CFK is Celebrating Earth Day… by giving you EXTRA CA$H!

Visit http://www.cfktoday.com for more information!

Everyone Loves a Little Bonus…

The school year is in full swing now, and we hope your fundraising is too! Now that you’ve started collecting your recyclables and boxing them up, we want to remind you of an awesome new opportunity to earn extra CA$H!

 Cartridges for Kids® is so thankful for your participation, we thought we’d reward you for all your hard work! This year we’re excited to announce a brand new promotion.

Here’s how it works: For every $150 in qualifying items your school or organization sends in a month, you will automatically receive an extra $25!

 There’s no need to track it, and you don’t need to sign up- we’ll do all the work for you! All you have to do is make sure you send in your items before the end of the month (remember to allow a few days leeway for shipping and processing).

 Want to know something else cool? You can do it once a month for the whole year if you want. That gives you the potential to earn an extra $300 this year alone!

We here at CFK truly hope everyone takes advantage of this opportunity, and we want it to be easy for you. That’s why there is no need to sign up or track your items. Just start sending in your boxes and we’ll do the rest!

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions- we’re here to help! You can contact CFK by calling 1(800) 420-0235 or emailing your questions to cfkprogram@wm.com.

 We look forward to hearing from you, and we’re excited to keep recycling with you this year!

 

 

America Recycles Day is Almost Here!

Did you know America has a National Recycling Day?

Since 1997, communities across the country have come together on November 15th to celebrate what can happen if we all work together to make recycling bigger and better in the United States. Recycling events large and small are popping up all over the country. Some are being organized by companies like Waste Management, Johnson& Johnson and Pepsico, but others are being put together by people and communities who are just as excited to help further the recycling cause.

Cartridges for Kids® (CFK) is excited to get involved in this spectacular day, and we want you to get involved too! Visit Americarecyclesday. org to find out more about events being hosted in your area, or get help hosting your own event. Sign the Recycling pledge and find some great tips and toolkits to help make recycling easy and fun in your school and community!

Now that you know about this terrific cause, how about getting involved while earning cash for your school/organization? Here’s where CFK comes in!

Most recycling events focus on paper, plastic and glass products. While we know how important these things are to recycle, what about the items that you can’t just drop in a green recycle bin and place on your sidewalk? With the increasing amout of technology in our world, electronics recycling or eCycling, is more important that ever- and CFK is an expert on the subject! We want to support America Recycles Day by spreading the word that ecycling is just as important as recycling.

We know you’ve been working hard getting the word out about our program and collecting cellphones and cartridges galore for us to recycle, but what if we told you we know how to help you be even MORE successful?

We’re talking about a collection drive! America Recycles Day is a great opportunity for you to get the word out in your school and community about your involvement with Cartridges for Kids and a CFK collection drive is the perfect way to do it.

The best part? It’s really easy! A drive can be as big or as small as you want it to be and CFK will provide the materials to get you started. Just click here to order everything you need to kick-off a cellphone and/or cartridge collection drive at your school. Just be sure to order your materials soon- we want you to be able to have your drive all planned out in time for America Recycles Day on November 15th.

If you aren’t sure how to promote your Collection Drive, visit Ways to Grow to find tons of great ideas and templates including our most popular project- the Recycle Tree.

We want to hear from you too! Do you have an awesome new idea about how to promote ecycling at your school? Is your Recycle Tree brag-worthy? Send us your ideas and pictures to cfkprogram@wm.com with the subject line “Our school loves CFK!” and we might post them here. We always love to hear about your success and creativity!

Good luck with your Collection Drives and we look forward to hearing from you!

The Great iPhone Treasure Hunt Comes to an End!

Well folks, your shipments for the Great iPhone Treasure Hunt have to be postmarked by today, so if you have stuff to send, rush it off to a FedEx store now!

We’ll be in touch with the winners, and as always, we’ll post the results here!

Thanks for participating and stay tuned for information on more ways to earn more CA$H!

 

 

Congratulations to our Gift Card Giveaway Winners!

Scheduling a contest or drive has never been so good…

A few months ago we told our participants that if they scheduled their 6-week contest or collection drive before November 15th (America Recycles Day) they would be entered into a drawing to win a $50 gift card to Staples, or office supply store of their choice.

Well the response was so overwhelming, with over 250 schools and organizations scheduling their contests and drives, that we decided to award a $25 2nd place winner as well.

So CONGRATULATIONS!

Scott Johnson Elementary, winner of a $50 Office Depot gift card

and

C H Gullatt Elementary, winner of a $25 Staples gift card

Best of Luck with your upcoming contests and drives!

 

You can still sign up for your contests and drives for any time during the year. As always, if you collect over $200 worth of materials or over 100 cell phones during your 6-week time period, you will receive an extra $50 bonus.

