Upcycle Your Back-To-School Shopping

As I mentioned before Twitter has turned out to be more than just a way to get people to my blog.

TerraCycle started following me on Twitter and sent me a message asking if I would be interested in doing a post on their Upcycling Brigade.

Well if you remember my upcyling post then you know I’m already a fan of TerraCycle and therefore totally stoked that they would contact me.

And if you missed it TerraCycle is a company that takes items like food and drink wrappers, as well as other things, and turns them into new products or upcycles them.

To make a long story slightly less long Albe sent me a list of all the products that they make and told me to pick some and then he would put a sample pack together to send to me.

For me finding something I liked and would be interested in taking a closer look out was absolutely not the problem; narrowing it down so as not to seem greedy was.

In the end I still had a fair sized list and figured Albe would narrow it down some more and then send out those things. Well guess what, he didn’t. He sent me all the things I listed (except 1 because they didn’t have any samples at the moment). And once again I say “Score”!

It was quite a mish mash of stuff so for this post I’m just going to talk about the back-to-school supplies.

The items I got were a kid’s backpack made from Clif kid Splashers wrappers, an insulated lunch bag & pencil case made from CapriSun drink pouches, a backpack made from an old billboard and a notebook that’s cover is made from Oreo cookie wrappers.

The Splashers backpack is just the right size for Dylan and the lunch bag is super roomy and really light which makes it perfect for him as well. And the best thing about them aside from the fact that they’re upcycled is that he loves them and is looking forward to taking them to school.



Tyler wasn’t so sure about the backpack, he would have liked a different color (yeesh). But when I explained what it was made of, and old billboard, that it each one is unique, because they’re all made from different parts of the billboard, and why being made out of a billboard is so cool, because it kept it out of a landfill, he was more interested in it, and then asked if he could get it in another color. Ah, kids.



But what I really love about this company is their Upcycling Brigade. You can sign-up to collect any of the wrappers that they use as well as cell phones and bottle corks and once you have the allotted amount, send them in and money will be donated to the charity of your choice. But here’s where my favorite part comes in; schools can sign-up to do this and they’re the ones who get the money.



We’ve all been a part of a school fundraiser in some form or another, either as the parent of the child peddling stuff no one really wants or as the buyer of stuff you don’t really want.

You may see where I’m going with this. This fundraiser requires no more stuff which makes it green and can be done all year long which makes it more helpful for schools.

What’s so great about all this I think is that you can get your back-to-school shopping done and teach your kids how to tread on little lighter on the planet all at the same time. Seems like a good deal to me.

You can buy their products at their online store shoponlygreen.com or in many retail stores like Target, Wal-Mart and Office Depot.