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Bottle Brigade Program

The Bottle Brigade Needs Your Help to Survive!

The Bottle Brigade™ needs a sponsor and we need your help in finding one! The Bottle Brigade has been hugely successful. So successful, in fact, that our small start up company can barely support the costs and labor needs associated with running the program. Recently the Bottle Brigade reached an amazing 4,000 locations in a little less than a year and a half! We never imagined it would become so popular, so fast. We were doing really well until a change in shipping policies caused by rising gas prices and shipping companies switching to dimensional weight this year. The shipping of our boxes has tripled in cost and because of this we are forced to scale back.

The Bottle Brigade is designed to help teach children about the importance of saving the environment and conserving resources. More then half of our locations are primary schools and teaching these young kids to "reduce, reuse and rethink" is a vital mission of our program. However we simply cannot continue to grow this great program without financial support. With a sponsor we can continue to sign up locations. Sponsorship would help us clear out our waiting list of hundreds of locations. It could also help us to develop an entire recycling and reusing curriculum to send to participating schools!

So we need your help to save this program and allow it to reach its full potential! Here are just a few of the benefits of a sponsorship. The sponsor's name and logo will be on every one of the 10,000 plus boxes we send. The boxes are usually located in high traffic areas. In addition, the sponsor would be credited in every press release that it single-handedly helped save the Bottle Brigade program. This year to date TerraCycle has been mentioned in hundreds of articles (Audited Bureau of Circulation of over 66 million impressions). Most importantly a sponsor will know it's helping America's children save their future. If you are interested in the sponsorship or know someone who would be interested, please review our proposal and press release in the following links.

Word document detailing the sponsorship opportunity
(please be patient, this is a large file)

Sponsorship Press Release

ATTENTION!

Starting immediately, the Bottle Brigade™ program will only donate $0.06 per cleaned and de-labeled plastic 20 oz. soda bottles. Current Bottle Brigadiers will have until October 1st to turn in all bottles at the current donation rate of $0.05 for cleaned and labeled 20 oz. plastic soda bottles and $0.06 for cleaned and de-labeled 20 oz. plastic soda bottles.

Every day, millions of soda bottles end up in garbage cans and landfills across America. TerraCycle wants to change that. As an eco-friendly innovator, TerraCycle packages its all natural liquefied worm poop in bottles collected from schools and recycling centers nationwide. It's no wonder that Red Herring Magazine named TerraCycle as one of the Top 100 Most Innovative Companies in 2004, and Inc. Magazine featured TerraCycle on its July, 2006 cover as "The Coolest Little Start-up in America!"

Earn $0.06 per bottle today! - Click Here to Sign Up!

To sign up, please click here. One to two weeks after you respond to your confirmation email, you will receive 4 boxes that each hold 70 bottles. Please refer to the FAQs before signing up. Once you've signed up, you can access your account here.

TerraCycle's Bottle Brigade program allows almost any organization to save 20 oz. plastic soda bottles from destruction. TerraCycle will donate $.06 per cleaned and de-labeled soda bottle you collect to the charity of your choice. If you don't have a charity currently in mind, you may choose from a list of existing charities, or save 10 square feet of the rain forest with every bottle! There are no signup fees whatsoever. To see if this program is right for you, click here for some FAQs.

Unfortunately, we cannot use water bottles (which tend to be a bit weaker even if they look the same) or other uniquely sized bottles such as the "wide mouth" Gatorade® bottles, etc.

Tons and tons of Bottles?

If the picture below looks like your workplace or maybe a nearby recycling center, we are here to help you out. TerraCycle would be happy to provide homes for 20 oz. soda bottles. The plants that our products feed would be grateful as well.

Program Statistics:

0 spots available

(Sign up for waiting list)

1,223,180 bottles collected so far

4,402 total participating locations

KYW1060 News Radio

NJ Firm TerraCycle Launches Eco-Capitalism Campaign (July 12, 2008)

Don't throw out those wrappers from cookie pouches or drink pouches. A local firm has come up with a way to recycle them into usable items. TerraCycle, Inc., based in Trenton, NJ, recently unveiled the Cookie Brigade. Spokesman James Artis says Nabisco cookie wrappers and Capri Sun juice pouches are being recycled into trendy accessories: "We take drink pouch bags, and we make pencil cases. Pencil...

