Denton: Up-Cycle

As individuals, businesses, and communities, we do not have to wait for the City Council to act to make Portsmouth more sustainable. In addition to reusing shopping bags, recycling, or composting, consider up-cycling unwanted products to make them anew again.

Between the Port City’s single-stream recycling and Mr. Fox’s composting, my monthly trash bag mostly consists of the single-use, thin-filmed, plastic packaging byproducts that often mistakenly contaminate our recycling stream. To landfill less of this solid waste, I recently started up-cycling my large quantities of discarded energy bar wrappers through TerraCycle.

TerraCycle collects post-consumer waste, ranging from diaper packaging, to office supplies, to cigarette butts, and repurposes it into innovative products via different collection programs called Brigades. You simply sign up for a Brigade at http://www.terracycle.com/en-US, mail your unwanted items using free downloadable shipping labels, and then earn points towards repurposed products or charitable gifts.

We all have a stake in, and consciously choose whether or not to take action towards, a more sustainable future. Consider up-cycling difficult-to-recycle waste byproducts as an additional way to take action towards making a more sustainable Portsmouth a reality.