TERRACYCLE NEWS

ELIMINATING THE IDEA OF WASTE®

What To Do With Your Leftover Candy Wrappers

For the everyday sweet-eater, Terracycle is your best bet. Founder Tom Szaky made the once-kitschy term “upcycling” into a legitimate process, and since its humble beginnings in 2001, Terracycle has become one of the No. 1 upcycling companies in the U.S. We’ve seen Szaky and his team create usable (and fashionable) materials for the home, garden, school and office from almost-impossible-to-recycle items like Capri Sun pouches, Skittles bags and Starburst wrappers, just to name a few.

PACK EXPO 2010

Sustainability Initiatives by these companies were judged by Tom Szaky of TerraCyle and Brian Wagner of PTIS, Packaging and Technology Integrated Solutions. The Packaging Association of Canada organized the "Green Den" presentation.

BOOM BOOM POW

BOOM BOOM POW TerraCycle makes mini Speakers ($13.99) and Boomboxes ($18.99) from upcycled M&M’s, Skittles and Starburst candy wrappers. Upcycling means using materials that would otherwise go to waste—in this case, excess packaging. Light, portable and super-colorful, the speakers and boomboxes are a natural complement to any iPod or MP3-player gifts this Christmas. They’re also battery-free, drawing power from your device to boom your sweet sounds—and packed and shipped flat to reduce pollution. —Brita Belli CONTACT: DwellSmart.

Green game-changers

USING WASTE TO CREATE NEW PRODUCTS Every product has a story to tell. A jacket that has been made from hot air balloons or a luxury handbag made out of old fire hoses - our waste is increasingly being used as raw material to create new products. This process is called upcycling which helps to reduce thousands of tonnes of waste going to landfill. Some organisations such as TerraCycle, are also educating communities on the environmental impact of our consumption and encourages concious buying. Benefits: Reduce,reuse, recycle Innovators: Worn Again, TerraCycle

Natural Giving

TerraCycle Billboard Bags Billboards can take thousands of years to breakd ow in a landfill. TerraCycle solves this problem by making these messenger bags from actual used billboards; each bag's color and graphic is unique.  To learn more, visit www.terracycle.net.

Glimpsing the future at Net Impact 2010

TerraCycle has a more unusual model. It collects all kinds of hard-to-recycle stuff by mail — drink pouches, candy wrappers, plastic bags, wine corks, toothpaste containers — and then turns them into other things. “In 2011, you’ll see a playground made out Capri Sun and Honest Kids drink pouches,” said Jo Opot, TerraCycle’s vice president of business development. Consumers who send trash get rewarded with donations to schools or charities, and they get the psychic satisfaction of knowing that something useful was made out of their garbage. You’d think that  few people would bother to send their trash in the mail to New Jersey–Terracyle’s home base–but the company says 12 million people have participated, returning 1.8 billion items. The company gets paid by brands whose products it recovers, by manufacturers who buy its materials and by marketers who use its logo on finished products. There’s lots more about this all works at the TerraCycle website, here.