraCycle and its many brigades, according to Lauren Taylor, the group's spokesperson.
TerraCycle pays participants 2 cents per wrapper, pouch or bag. These are then upcycled into merchandise by Yak Pak and other companies. According to Taylor, TerraCycle uses "environmentally and socially responsible factories across Latin America" to manufacture the items. One of them is a women's co-op in Brazil that makes pencil cases, backpacks and folders and, according to Taylor, "provides fair wages and safe workplaces for some of Brazil's poorest and least desirable classes focusing almost entirely on women.
"In all of our factories we are working with places that have been referred to us by trusted partners and they absolutely must have a strong social or environmental aspect to do business with TerraCycle," Taylor said in an e-mail.
The items are then sold through the TerraCycle Web site, www.terracycle.net, or in stores, such as Walmart, Kmart and Target.
Participants sign up for a TerraCycle Brigade, which designates the item to be collected. There is a limited number of brigade openings available for each item. For example, the Drink Pouch Brigade has more than 25,000 participants, and there are more than 4,000 openings left.
TerraCycle encourages participants to collect all wrapper brands, but there are brigades designated for certain brands. These brands sponsor the brigades and allow those brigades to include more schools and organizations, according to Taylor.
For instance, Bare Naked Granola cereal wrappers are one of the designated brigades, and the bags are turned into retro shower curtains and fun tote bags. Stonyfield Farms yogurt containers are collected and sold as potting containers to nurseries.
The fact that he can buy these items is what excites second-grader Alex Boomsma, 7, who is taking part in Schaeffer Elementary School's upcycling initiative.
"It makes it fun for people to buy the stuff," Alex said. "And it's good for the environment."
At the Manheim Township School elementary school, the second grade is heading the school's collection of drink pouches. With two designated drop-off areas and an informative video — created by the second-grade students with the enthusiasm of second-grade teacher Chris Burrowes — the school has collected more than 1,000 pouches so far this year.
"This initiative fits right in with our environmental stewardship at the school," Burrowes said. "It's what we are all about."
Burrowes is working with second-graders to educate them about the importance of recycling and developing ways to encourage the rest of the school and community to participate in the initiative.
At Fritz Elementary in Conestoga Valley School District, Mara Clauson spearheads the recycling project as a part of her involvement with the PTA. The school is part of the Drink Pouch Brigade also.
Still in the beginning stages, Clauson is planning to establish areas in the school that students and the community can drop off their drink pouches, without the straws, as instructed by TerraCycle.
Clauson is encouraging not only students to collect the drink pouches, but families and the community as well.
"They can just drop them off at the school office," Clauson said.
Other schools and organizations involved in the program in some capacity are Elizabethtown Middle School, Our Lady of the Angels, Denver Elementary School, Mount Calvary Christian School and Sonshine Child Development Center.
Alysha Plaza, daughter of Annette Plaza of Lancaster, is the force behind Burrowes Elementary school's involvement in the program. The School District of Lancaster school staff has helped Alysha by hanging signs in the hallways and including information in the students' take-home folders.
"It's all pretty easy. TerraCycle sends me the envelopes to return the drink pouches," Alysha said. "They also pay for the shipping."
So far, Alysha has collected several hundred pouches and will designate her school to receive the donation. Each group can designate a charity or school to receive the profits from the collection process, according to Taylor.
Once collected, the items are counted and shipped to TerraCycle. Each brigade has its own requirements that must be followed in handling and shipping the items. Drink pouches must have the straws removed, whereas other items can be sent in as is. Directions for each brigade are included on the brigade's Web site, which also provides each participant with its collection totals.
In his class, Burrowes assigns two students to be in charge of collecting, counting and packaging the drink pouches.
"It gives them a sense of responsibility and importance to be able to be directly involved with saving the environment," Burrowes said.
