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Instead of throwing away that empty soda bottle, Whitney Schlansky has a better idea: Send it to the worms.
Since June, Lexington's High Street Neighborhood Center, a downtown, nonprofit day care center that serves low-income and at-risk children, has been collecting empty 20-ounce soda bottles. Schlansky and her young assistants then send them to a company called TerraCycle Inc., based in Trenton, N.J., which reuses the bottles to market its line of natural plant foods made from, in the company's own words, liquefied "worm poop."
The center earns 5 cents for every bottle it sends in. That price will soon go to 6 cents a bottle, when new rules take effect in October that require all donation sites to clean and take the labels off their bottles before shipping them to TerraCycle, said Albert Zakes, the company's public relations director.
The center has collected more than 1,100 bottles, netting it roughly $55 in profit. The funds are earmarked for art supplies -- including construction paper, crayons, markers, glue and scissors -- for use by the center's 56 students, who range in age from 1 to 5.
The center stumbled onto the TerraCycle program when one of its board members, Linda Svec, was searching the Internet for fund-raisers in which the school could participate year-round.
"This seemed to be a simple idea, one that would be easy to get children involved in," Svec said. "And it was easy to turn the program into a lesson plan about recycling, as a way to teach the children that it's an important thing to do."
Said Zakes: "What's great about this program is that kids know the end result. They're not just tossing a bottle into a blue recycling bin, as they would in a typical recycling program, without knowing what will happen to it. With this, they know what the bottle's going to become."
The Zerofootprint seal
What it's to become is a spray bottle filled with nitrogen-rich plant food, created by feeding organic waste to millions of worms at TerraCycle's affiliated worm farms throughout North America. With donations coming in from some 4,000 "Bottle Brigade" collection sites across the country, the company receives 7,000 to 10,000 empty bottles a day for reuse that otherwise might have gone to landfills.
By using worms to tackle composting waste and keeping plastics out of the landfill, the company, developed by two former Princeton University students, is environmentally friendly twice over. Its environmental commitment made its plant food line the first consumer product to earn the right to carry the Zerofootprint seal, which signifies its manufacturing process has virtually no negative environmental repercussions, Zakes said. The company has reused more than 1 million soda bottles and donated more than $50,000 to schools and other non-profit collection sites.
"What's great about the program is that it can be ongoing; the children can really be involved in it, and it brings the importance of recycling to the table for them from a really early age," said Schlansky. "When they're at home now, the kids are saying to their parents, don't throw that bottle away, let's take it in to school."
TerraCycle provides collection boxes to its donation sites and pays for shipping, so participation in the program is free for all Bottle Brigade locations.
Calvary Baptist Church and First United Methodist Church, which co-founded the High Street Neighborhood Center 36 years ago and support operations there, also are collecting bottles on the center's behalf.
GECOM Corp. manufacturing facilities in Winchester and Frankfort, which produce locks and latches for auto manufacturers, are collecting bottles for TerraCycle to help support programs at the Lions Club's Camp Crescendo in Lebanon Junction. Each summer, the camp offers programs for hearing and visually impaired youth, for children affected by AIDS or HIV, for kids in foster care and for those with Muscular Dystrophy, said Lions Club member John Jenks of Winchester.
"We were going through lots of bottles. But we couldn't find anyone to recycle them for us," said Megan Miller, GECOM's human resources supervisor in Winchester. "Our numbers were not large enough for recycling pick-up but large enough to help someone like TerraCycle."
Three months ago, the company put TerraCycle collection boxes in break rooms, so workers can toss in empty bottles instead of throwing them away. The Winchester plant has shipped 25 boxes of 20-ounce bottles to TerraCycle, Miller said.
Boxing days
At the High Street Neighborhood Center, bottle boxing days are always met with smiles by the kids.
"They love helping me do it," Schlansky said.
And as they bring in their grocery bags full of empty soda bottles each day, even if they don't quite realize it, the kids are helping earn things to "help keep the school going," Svec said. "We're always looking for ways to help children understand that they are really important contributors to our cause."
Ways to help
To help with the bottle collection at High Street Neighborhood Center, bring cleaned 20-ounce soda bottles, labels off, to the center at 228 South Limestone from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
To find out more about becoming a TerraCycle Bottle Brigade collection site, go to www.terracycle.net/bb. The company also has begun accepting used drink pouches, including Capri Sun pouches. Only Honest Kids brand drink pouches earn money for collection sites, however, at 2 cents a pouch. For more information on the Drink Pouch Brigade program, see www.terracycle.net/dpb.
TerraCycle's plant food products are available at Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Target stores nationwide.
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