One Human's Trash Is Another's Treasure...

If you have a minute, go ahead and take a peek into your garbage can. You'll probably find the usual suspects--a banana peel, pieces of random mail and maybe some coffee grinds.

Just ordinary garbage, right? Well, tell that to Trenton, N.J.-based TerraCycle (started by a 25-year-old Princeton drop out--I love this country!), a company that has taken everyday waste and made it into consumable products. And not products sold at a street fair either. We're talking about massive retail ventures.

TerraCycle recently began a partnership with OfficeMax, which now offers "Made From Waste" products in all of its stores throughout the nation. Products include waste baskets (ironic, eh?) pens, pencils, binders, paper, pencil cases, cork boards and computer bags. Even better, the products are made from commonly tossed items such as newspaper, cookie packaging, elephant poop, banana leaves, wine corks and billboard vinyl.

We truly live in the most innovative time in the history of the world. Who would have thought that elephant poo and wine corks could create so much goodness? It's absolutely amazing.

According to a recent TerraCycle press release, execs at OfficeMax worked closely with the company to develop products that consumers not only needed, but could also be created from common waste products.

Check out some of the Made From Waste products and their materials of origin:

-Pencils: 100 percent reused newspaper
-Paper lines: elephant poop, banana leaves, coffee grinds and straw
-Pens: biodegradable corn plastic and recycled plastic
-Kid's notebooks: reused Oreo and Chips Ahoy cookie packaging, post-consumer paper
-Computer bags: reused billboard vinyl
-Cork boards: reused wine corks

And get this, TerraCycle (I swear, the dude that started this company is a genius!) pays consumers to send in cookie packaging, wrappers, plastic bottles, wine corks, etc. as part of their efforts to clean up the Earth and create products we can reuse. They also partner with food manufacturers to act as sponsors for this brigade. It doesn't get any better than this people. Unless, of course, you're talking about the worm poop plant food packages for reused soda bottles that TerraCycle created back in 2005 for Wal-Mart and Home Depot.

I don't know about you, but OfficeMax's coolness factor just rose about 5 trillion points for me. What do you think? Want to track the CEO of TerraCycle down and marry him (like I do)? If so, leave your comments here. Or drop us your ideas for how to turn waste into goodness.

--Heather Strang