How We Decided to Go Global
Tom-Blog
When I first suggested taking TerraCycle’s operations global, there was nearly a mutiny among my board members and executive team. No exaggeration, they thought I’d lost my mind. As quickly as I’d brought up the idea, it was tabled — that is, until I got a phone call in 2008 that set everything in motion.
The phone call came from PepsiCo-Frito in Brazil. The company’s executives liked what we had done with Frito chip bags in the United States, and they wanted to do the same thing in Brazil. As we’ve done with many brands, we had developed national collection programs for Frito’s nonrecyclable waste, its chip bags. People all across America can collect used bags and send them to TerraCycle. We cover the cost of shipping and pay 2 cents per chip bag to the charity or school of the collector’s choice. We then take the bags and convert them into materials including branded fabrics and plastic pellets. Our team then works with major manufacturing companies to use the new stuff in their products, effectively replacing the need for virgin materials. As an example, Olivet, a major supplier to Wal-Mart, now uses “chip-bag plastic” from TerraCycle as the plastic in the coolers <http://www.terracycle.net/products/197-Olivet-Cooler> it makes. This renders the chip bag nationally recyclable and produces a major win for the brands and their sustainability goals.
The executives with PepsiCo Brazil indicated that, if we weren’t prepared to open operations there, they would pay us to teach a local company how to replicate our business. It immediately became clear to me that if we didn’t seize the opportunity in other countries, someone else would get there first, and we’d never get another chance.