You’ve heard it over the years: Company creates curriculum for schools, with conflicted teachers not wanting to advertise to their students, but at the same time at a deficit in terms or resources. Frequently, this is a justifiable concern, as companies have advertising and product placement throughout. This is a mistake. No matter the short term value, the lingering long term effect is this mixed feeling towards the brand, and diluted educational offerings to students. Of all the things that I’ve done as CEO of Terracycle, none has excited me more than what we’re about to launch: The TerraCycle Curriculum Series. There is minimal branding in the curriculum. No mention of our products. No focus on how to be a good consumer. Instead, we teamed up with sustainable curriculum specialist Cloud Institute and created an academically rigorous nine part program to be released over three years each spring, fall and winter that’s built to be fit within national curriculum standards. Free. We are committed to this being more than happy talk for kindergartners, that’s long forgotten by first grade. There are four distinct programs covering from K to 12, ranging from “Where do apples go? A story about the nature of Materials” to “An exploration of Cradle to Cradle design thinking” So, you may be asking, why do this?