My company, TerraCycle, has been obsessed with questions like these, and our strange consumer culture for more than a decade. Our culture of consumption had duped me into thinking that some things, be it a product or a raw material, could be reduced to such uselessness that it can only be defined by the broad label “trash.” It was the single-greatest epiphany of my life, both personally and professionally, because from it TerraCycle was born.