Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Reduce, Reuse, Upcycle!!





 

In my constant zeal to get rid of the world's trash in it's entirety, I get stopped in my tracks ever so often to  realize I am only one woman and can't conquer the world.  A few years ago, I introduced a company called Terracycle to my daughter's elementary school.  For those of you that aren't familiar with Terracycle, they are a company that has teamed up with organizations and individuals in the quest to eliminate waste.  There are all kinds of different items that get tossed in trash cans all over the country every second of the day that aren't recyclable like ink cartridges, cell phones, candy wrappers, chip bags, juice pouches and so much more.  Terracycle takes these items and "upcycles" them into something new.  The money they pay the collector goes to the charity of their choice.  In our case, it is our local elementary school. Check them out at www.terracycle.net.


After attempting to single-handedly take this task on myself the first year, I decided to pass the buck to a group of women the next year that had the extra time and the same passion as myself for keeping our planet clean.  They did an incredible job growing our Green Team!!!  This year, I had the privilege of joining back up with them to keep the torch going.  It's been so exciting to watch the school evolve into one that is so much more conscientious about recycling!!

 

Even though this ginormous pile of juice pouches nearly sent me over the edge, thank you Lord for Vanesa, it was so exciting to see it shipped off to Terracycle for a better purpose than clogging up our landfills!!!   This pile filled up three big packing boxes and was shipped off with two additional boxes--one full of inkjet cartridges and another with cell phones.  Great job Green Team!!!

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