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Why not ‘upcycle’ what you can’t recycle?

By | July 6, 2010, 10:59 AM PDT

No matter how good your company’s intentions when it comes to recycling as many items as possible to keep them out of landfills, there are some common office items that CANNOT currently be sent to recyclers. Stuff you might find in your desk drawer like pens, highlighter, glue sticks.

That’s why TerraCycle, which makes products made out of things like this, is turning up the heat on what it calls its Office Product Brigades program. The initiative collects at least some of these things, earning your business a bit of a charitable deduction along the way.

Here’s the pitch: For every writing implement, tape dispenser or glue bottle you return (regardless of the brand), TerraCycle will donate 2 cents to the charity of your choice. TerraCycle will pick up the shipping costs for boxes of whatever you send in.

The clipboard to the right is an example of the sorts of things that TerraCycle makes out of what you send in. (The item in question happens to be made out of old circuit boards.)

TerraCycle’s partners in the Office Products Brigades program are 3M, Elmer’s Products, Papermaete, Sharpie and Scotch Tape. (Although as I mentioned before, it doesn’t matter what kind of stuff you turn in.)

Even BEFORE this program was launched, TerraCycle has collected more than 250,000 pens, markers, glue bottles, spent tape dispensers and such from landfills.

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Heather Clancy

About Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy

Contributing Editor, Business

Heather Clancy has written for United Press International, ZDNet, Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times. She holds a degree from McGill University. She is based in New Jersey.

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Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy
Writing publicly about what the high-tech industry is actually doing to help itself and the world get greener or more sustainable is one way I figure I can contribute more meaningfully to said effort. I'm also a big OMG-kind-of-fan of smart leadership, which is why the goodly folks who publish this blog let me go on about this topic and why I am always on the hunt for forward-looking business management ideas.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I also write often about emerging technology trends such as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as appropriate.

My corporate writing work usually consists of crafting research white papers about some aspect of technology. In the event that my commentary (in written, audio or video form) mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. However, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I'm covering in my blog.

She writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.

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RE: Why not 'upcycle' what you can't recycle?
that would be the second "R" in the Green Triangle
- Reduce
- Re-Use
- Recycle

Recycle is supposed to be the last option not the first or second
Reuse / Re-purpose is preferred over Recycle

Recycle only when the other 2 options aren't viable anymore
- there's no reason to be smashing older functioning P-II & P-III systems as they make great home / home office file storage servers and for a really cheap cost
ie. I have just acquired a P-III system in a full tower case
I'm adding to it:
a 4-port SATA PCI card
a Gigabit etherenet PCI card
4x 1TB HDD's
and bingo a really cheap file server for my archives & rarely used files
and it will still use less power than my current desktop does
Posted by Who Am I Really
8th Jul 2010
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