Look at your toothbrush. It’s likely made of some form of plastic, rubber, and inventive design engineering, packed into a small space. After your initial decision process, where color, teeth cleaning wizardry, and perhaps recycled content and recyclability came into play, you don’t really notice it that much anymore. It’s become part of the background. Until now. Now being the start of another round of winter colds, one of the preventative practices being to throw away your toothbrush and get a new one. Hang on, you know I can’t let that be how it goes!

We just made what some may consider either a stupid move or a brilliant move, but it's definitely an interesting one -- we've opened a retail store. But that's not the part in question here. We've got solid product offerings that customers clearly want. No, what makes this launch unique is that we've decided to start out by letting people choose what to pay for their purchases. Are we nuts? Why, yes, but that's the beside the point. In other sectors, namely music and restaurants it's shown to be quite a success, drawing a lot of media attention, building good will with fans and customers, and in the end, turning out to be profitable.

This week something fairly monumental is taking place: It's Climate Week NYC, where among other things, top government leaders from 90 countries are gathering for the United Nations climate session. It's also time for things to kick into high gear for TckTckTck, an innovative global alliance of people, businesses, even faith groups, with a singular purpose: Make it abundantly clear the great importance they see in their country's leaders coming together for the pinnacle of this series of high level climate change focused discussions, COP15, happening in Copenhagen in December of this year. Impressive, but will it work? How is this different then before? I had the chance to ask this and more of Kumi Naidoo, Chair of the Global Campaigning for Climate Action (GCCA) which is organizing TckTckTck. Mr. Naidoo is a long time powerhouse when it comes forging paths to a more sustainable future. He has been a part of a number of high profile board and advisory positions with renowned institutes such as the Clinton Global Initiative, Amnesty International, the World Economic Forum, and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

Something amazing is happening. This week in NYC, Climate Week is in progress, with leaders from 90 countries gathering for a United Nations-organized event focused on climate change. And there, along with 1000 events in 100 countries on September 21st, an unprecedented alliance of people and groups will be gathering for a truly global “Wake Up Call” to world leaders as part of the TckTckTck campaign.

TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky on creating a tradition-breaking business where doing the most environmentally and socially responsible things drives profit. In an economy like the one we're facing now, the conventional wisdom is to pull back on the reins, focus on your core business, and economize in every way possible. We've never been a company to follow the conventional wisdom, and a historic recession isn't enough for us to lose our fearless ways.

If you’re reading this, it’s pretty likely you recycle. You sort. You do your best (most of the time) But what about those plastic Scotch Tape dispensers you use? Most recyclers don’t take them. You don’t have much use for them, being empty. What do you do? Toss them in the recycle bin and hope for the best, or just toss them out in the trash?

So often, you read about the negative effects of globalization - homogenizing world culture, poor treatment of workers, jobs lost, lack of cultural sensitivity in the new areas of a world a business starts up. Nasty business, and not something I'm in support of. Why then are we about to start operations in the UK, doing largely the same thing we're doing here in the US? The difference is enormous, yet the impact universal. Universally positive. Instead of just elbowing our way into a new country, presuming that a common language means a similar culture, we enlisted the help of Think London an amazing organization funded primarily by the London Development Agency , the Mayor's sustainable development agency. It's zero cost to companies wanting to start operations in London. Having a knowledgeable, agile, local partner who literally and figuratively speaks the language, knows how to ask the tough questions of us that we'll likely encounter, can help with finding the right space, partners, and even message to convey about what you're doing, has been invaluable.

Globalization has long gotten a bad rap. And for good reason. So many companies arrogantly decide that, one way or another, what they create will become what people desire, unaltered, in countries around the world. And in many cases, it’s worked, homogenizing cultures, at least on an aesthetic level, with no real benefit to the people on an economic or environmental level. It’s largely pop culture crap that ends up adding to landfills when done.

TerraCycle and Colgate are both offering their own FREE curriculums; Colgate seeking to teach kids how to keep their mouths clean and TerraCycle seeking to teach kids how to Outsmart Waste! Both curriculums can be used at school or in the home and both meet national education standards. For the past 15 years, the Colgate curriculum, which is a part of the award-winning Colgate Bright Smiles, Bright Futures® global oral health education program, has reached over 50 million children annually and their families in 30 languages and 80 countries throughout the world. Stop by Colgate and Terracycle to sign up!

he new deal, which sees the company’s procurement and supply chain operation take the lead in contract negotiation and licensing agreements, follows the example set by the company’s US arm, which has been working with TerraCycle, a company which specialises in giving otherwise redundant waste packaging a new lease of life through products such as bags, for the past six years. Under the new scheme, packaging used in Kraft’s Kenco and Tassimo brands, as well as unusable packaging from its food factories, will be ‘upcycled’ alongside post-consumer waste.