A local Girl Scout troop is leading the nation in recycling plastic pop bottles for a company that makes all-natural plant food out of worm droppings.

To date Troop 3803 has collected more than 5,000 bottles, making them the top collector for TerraCycle, a New Jersey company that reuses the bottles to package their plant food made from the liquefied byproduct of worms. The troop gets 5 cents per bottle.

“I like it because we’re helping the world and the environment,” said Kayla Spielman, a member of Troop 3803 and Waseca sixth-grader.

The money they receive will be used for a trip in 2009. “We get to go to a place of our choice,” said Allyson Helms, who is a Girl Scout in the same troop and also a sixth-grader.

"It’s between Florida, California or Washington, D.C.,” she said, noting that Washington, D.C., has a lot of history.

“They work really hard,” said troop leader Loree Tetzloff. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of them.”

Troop 3803 became involved in the recycling project when Tetzloff happened to hear a Podcast, More Hip Than Hippie, about the company and their fund-raising project.

The nine young girls in the troop this year have an organized collection system set up in Waseca Schools. They set out boxes with a “Please Donate” sign in the schools. When the boxes are full of 20-ounce bottles, the girls put them in bags. Then they take the bags of bottles to Tetzloff’s back yard where they take the labels off, rinse them out and pack them to be sent off to the company.

TerraCycle notes it is the first company in the world to package its products in used pop bottles. Their organic products are not only made from waste, they are packaged entirely in waste, the company says.

The organic plant food is available at Home Depot, Wal-Mart and at ACE, Do It Best and True Value hardware stores.

More than 1,500 community groups are part of TerraCycle’s Bottle Brigade, which has rescued more than 1.1 million bottles so far from ending up in landfills.

“I try to get the girls to do as much of the work as possible,” Tetzloff said.

Waseca Girl Scout Troop 3810, led by Twylla Vetsch, also collects bottles for the Bottle Brigade. Both Spielman and Helms agree that the down side of their business venture is getting the remaining pop, and sometimes candy wrappers, out of the bottles. “It’s very very sticky,” Spielman said.

In addition to the collection boxes in the schools, the girls get bottles from a variety of sources. “After the games, we pick up bottles under the stands,” Helms said.

“A lot of the teachers help us,” she said. Word of the project has spread and several people drop off the bottles at Tetzloff’s house.