Keep an eye out for more reasons to sign up for a contest or drive – another gift card incentive might be on its way – HINT: EARTH DAY!

Contact CFK at 800-420-0235 or email at contact@cartridgesforkids.com to schedule your contest or drive today!

 

 

That old bag…

We’ve talked about pledge bags before. Don’t believe us? See for yourself here and here.

Anyway, whether you remember or not, we’re gonna do it again!

Pledge bags are cute little 6 X 9 inch bags that encourage recycling at your school. You pass them out and tell everyone to bring the bag back with at least one item in it.

What do you put in the pledge bags? Thanks for asking.  An inkjet cartridge, a cell phone, a digital camera, an ipod, or tape the bag to a laptop or xbox console and bring it in. Make sure that the student and parent sign the back of the pledge bag…this means they pledge to recycle all year long!

What do you do with the bags once they’re returned? Keep them. Hang on to them. We don’t need them. Put all the bags in a central location and use them to give out prizes. Tell everyone that you’ll hold a drawing every week, every month, or whenever you want. Draw one of the bags, and give that lucky recycler a prize of your choice. In the past, people have given away extra recess time, lunch with the principal, stickers, or one of our “Caught You Recycling” cards.

How do I get the word out that we’re using the bags? We’ve typed up an email that you can send home to parents or other supporters. Click here to get it. Other than that, spread the word the same way you would about the rest of your recycling program: over the intercom at school, with fliers, at sporting events or club meetings, or on community events calendars in your local area.

Good luck! Click here to get pledge bags, or here to ask us more questions about it.

Recycling Lesson Plans

As the school year is beginning, there’s lots of resources you can use to integrate recycling into your lesson plans. Check out the following links:

The Teacher’s Guide
A to Z Teacher Stuff
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
Scholastic
Discovery Education
KidZone
Education World

CFK has also put together a recycling lesson of our own. Check out our Save the Earth Scavenger Hunt on the Ways to Grow page on our website. Incorporate recycling into your math or science lesson and earn money for your school all at the same time.

Click here to sign up or contact our staff.

Set Up a Back to School Table!

The beginning of the school year is often an overwhelming time…so many papers to send home, so many projects to start.

Luckily, CFK is here to make your Back to School time easier.

Going Back to School with CFK is as easy as 1–2–3!

1. Gather up the following: CFK fliers, item poster, collection box, and examples of our recyclable items, if you have them.

2. Find a table. ANY kind of table. A card table, a desk, a cafeteria table, any place that you can set up.

3. Put it all together. It can be at Back to School night, a sporting event, in your school’s main lobby, anywhere that lots of people are going to see it. Tell everyone about your recycling program, and make sure they know what to bring in and where to bring it.

It’s that easy!
Click here for examples and more Back to School table ideas.
Click here for our “Just Getting Started” page with more ideas on how to get your program off the ground.

Recycle 4 Soldiers in July

July is Recycle 4 Soldiers month here, and you’re right, I’m gonna quote Uncle Sam…We want YOU to help out!

Here’s how:

1.  Go right now to your junk drawer and take out the 1, 2 or 3 retired cell phones you have sitting in there. (You can grab the chargers while you’re at it.)Put the phones into an old box and tape it up. Tape the shipping label to it, and put it in your mailbox. Or, if you’re lucky enough to know your mailman/woman personally, you could hand it to them with a smile.
And you’re done! Your cell phones will be recycled or refurbished, and the proceeds will be sent on to the soldier support organizations we work with. See below for the list.

2.  Go to the Recycle 4 Soldiers enrollment page on our website. Sign up your school, church, neighborhood association, bridge club, or sports team (or any other group really, because do people still join bridge clubs?). We’ll send you all the info you need to start a year-round recycling drive to support our troops. This means you collect all the stuff we recycle and send to us on our dime. We recycle all the stuff and send the money to those non-profits listed at the bottom of the page. Everybody wins.

3. Oh, you’re already a non-profit working to support our troops? PERFECT! You can sign up to recycle also. We’ll send you customizable fliers to advertise your collection, and you can be part of a recycling team full of soldier support organizations just like you.

Stay tuned later today for some exciting info about the new iPhone!

CFK is Paying You MORE on 100 Different Items!

That’s right, CFK is paying you MORE MONEY for 100 different recyclable items!

Check out our new (and improved) price list here.
All items in bold have had their prices raised, so when you send those in, you make
MORE MONEY!

Get the picture?

Stick around, because we’ll be raising values in April and May also. You never know how much you can make!

In honor of these values going up up up, we chose to share this cute video.
Some guy took the sounds, music, and voices from the movie Up and remixed them all together.

Happy Friday, Happy MORE MONEY Day from CFK!