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Arielle: Hey, guys, I am here at a facility that turns trash into treasure, but more on that later on in the show. I am Arielle Hixson, and Channel One News starts right now.

Tom: All right, Arielle is going to show us a whole new world where recycling reigns. That is coming up. Hey, guys, I am Tom Hanson. Let's get going.

First up, a historic state visit underway at the White House, with special ceremonies, state dinners and lots of meetings. And the guest of honor is French President Emmanuel Macron.

President Trump and President Macron started off yesterday's meeting with a light moment.

President Donald Trump: We do have a very special relationship. In fact, I'll get that little piece of dandruff off. Little piece! We have to make him perfect. He is perfect. 

Tom: Later they talked about many global topics, including the nuclear deal with Iran. That is the deal the U.S. made with Iran under President Obama to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. President Macron believes the U.S. should stay in the deal. President Trump says he is thinking about ending it but had a warning for Iran.

Trump: If they restart it, they’re gonna have big problems, bigger than they’ve ever had before.   

Tom: But the tough talk and meetings took a back seat last night. The two leaders and their wives, with more than 150 guests, dined together at the Trump administration’s first state dinner. 

All right, so, as I’m sure you have heard, April is Earth Month, so we have been bringing you lots of green stories. And today we are taking a look at one company which is throwing away the idea of waste by recycling the nonrecyclable. From instant coffee cups to pens to plastic gloves, TerraCycle is changing the game, and Arielle Hixson went to its headquarters to dig up more info in today's Get Your Geek On.

Arielle: Here at Atlantic County Special Services School, the students are learning not to let anything go to waste. Twice a week, they make their rounds through the hall, collecting from specially marked boxes what most people would likely consider trash. They weigh the items, box them up and ship them off to a company called TerraCycle.

Tom Szaky: There is not a single thing I have seen in the world that is not recyclable.

Arielle: What is the weirdest or strangest thing that you have recycled?

Szaky: So I, personally, love the grosser, the better. We are launching chewing gum recycling in Mexico. We are launching dirty diaper recycling in Holland, in Amsterdam, in three months.

Arielle: Hold up, did he just say dirty diaper recycling?

Szaky: We separate it into the material it is made from. So you have the poop, you know, which is in a dirty diaper. You also have a thing called SAP. It is a crystal called superabsorbent polymer. That we can dry out and basically add it to farming soil so that the farming soil in arid environments can absorb water.

We also have a material inside called cellulosic material — that’s, like, the fluffy stuff. That can be reconstituted and made into itself again. And most of the diaper is plastic, and that turns into things like park benches.

Arielle: Diapers can take hundreds of years to decompose in a landfill, where most of them end up. But Tom Szaky, the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, says there is nothing his company can't recycle. He says the reason most only recycle cans, papers and plastics comes down to money.

Szaky: So a garbage company will come to your home and pick up your garbage, and it’s also the same company that will pick up your recyclables. Why did it choose to put aluminum cans in the recycling side and your dirty diapers in the garbage side? The reason is they can make money on the aluminum after they process it, and they would lose money if they tried to recycle the diaper.

Arielle: But TerraCycle partners with big brands, businesses and even city governments to help cover the costs of recycling for some of the world's most common forms of waste.

Szaky: The reason we can do, say, car seat recycling in the U.S. is because the Target stores are funding it, or toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes because Colgate is paying. It could also be cities; over 100 cities in the United States fund TerraCycle programs to recycle things like cigarette butts, which end up becoming major litter problems, but we need that funding because on its own, the economics don't work.

Arielle: And if it is not recycled, it will most likely end up here, in one of the many landfills around the country. The average American throws away about four and a half pounds of garbage per day. That is about 1,600 pounds of garbage per person per year. And if it doesn't end up in a landfill, many times it will find its way into our rivers, lakes and oceans.

Szaky: Twenty-five percent of the world’s plastic ends up in our oceans. And we talk about the stuff floating. Only 5 percent is floating; 95 percent sinks to the bottom.

Arielle: TerraCycle hopes to change that by providing a new option. Many hard-to-recycle items are sent to the TerraCycle headquarters and are upcycled — turning unwanted materials into cool new products.  

