Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer were on the scene with their worm-based invention in 2001.  They fed organic waste from the dining hall to worms, then liquefied the excrement to make compost tea that was stored in used soda bottles [2].  Those bottles were collected on campus.  In 2002, they planned on expanding their work to other businesses by collecting their waste.  Szaky discovered that they had created the world's largest continuous flow reactor [3]. I was watching Garbage Moguls one night on National Geographic channel. They were featuring an all-weekend marathon on TerraCycle. The first night I watched, I was hooked. Their crew went all out! At the time of viewing, they were expanding into retailing after years of working with other companies to sell their products. The crew was having a small difficulty adapting to the new expansion and Tom Szaky brought them into his office. In particular, he spoke to two girls whom he delegated the responsibility to run the store. During an approximate 15 minutes chat, he highlighted his concerns and offered solutions. He would follow up with a visit to the retail store and work further with those two girls. The result was a dedicated team of girls who figured out how to get creative.

Tom Szaky, a 28-year-old wunderkind from Canada, wants you to send him your garbage, and he’ll pay the shipping. Oh, and he also wants to make a lot of money and save the world by taking unrecyclable waste like chip bags and juice pouches and turning them into new products like backpacks, kites, coolers and clocks. Now he and his company, TerraCycle, take tons of hard-to-recycle plastics and other waste collected from collection “brigades” formed in schools, churches businesses and service organizations and turns them into products sold at Walmart and Target. They pay the shipping for articles like shopping bags, used pens, whatever, and pay 2 cents per unit to a charity on behalf of the collecting organization. All of it is organized through the company Web site, terracycle.net. The feel-good business model has worked with giant companies like Kraft Foods, Frito-Lay and Kimberly-Clark, who pitch the program on their packaging. Walmart and Target also have joined up, setting up collection points and selling products.

What excited me about my daughter’s project was her description “Inspired by Terracycle“. My daughter’s familiarity with Terracyle comes from items we have been sent to review for our blogs.

TerraCycle makes affordable, eco-friendly products from a wide range of different non-recyclable waste materials. With over 50 products available at major retailers like Walmart, Target, The Home Depot, OfficeMax, Petco and Whole Foods Market, TerraCycle is one of the fastest growing eco-friendly manufacturers in the world. Our hope is to eliminate the idea of waste by finding innovative, unique uses for materials others deem garbage.

I absolutely loved the show Garbage Moguls. I want to work at TerraCycle but I already have a good job and I do not live near Trenton NJ. I have some suggestions for Terracycle on how they might find some ideas, what to collect…etc.

Tom Szaky, co-founder and chief executive officer of TerraCycle Inc., a company that has become the most eco-friendly brand in North America, will be the guest speaker for the Allan P. Kirby Lecture in Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 7 in the Dorothy Dickson Darte Center. The event is free to the public. TerraCycle is well known for TerraCycle plant food, a fertilizer made from worm feces available through retailers such as Walmart, Whole Foods and Home Depot. The company manufactures more than 50 consumer products. Other products include garbage cans made from crushed computers, handbags made from energy bar wrappers and juice pouches and eco-friendly binders and pencils. The company won more than 100 environmental and social awards. It has three manufacturing facilities in North America with headquarters located in Trenton, N.J.

When I broke into a bag of peanut MnMs this morning, I noticed a familiar logo on the back of the package, Terracycle, and was reminded that I have not been sending much material their way lately nor have I plugged them enough on the blog. So... In case you haven't heard of them, Terracycle <http://www.terracycle.net/>  is a fantastic, award-winning small business which specializes in "up-cycling," that is, making consumer products from post-consumer materials. Founded by a few guys from Princeton and headquartered in New Jersey, the company that used to produce natural plant products (worm waste products) has diversified to collecting millions of waste units to be transformed into useful products - all while collecting a ton of money for charity. You've probably seen their logo on various back-to-school items on sale at major retailers like Target and Walmart or possibly recognize the name from the Terra-Team's reality show "Garbage Moguls" that premiered Earth Day of 2009 on National Geographic. All this even after the company founder, Tom Szaky, turned down a million dollar prize from the Carrot Capital Business Plan contest because he didn't like the direction Carrot Capital wanted to take the company. Love it. Donate, shop, and learn all about Terracycle here <http://www.terracycle.net/> .

If you think most reality TV is garbage, TerraCycle’s reality show should fall right in line. Except it’s actually a good show…it just happens to be about garbage. Called Garbage Moguls, TerraCycle’s now-in-its-second-season TV show follows the enterprising young minds at one of the countries most promising recycling-related companies, and their exploits in the eco-world are anything but boring. Environmentally-conscious individuals will get a kick out of seeing how products get “upcycled” from someone’s trash to a new treasures sold in stores like Target and Office Max. Like a conversion of used dog food bags from Pedigree into a whole host of pet products that include leashes, toys and clothes, which are subsequently pitched to some dog accessory execs.

The company that turned Cheetos bags into MP3 speakers is now transforming Chester Cheetah into 32-gallon garbage cans. New Jersey-based recycling company TerraCycle is teaming up with Pioneer Plastics USA to make heavy-duty trash cans out of recycled polypropylene that was once chip bags. The cans are 80 percent post-consumer–most of the material is from chip bags collected by TerraCycle’s Chip Bag Brigade program. About 20 percent is from scraps of rubber elastic trimming that are leftover in the production of disposable diapers. The old Cheetos and other chip bags are first shredded, and then run through a densifying machine that employs heat and pressure to turn the shreds into a solid material. The material is extruded into plastic pellets, which can be used to make trash <http://www.oohmygoods.com/Wholesale-trash_c830>  cans through injection molding. It takes about 500 chip bags to make each can.

“Send us your trash – we’ll make it into cool products.” That's the simple premise and promise of New Jersey-based startup TerraCycle, a green recycler founded by two former Princeton University classmates who dreamed up the idea in 2001 for a business plan contest. Now full-time "eco-capitalists," they're making good business from trash by partnering with brands to create recycling campaigns for their products, and a halo effect for their affiliates.

TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based startup that upcycles trash into useful everyday items, has popped up on our radar many times over the past year. Because really, how can you not pay attention to a company that turns Frito Lay chip bags into speakers <http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ariel-schwartz/sustainability/terracycle-upcycles-frito-lay-bags-tasty-speakers>  and makes kites out of Oreo packaging? Apparently, we aren’t the only ones with an eye on TerraCycle. The company’s latest antics will be available for a national audience beginning tonight, when Season 2 of Garbage Moguls premieres on the National Geographic Channel.