P.S. 94 Students Get Rich From Recycling

Like many of her classmates, Julia Kourtney, a fourth grader at P.S. 94, was already an avid recycler. But when she discovered there was money to be made from her empty Capri Sun juice pouches, she started collecting those, too.

Linda Kourtney, Julia's mother, said her daughter noticed the logo for TerraCycle, an organization that collects everything from chip bags to old cell phones, emblazoned on her lunchtime juice pouches, and became intrigued by the company's offer of two cents for every emptied pouch that gets mailed in.

"She kept bringing the pouches home saying 'Mom, they're two cents!'" Kourtney said. "We asked the principal if we could do this sort of thing, and she said 'sure.'"

Linda and her daughter placed cardboard boxes around the school grounds, in which students tossed their empty Capri Sun pouches. The younger Kourtney routinely empties the pouches from the boxes and sends them back to TerraCycle.

Last year, Kourtney's efforts earned the school a whopping $660, much of which will be donated to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The rest will go back to P.S. 94, to be divided between funding for the school's science department and a party for the students involved in the recycling program.

Once the pouches reach the TerraCycle plant, they are either upcycled—meaning they're converted into products like tote bags or backpacks—or recycled into construction materials like composite lumber or flooring, said TerraCycle's public relations intern David Smith. According to TerraCycle's website, the organization has collected 95,095,977 pouches through the program.

But to the students at P.S. 94, though, there's nothing remarkable or radical about their efforts.

"The kids are just really interested," Kourtney said. "They recycle in the school anyway. It was really normal for them to just put the pouches in a separate bin.”