What are you good at as a company? What are you not? Though we at TerraCycle (and I imagine you too) like to think we can do anything we set our minds to, we know what our core competencies are: Branding, materials science and repurposing, and post consumer collection programs. Anything else, we can do it, but there are often others that do it better. And increasingly, we're happy to let them do it. Why expend a lot of energy trying to up our game in those areas, when we can instead focus on maximizing the amount of "waste" we collect, making the most people aware of the options we offer, and benefiting thousands of people who collect product for our brigades?

Have you heard of a company called FAB? I’m guessing not, and at the same time, it’s a safe bet you’ve seen their products. And depending on how old you are, you have been running towards or running away from them for years. And fast. FAB has licenses for a huge variety of today’s biggest pop culture brands: Paul Frank, Hello Kitty, Hannah Montana, Nickelodeon, Hello Kitty, Disney, Marvel, and on. From backpacks to snow globes to “novelty clocks,” their collective licensing and manufacturing might create an enormous amount of trinkets that will likely end up in the trash months after purchase. And we’re now partnered with them.

Next time you're home, look around your closet. Your attic. How many pairs of jeans do you have there, unworn for months, years, decades even? I have four. Aside from the ones you keep for "some day" when you're skinny again or returning to fat, which ones of those could go? And where should they go? I'm betting your first thought was Salvation Army or some local version of such a thing. A commendable thought, but there's a problem. Salvation Army does so much to benefit individuals, their local community, and the economy. Young people get their first college apartment furnished. Seniors meet their needs affordably. People of all ages get trained in job skills, becoming more self sufficient, contributing to their local economy, and reducing burden on government unemployment/welfare budgets But there's one problem. The Bigger Cost of Donating Jeans

This week, TerraCycle officially launched in Brazil! The new global launch comes just six months after launching with Frito-Lay in the US, and now the expansion into Brazil - with other countries to follow - makes an important point: Big business isn't always a bad guy. In fact, it can help small business grow via sustainability. The news came to me from an e-mail from Carlos, a representative of Pepsico Brazil: "Breaking news.... the PepsiCo / TerraCycle Brazil project is up and running. The displays are in 59 WalMart stores in São Paulo, Curitiba and Recife. Above a photo of the store we visited yesterday. In this particular store we have a TV screen with a 45-sec video with the story. I’ll post it on YouTube in a few minutes. Thank you for sharing the passion in making this happen. Let’s celebrate!" This launch marks the first step in TerraCycle's efforts to go global. The next steps include launching with national programs in Canada, Mexico and the UK later this year. All this news comes with a major realization to me. A realization that I think all of us that are dedicated to the green movement can be a part of. While we typically spend our time critizing big businesses, especially global conglomerates. I can stand here as a witness and tell you that if you come up with a big idea that does good and fulfills the goals of one of these corporations they will do everything in their power to embrace the idea and make it huge.

As entrepreneurs, we all know the value and necessity of forming partnerships. Little would get done in the business world without a solid network to help grow our companies. Form an alliance with the right organization and your impact is amplified exponentially. But that begs a tough entrepreneurial question: Should a younger, cutting-edge company join forces with an established, more conventional company? It can be a slippery slope. Will the former company's values be in line with those of the latter? Whose mission and ideals will win out?

« On me paye pour vendre des crottes de vers de terre ! N’est-ce pas merveilleux ? » Dès ses premières interviews, Tom Szaky annonçait la couleur. « C’est ça, le rêve américain ! », ajoutait un journaliste. Le jeune patron canadien de TerraCycle, qui se définit lui même comme un « trash entrepreneur », n’en finit pas de faire le buzz aux Etats-Unis. Avec sa bonne tête et son sens de la formule, il est devenu en quelques années le bon client des talk shows américains. Symbole auto-proclamé de « l’éco-capitalisme », il agace autant qu’il séduit.

My book, Revolution in a Bottle, hit the streets this week. It follows the story of TerraCycle from our beginnings in my dorm room, shoveling maggot filled organic waste, to creating products we sold to Wal-Mart and other major big box retailers, getting sued by Scotts and creating “sponsored waste” programs to upcycle branded waste. It also offers insights on how we approach media and pursue new opportunities. Read on to catch an excerpt from the book. In many ways, what follows are lessons I learned on the job as an untrained and highly instinctual entrepreneur. TerraCycle taught me extreme forms of bootstrapping, and many of the innovations for which we are known were responses to failures of initial attempts in packaging, marketing, product development and even investor pitches. For me, the key to our success was having one big idea—making the greenest, most affordable and effective products from waste—and holding firmly to it. As you will see, there were numerous times when, for example, to attract investment, we might have compromised our environmental commitments, but if we did, TerraCycle would have ended up like one of many companies, rather than in a league of its own. We let the idea of our company—producing a range of green products made from and packaged in waste without charging a premium for them—live and grow within us. Not only did that commitment distinguish us with our immediate customers (large retail companies), and with end consumers, local and national press and with our sponsored waste brand partners, it also gave us cost advantages over other co

So many coffee lovers have switched to single portion delivery devices produced by a variety of brands, including Tassimo, Flavia and Green Mountain. The coffee tastes is always fresh, perfectly brewed and one doesn’t waste extra coffee left from brewing a full pot. However, the packaging isn't made to be recyclable, so if it is to be diverted from landfills, it needs to go through a time consuming process of disassembly. This begs a serious environmental question. The single dose cartridge is a composite of aluminum, plastic and coffee. It used cartridge is currently not recyclable and is what Bill McDonough would call a "monstrous hybrid" since all three parts on their own are either compostable or recyclable, but together they make a unit that isn't readily recyclable and thus is headed to the landfill. (The same is true for a wide range of common products too long to list here). The solution to waste streams like this is to collect them and “dissemble.” The separation of the three basic materials is hard to automate and likely must be done by hand, at which point, the coffee can be easily be composted and the plastic and aluminum recycled.

So many coffee lovers have switched to single portion delivery devices produced by a variety of brands, including Tassimo, Flavia and Green Mountain. The coffee tastes is always fresh, perfectly brewed and one doesn’t waste extra coffee left from brewing a full pot. The single dose cartridge is a composite of aluminum, plastic and coffee. Its used cartridge is currently not recyclable and is what Bill McDonough would call a "monstrous hybrid" since all three parts on their own are either compostable or recyclable, but together they make a unit that isn't readily recyclable and thus is headed to the landfill. (The same is true for a wide range of common products too long to list here).

Even though it seems everyone has an iPod or MP3 player and is downloading music, traditional CD's are still a huge business. The jewel cases are made from a variety of plastics that break easily and are not easy recyclable; sooner or later most of them will end up in landfills. I’m excited to tell you about the world’s most eco-friendly CD case TerraCycle just created made from recycled, shredded chip bags! By compressing many layers together, it creates a sturdy material, much stronger than cardboard. We have already used this material to create clip boards which are sold at Office Max. They’re very colorful and unique; no two look the same. Talk about a double solution to keep non-recyclable waste out of landfills! First, we give new use to the waste chip bags, and by that use, new plastic CD cases don’t need to be created. And yes, TerraCycle will take the used CD cases back and turn them into some other product.