Terracycle

Back in 2010, I was still kind of a newbie in the school district I was working for and I was a paraprofessional.  It was safe to say that back then, as a paraprofessional, I had more time on my hands as the students I was working with were more manageable.  So I decided to take over some of the fundraising opportunities that the school was participating in.  Now, participating is a strong verb to use here in this case.  Basically, there was a box sitting in the school office and it collected a few Box Tops, a few Campbell's Soup labels, and maybe a couple of Kemps Milk Caps.  Kemps and Campbell's has since ended their programs.  Then I was in the grocery store one day and I was picking up some items for school.  I ended up seeing on a box of Capri Suns that there was a fundraising opportunity for schools, and I had to read the back of the box.  So being the fundraising guy, it caught my eye.  The program advertised on the back of that Capri Sun box was a program called Terracycle.

Terracycle is a great program.  Terracycle is a company located in New Jersey and it has grown and become international. It has more than one purpose to it and it was also a good lesson for the students in addition to being a fundraiser for the school.  Terracycle recycles, or upcycles, waste that isn't usually accepted in normal curbside recycling programs.  There are many initial assumptions as far as what Terracycle takes, and please don't go thinking it is like the movie "Back To The Future 2" where anything and everything goes into the DeLorean for fuel.  However, there are things that you didn't think Terracycle would accept, but does.  Another assumption that people had when I tried to explain the fundraising program was when they said, "So, I just have to bring you my garbage?"  That was gross when people wanted to participate and that's what they thought they had to do.  Even though the program involved waste, there was a process.

Of course, I jumped into this idea and program with both feet.  I had decided to enroll our school into the program and I basically introduced it to my coworkers at the time at a staff meeting.  I simply told them to remember the name Terracycle.  I said it was a program that we were going to do and that they would be hearing about it more often.  So I jumped in with both feet.  I probably should've stepped into this project one foot at a time, but I guess I was ambitious.

So Terracycle took things like candy wrappers, cheese packaging, and cereal bags and paid schools one or two cents a piece for the items.  Each collection that they upcycled was called a brigade and it was paired with a corporate sponsor so schools could send in the material for free by the shipping being covered.  For example, a candy wrapper brigade was sponsored by M&M/Mars.  The candy wrappers were from any brand of candy and that was the case with most brigades.  It usually wasn't brand specific.  There have been a couple of brigades along the way that were brand specific, but the idea here was to help schools and keep as much waste as possible out of the landfills.  When our school launched the program, the students had good intentions, but there were some really gross submissions.  So we had to make sure we were very detailed in explaining how to submit things for Terracycle.

Our school has recently passed the 10 year mark in being a part of Terracycle.  The most successful brigade that we had participated in was the candy wrapper brigade.  Come on, we are school, what do you expect?  Our school has approximately 60-70 students everyday in a school year, and we sent in over 11,000 candy wrappers totaling over $200.00.  Some people may say that it is only $200.00, but I look at it as we made $200.00 on candy wrappers that would've normally just made their way to the garbage can.  We have participated in 40 different brigades since we joined the Terracycle program in 2010.  As corporate sponsors decided to leave a brigade, sometimes that brought an end to the brigade, which is really hard to accept!  When you are used to turning in things to Terracycle and all of a sudden you have to throw those items away in the trash again, it's kind of sad.  Our school has raised almost $1,200 since we began 10 years ago, and we have upcycled over 67,000 items, which means over 67,000 items stayed out of the landfill.  Some of the other things we currently upcycle and send into Terracycle is air care products and packaging sponsored by Febreeze, most personal care and beauty items and packaging sponsored by Garnier, empty toothpaste tubes and floss containers sponsored by Colgate, empty deodorant containers and personal hygiene items sponsored by Tom's Of Maine, Burt's Bees items and packaging, and more.   Our school actually was surprised with an award once by the Terracycle program.  We had participated in a brigade sponsored by Scotch Tape.  This brigade accepted empty disposable tape dispensers, empty tape cores (the plastic middles of tape rolls, and all the packaging as well.  It was back in 2015, and our school was recognized by being one of the top 10 collection sites in the nation for submitting items to this particular brigade.  So, we were given a small cash bonus, and we were sent a box of Scotch Tape supplies for our school.  The funny story about this is I had no idea as the coordinator of the program for our site that this was coming.  One of my coworkers came up to me and said, "I saw the article in the paper... congratulations".  I just smiled and said thank you and I had no idea what he was talking about.  I had no idea that there was a press release that Terracyle did. Then, I found it.


I am really glad that our school has participated in this program for 10 years.  I am also glad that our school still found a way to currently participate in this program because so much has changed as far as our what our school needs have been over the years.  I will tell you that the most important thing that has made this a successful program at our school is the staff buy-in.  Our school has a couple of major key players that has made this program be a complete success.  Their passion has motivated our students to pay attention to this program and has inspired them to want to help by submitting items of their own instead of throwing them away in the garbage.  That is the coolest part of this, the students learning the valuable life lesson of doing their part in taking care of the environment.

Be Kind To Everyone.