The Burbank Leader

Energy bar wrappers’ delight (July 11, 2008)

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...

The Baltimore Sun

Make some money and save Earth (July 10, 2008)

TerraCycle has been getting all kinds of good press lately so I'm sure it needs no help from us. But really, I just want to jump on the fan bandwagon because it's pretty cool what this little New Jersey company is doing. Two Princeton grads had a simple plan: take waste, process it, and turn it into a useful product. They now make totes out of Capri Sun juice pouches, bags out of plastic grocery...

Sustainable Packaging News

TerraCycle Turns Kraft Packaging into New Products (July 10, 2008)

Kraft Foods recently announced a new partnership with TerraCycle, an upstart upcycling company that takes packages and materials that are challenging to recycle and turns them into affordable, high quality goods. The partnership will greatly expand the number of collection sites TerraCycle has available across the country and will help prevent a significant amount of packaging waste from going into...

Chicago Sun Times

A herculean effort (July 8, 2008)

Kraft is getting into the garbage and recycling business. The packaged goods behemoth is paying schools and not-for-profits to collect garbage such as used drink pouches, energy bar wrappers, cookie packaging and other detritus. The collected materials will be upcycled by a firm called TerraCycle and transformed into products such as drink pouch pencil cases, totes, backpacks and umbrellas sold at...

TRASHformations

TerraCycle Fashions a New Life for Old Wrappers (July 7, 2008)

Each year, billions of food and drink wrappers encasing popular brands end up in landfills because their multilayered materials -- which keep products fresh -- are tricky and expensive to break down and recycle. This waste has presented a challenge for manufacturers eager to reduce their environmental impact and buff reputations among eco-conscious consumers. But that's changing due to an unusual...

Food Processing

Lessons from the snack packers (July 3, 2008)

Taking a different green approach, Clif Bar & Co. Berkeley, Calif., is sponsoring a program to keep energy bar wrappers out of landfills. Clif Bar has created the initiative, called the Wrapper Brigade, with TerraCycle Inc., Trenton, N.J., which provides wrapper collection and reuse expertise. Wrapper Brigade participants receive four collection bags that hold 200 energy bar wrappers each. They...

Green Biz

A Second Life for Cookie Wrappers (July 3, 2008)

NORTHFIELD, Ill. -- TerraCycle Inc. has joined forces with Kraft Foods to "upcycle" used wrappers from cookies, energy bars and drink pouches into purses, backpacks and umbrellas. The partnership stands to divert millions of pounds of waste from landfills and provide a major coup for upstart TerraCycle, which made its name by transforming worm poop into fertilizer. TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky estimates...

Inc. Magazine

Totes From Trash (July 3, 2008)

A New Jersey-based eco-friendly plant food company has struck a deal with Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT) to turn its used packaging into purses, backpacks and other merchandise, company officials announced this week. Under the partnership, TerraCycle, which already packages its own worm-waste fertilizer in recycled plastic bottles, will expand its waste collection sites to include Kraft brands such as...

The Trentonian Times

A Deal for the Future (July 2, 2008)

TRENTON -- City recycling innovators, Terracycle, yesterday announced a new partnership with Kraft Foods in which discarded cookie and energy bar wrappers will be transformed into everything from purses and backpacks to umbrellas and shower curtains. TerraCycle's Drink Pouch Brigade first introduced the company to Kraft. Through Capri Sun, which is owned by Kraft, TerraCycle was able to show how...

Food Business Review

Kraft Foods enters into recycling partnership with TerraCycle (July 2, 2008)

In line with this partnership, schools and community groups will collect wrappers from Balance energy bars, Oreos and Chips Ahoy! cookies and Capri Sun beverage pouches. With financial support from Kraft Foods, TerraCycle will give two cents for each cookie wrapper or drink pouch. The wrappers and pouches thus collected will be used for making umbrellas, shower curtains and purses. According...

Wall Street Journal

TerraCycle Fashions a New Life (July 1, 2008)

Company Turns Trash Into Totes, Backpacks And Other Products Is a tote bag forged from old CapriSun pouches fashionable? What about an umbrella constructed of used Chips Ahoy! wrappers? Each year, billions of food and drink wrappers encasing popular brands end up in landfills because their multilayered materials -- which keep products fresh -- are tricky and expensive to break down and recycle....

More Bottle Brigade press...