It is kind of crazy just how many things can be recycled here and what can be created from it. From a wall of plastic water bottles right down to a plastic walkway, you can see it all. And believe it or not, many of the items seen here come from schools across the country.

The TerraCycle program pays schools for their recycled materials. Not only are these students helping their environment, but they have also raised over $2,700 for their school with the TerraCycle program.

I'd say that is really turning trash into treasure. Arielle Hixson, Channel One News.

Tom: And Words in the News just popped up in that story — did you catch it? Upcycle, which is to turn waste or unwanted items into something useable.

And if you want to learn how you can recycle your hard-to-recycle items, head to .

All right, after the break, a new policy in China that is making sci-fi a reality.

Tom: Okay, imagine the government graded you based on how you act in public. It goes like this: You help an old lady across the street, and your score goes up.

Emily: Cut in line or jaywalk, and your score goes down.

Tom: Yeah, it is something out of a science fiction movie, right?

Emily: Yeah, but it is no movie — it is real life in China. Already, millions are being tracked and rated, and China says by 2020, all of its 1.4 billion citizens will get a personal score based on how they behave.

When Liu Hu recently tried to book a flight, he was told he was banned from flying because he was on the list of untrustworthy people. Liu is a journalist who was ordered by a court to apologize for a series of tweets he wrote and then was told his apology wasn't believable.

Liu Hu: I can't buy property. My child can't go to a private school. You feel you're being controlled by the list all the time.

Emily: And the list is now getting longer as every Chinese citizen is being assigned a social credit score, a rating that can go up or down based on your behavior. It is believed that community service and buying Chinese-made products can raise your score. Fraud, tax evasion, and smoking in nonsmoking areas can drop it. If a score gets too low, a person can be banned from buying plane and train tickets, real estate, cars and even high-speed internet.

Woman: It's a good thing. There should be punishment for people who can't behave.

Emily: China's growing network of surveillance cameras makes all of this possible. The country already has an estimated 176 million cameras. But it plans to have more than 600 million installed by 2020.

Xu Li: It can recognize more than 4,000 vehicles.

Emily: This is Xu Li, the CEO of SenseTime, one of China's most successful artificial intelligence companies. It has created smart cameras for the government that can help catch criminals but also track average citizens. In some cities the government is even tracking jaywalkers. Cameras record them going through intersections, zero in on their face and then publicly shame them on nearby video screens.

Experts say how the new scoring system truly works is kept secret and could be easily abused by the government.

Ken Dworkin: Well, I think that the government and the people running the plan would like to go as deeply as possible to determine how to allocate benefits and also how to impact and shape their behavior.

Emily: Now, the fear is the government may use this to punish people it doesn't think are loyal, for example, journalists who are critical of the government or protestors. And trying to clear your name or fight your score is nearly impossible.

Now, on the other hand, if you are considered trustworthy, you can get discounts on your bills, better services at banks, and get this — China's largest dating site reportedly even boosts the profiles of people with good social credit scores.

Tom: That is crazy. All right, thanks, Emily.

Well, we want to know what you guys think. Should people be scored on their behavior? Vote and leave us a comment at .

Okay, Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun, and it was the first planet to be discovered with a telescope, by this guy, William Herschel, back in 1781. Now, we know it is a very cold and windy planet. And now, through scientific research, we also know it smells pretty bad.

According to scientists, the planet Uranus smells like rotten eggs. This might make you chuckle, but this is real science. A new study suggests that the clouds in the planet's atmosphere are made up of hydrogen sulfide. And if you didn't know, hydrogen sulfide is the same gas that makes rotten eggs smell so bad. 

You may ask how scientists sniffed this one out since Uranus is 1.6 billion miles away from planet Earth. They did it through a spectrograph on NASA's Gemini telescope. But don't worry, even if you miraculously made it all the way to Uranus, the minus 200-degree weather would kill you before the stench.

You have got to love science. I think I will stick with planet Earth for now.

All right, our time is up for today, but we will see you right back here tomorrow. 

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