Published Jul 11, 2008 - 22:26:58 PDT
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Energy bar wrappers’ delight
Couple use their snacks’ piles of packaging to help charity and the environment.
For Burbank resident Sean Barton and his wife, Jamie Barton, lunch is
often an energy bar on the run rather than a big sit-down meal.Between the two of them, they consume at least 10 snack bars a week.
So when Barton heard about an energy bar recycling initiative that reuses energy bar wrappers while raising money for charity, it was something he figured his household could contribute to.
“It fits us both,” he said.
Earlier this year, Barton and his wife began collecting energy bar wrappers as part of the Energy Bar Brigade, one of a handful of recycling initiatives organized by TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based company that makes plant fertilizer and prides itself on the sustainability of its products.
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“I am the furthest thing from being a tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, Audubon kind of guy,” he said.
TerraCycle, a business formed by Princeton students Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer, started out making organic fertilizers from worm waste and packaging the product in recycled plastic bottles.
The company recently started selling everything from purses to planters, all using recycled materials.
TerraCycle collects some of its raw materials — wrappers, yogurt containers and corks — through volunteer recycling brigades around the country.
The wrappers Barton and other participants collect through the Energy Bar Brigade will be fused together and turned into consumer products like totes or backpacks, according to the company.
“It makes a really sturdy kind of waterproof material,” TerraCycle intern Lisa Molendini said.
Through the sponsorships of partner companies — in the case of the Energy Bar Brigade, CLIF Bar and Balance Bar — volunteer collectors also receive 2 cents per wrapper as a donation to their charity of choice.
“We’re paying people to send in their trash that’s generally unrecyclable,” Molendini said.
The Bartons have collected between 200 and 300 wrappers at home and work during their first few months in the program. The money they raise will go to weSPARK, a cancer support center in Sherman Oaks.
Even though the money from the Bartons’ wrappers might pile up slowly, it’s something, and it’s better than putting the trash in landfills, they said.
Hopefully, the company’s initiatives will also prompt other companies to do something about their environmental impact, Sean Barton said.
“I’m hoping that it’s going to spur ideas to these larger corporations that have more money than God,” he said.
And altogether, the donations from the company’s various recycling efforts have amassed more than $200,000 in charitable contributions, Molendini said.
