Even if you didn’t go trick-or-treating last night, there’s a decent chance you have some candy and chocolate sitting around the house. Perhaps you’re like some Consumerist staffers who just can’t help but be tempted by the bulk bags of Kit Kats that go on sale at their local Walgreens? Regardless, before you toss those empty wrappers in the garbage, you might want to consider using them to help out a good cause.
The Candy Wrapper Brigade is a partnership between Mars/Wrigley, Cadbury and TerraCycle, a company that makes products from non-recyclable waste materials. They’re currently asking for you to send in some of your used candy wrappers to use as raw materials for their products.
From USA Today:
To participate, you sign up online, receive a prepaid postage label and drop off a box filled with wrappers (and affixed with the label) at a post office. For each approved candy wrapper,$.02 will be donated to the non-profit group or school of your choice. Eligible products include M&Ms, Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, Twix, Snickers and Swedish Fish.
TerraCycle also has “brigades” for things like drink pouches and Ziploc products. Go to TerraCycle.net for more info.
Upcycle Halloween candy wrappers into kites, purses [USA Today]
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Alas, we’re a Reese’s peanut butter cup household.
I love this idea. I’ve seen some of these products before and they always look so cool. A local salon sells bags and purses made from old billboard ads. Upcycling is such a great concept; I’d love to see more of it.
I go through about 150 or so 40-pound bags of wood pellets a winter. The bags are not acceptable as recycle in our area. What’s a guy to do?
Reuse them as trash bags. Use them as a liner in a pet’s cage or litter box. Shred it and use it for kindling. Shred it and compost it. Have wood pellet sack races. Weave them into decorative items. Cut them up and use them as a tablecloth.
Plastic tablecloths are only useful if you’re Dexter Morgan.
True. I was just going under the assumption that the bags were paper.
Hopefully they really mean .02 dollars and not .02 cents!
Holy shit you’re right. I didn’t even notice that. Yeah that would suck if it was 0.02 cents.
Given the dollar sign is in the quote…
I didn’t know they took the fun size wrappers. The only bags I have seen use the regular size ones and larger.
It’s .02 cents. They are following the Verizon lead and making it sound like it’s a lot of money.
In reality, you’ll have to contribute -one million- wrappers just to make them donate a $100 dollars.
Do the math.
1 x 10^6 * 2 x 10^-4 = 2 x 10^2
Wrong math and misunderstanding of the article. It’s $.02, as in 2 hundredths of a dollar.
Correct math:
.02 * x = 100
x = 100 * 100/2
x = 10000/2
x = 5000
Simple maths:
1.0 x .02 = .02
That’s 2/100th of the whole. Now, what do you need a 100 of to make a whole dollar?
sarcazm, i haz it
I was considering joining the site, but their “about” page has a ton of typos…
Makes me not want to give them sensitive info…
e.g. -
“Tom’s dream was to find way a new, more responsible way of doing doing business that would be good for the planet, good for people and good for the bottom line! “
This recycling venture can’t possibly make economic cents on it’s own. It’s just a trick to make you feel good & buy more product.
Why is everything suddenly a trick? Are you suggesting everyone is evil and out to get you?
It must be sad to be so paranoid.
Remember the soda can pull tab for charity scam?
A perfectly logical sounding charity that supposedly bought wheelchairs from a manufacturer by turning in pop tabs from soda cans. Damn thing’s been going on so long I got friend with literally thousands of collected pop tabs in bags… and nobody wants them. there is no “wheelchair manufacturer”. It was an Urban Myth started last century by an attention seeker, and to this day there are people who collect these things, thinking that “one day, when I have enough, I’ll send them along.”
Trouble is, there is nobody to send them to.
And the really sad thing is, if they’d just crushed the can and kept the whole thing, they would have been able to recycle that aluminum can for actual money. The going return for scrap aluminum cans is now about $1.05/lb here where I am.
With several thousand pull tabs, not much money. for same amount of cans, quite a bit of money.
The Ronald McDonald House takes them. Yes, they sell the pop tabs for the scrap value of the aluminum, but they are a 100% legitimate charity that collects pop tabs as a fundraiser. The local RMH gets a few thousand dollars a year from pop tabs.
My school Terracycles juice pouches. We get paid 2¢ for each pouch. Considering we’re a school of 600+ students, this adds up pretty quickly. I think it’s really cool that they’re doing it with candy wrappers now!
My school Terracycles juice pouches. We get paid 2¢ for each pouch. Considering we’re a school of 600+ students, this adds up pretty quickly. I think it’s really cool that they’re doing it with candy wrappers now!
It is more efficient and more environmentally responsible to simply write a check to the charity.
I was going to say the same thing. Mailing these wrappers back and forth seems wasteful and unnecessarily gimmicky.
So, if I eat ONE HUNDRED pieces of candy this week and spend just a few hours collecting, organizing, and mailing all my wrappers, you’ll donate $2 to my favorite charity? Score!