Waste Not, Waste Not With TerraCycle

September 14, 2007

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TerraCycle - a Trenton, N.J., company founded by two Princeton University students in 2001 - has reused more than 1 million soda and water bottles to package its plant food, itself the product of recycled garbage and affectionately known as "worm poop."

Now TerraCycle is using recycled bottles as bird feeders as well, already packed with seed and priced at $4.88.

Many of the bottles have been collected by more than 4,000 school groups and charities. TerraCycle spokesman Albe Zakes says the company pays 6 cents per bottle.

A big fan of the "Bottle Brigade" program is Lee Gluck, the library media specialist at Whiting Lane School in West Hartford who previously taught at Wolcott Elementary School for about 12 years, including the past four years teaching fifth-graders.

"My big thrust as a teacher is to empower children, that they can make a difference," she says. "The TerraCycle program is great because it ties in with my theme of teaching, which is to learn and care for the environment."

The students raised money for the Wolcott Children's Forest. The 5-acre town-owned tract next to Wolcott School was an important teaching environment. When a cell tower was proposed there, teachers and parents banded together, Gluck says, "and gave it a name and a place on the map." It now has a 100-seat amphitheatre, and the pond will be stocked with fish Sept. 23.

Kids collecting boxes of bottles through TerraCycle's program helped raise a bit of the money for the Children's Forest, and Gluck says she hopes to continue TerraCycle's program at Whiting Lane.

"The bottles are going to be used for worm poop," Gluck says. "The kids get the biggest charge out of that."

TerraCycle products are carried at such retailers as Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart and Whole Foods; the bird feeder is available at Wal-Mart. For details, go to http://www.terracycle.net/.

- NANCY SCHOEFFLER