Earlier this week, the Kimberly-Clark Corporation and TerraCycle Inc announced their new partnership. The two will collaborate with schools, businesses, and other organizations to upcycle Kimberly-Clark products into new consumer goods. The partnership will keep packaging waste from Kimberly-Clark products out of landfills and provide fundraising opportunities to participants of the TerraCycle Brigades program.

 

Kimberly-Clark’s “partnership with TerraCycle creates new programs that allow participants to earn funds for their selected charity of choice for every used piece of plastic packaging associated with Scott or Huggies brands that they collect. The collected plastic packaging will be upcycled into affordable, high-quality products available next year at major retailers nationwide." Source: TerraCycle

 

The Brigades program allows major companies and consumers to participate in two of the three Rs – reuse and reduce. The partnership with Kimberly-Clark is just the latest in a series of high profile deals that TerraCycle has secured over the past few months.

 

Earlier this year, TerraCycle began working on a process that will upcycle used Frito-Lay bags into products that will be used in the green building industry. While information about the green building product line is still under tight lock and key, TerraCycle has already began to create handbags, folders, portable speakers, and other products out of upcycled Frito-Lay chip bags.

 

TerraCycle also recently created the Scotch Tape Brigade, which collects the cores and tape dispensers from Scotch tape products to be upcycled into new products.

 

All of the upcycling deals provide a valuable opportunity for organizations to start a new Brigade. The Brigade collects the products for upcycling and TerraCycle provides a financial incentive for each of the products shipped to the company.

 

It wasn’t until I attended an event at my children’s school that I realized how popular these TerraCycle upcycling Brigades are becoming. There next to the garbage can and the recycling bin was a third bin clearly labeled “Juice Pouch Brigade” — the school collects empty juice pouches and ships them off to TerraCycle on a regular basis.