TerraCycle <
http://www.terracycle.net/> turns waste into profitable products.
It’s an awesome business that embodies the idea of a sustainable economy, as it creates a market for
products made from trash.
TerraCycle began with two freshmen at Princeton University, Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer. Basically, they sold worm castings (fertilizer) in a wasted soda bottle. They took food waste from their school dining hall, fed it to their friendly worms, and voila, a commodity to be sold. This packaging of dining hall-sourced fertilizer in junk plastic bottles continued to sell, and eventually TerraCycle fertilizer was being sold at
Home Depot and Whole Foods. Now, TerraCycle has expanded to include
purses, bags, fences, and boxes–all made from trash.
when you have kids, you tend to start thinking about things you may not have before. like garbage, landfills and what part you can do to help said kids have a better place to live long after we are gone. going green is such a big part of every day life these days (or at least, it should be – even small steps help). so i was thrilled to hear from
TerraCycle and jumped on the opportunity to help them spread their mission.
TerraCycle is a small company who takes non-recyclable waste (and pays 2 cents per piece to charity) and turns them into upcycled and repurposed eco-friendly items. they take the things that most of us throw in the trash, because we can’t throw it in the recycle bin, and make pencil pouches, binders, tote bags, shower curtains and picture frames – just to name a few. think capri suns, doritos, skittles and other packaging. they even take soda bottles and remake them into containers for dog shampoo and garden fertilizer.
Insecticides with ingredients such as vinegar and orange oil are sold at many nurseries, Spiegelman says, and boiling water kills weeds. She likes several organic lawn care products, including TerraCycle's liquid lawn fertilizer made with worm waste, available at its Web site (terracycle.net).
In the second half of the show, Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle, joins John and Mike to talk about how his company is solving the problem of non-recyclable waste. In America alone, TerraCycle has 10.1 million people collecting waste — about 3 million pounds a day! — to convert into consumer products.
TerraCycle converts everything from organic waste to plastic juice pouches into like-new products, in turn creating a whole reuse market that previously did not exist.
“About 80% of the products we buy are not recyclable, and those are the ones we focus on creating solutions for,” Szaky says. He notes that TerraCycle has about 70,000 collection points — growing by about 500 a day — in countries around the world.
In the annals of startup lore, Tom Szaky's story is one to remember. He started his company, TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net/> , after harvesting worm poop in his Princeton dorm to create an organic fertilizer so he could, as he says, "grow better pot." Why not make "sustainable and affordable" products from waste materials? he thought. Since 2007, TerraCycle has convinced more than 7 million people in 60,000 locations to collect over 1 billion pieces of trash. TerraCycle "upcycles" this waste into a variety of high-quality products, from fertilizer and fire logs to tote bags and kites. Szaky, who immigrated at age 8 from Hungary to Canada, continues to have fun thinking of ways to "manipulate waste" and help save the planet.
TerraCycle’s All-Natural Liquid Worm Poop Garden Fertilizer is by far the greenest way to green your garden. Guided by TerraCycle’s mandate to eliminate waste, this fertilizer is both made from and packaged in it. Worm tailings are harvested from organic-waste fed worms and packaged in reused plastic pop bottles collected by Bottle Brigades. The Brigades, made up of community groups from across North America, receive $0.05 in exchange for each container, supporting local fundraising initiatives and diverting waste. The result: a potent fertilizer with environmental and social benefits.
If you read their story – it all boils down to the fact that this is a company that takes recycled fruit juice pouches and turns them into backpacks, cooler bags and lawn fertilizer.
People are literally walking around with bags of old fruit juice packets on their backs.
They take all this recycled stuff, break it down, stitch it together and make a nice little product – all at pretty reasonable prices.
CEO of TerraCycle, Tom Szaky, built an eco-friendly powerhouse before green was popular. In TerraCycle's own words, "It all started in 2001 as a simple organic fertilizer company. Two college students fed the leftovers from their cafeteria to an army of worms. They harvested the worm compost and liquefied it into a completely organic, ultra-effective fertilizer. Not having any money they could not buy the packaging they needed to start selling their fertilizer. Undiscouraged, they began to bottle their liquid fertilizer in used soda bottles they collected from people’s recycling bins, unwittingly creating the world’s first product made from and packaged entirely in waste!
In 2001, enterprising 19-year-old Princeton student Tom Szaky started TerraCycle <
http://www.terracycle.net/> to turn out containers of organic fertilizer produced by worms for an entry in the school's business plan competition. He used old soda bottles to sell the fertilizer, and cleared $1 million in 2006. Over the next few years, Szaky expanded the company to produce goods made from upcycled, non-recyclable materials: totes made from plastic shopping bags, kites made from cookie packages, and laptop cases made from drink pouches (among others). You can even send TerraCycle your own trash and they'll turn it into part of their product line.
