Being green: turning trash to treasure
school TerraCycle kraft foods plastics Frito-Lay (Pepsico) Walmart Target Frito Lay Include USA Garbage Moguls kimberly-clark
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.