My company, TerraCycle, has a very unusual business model. We turn the world’s waste into new products. We collect non-recyclable waste, some straight from manufacturers and some from schools, charities and other community groups, and we partner with other manufacturers to recycle or “upcycle” that material into new products — like plastic lumber from juice pouches and shower curtains from sewn-together granola wrappers. My channel on this blog will be a diary of our experiences and decisions, our lessons learned and opportunities missed. Here’s how our model works: eventually all products become waste. Some, like soda bottles, are recyclable but most are not. Major corporations ranging from Kraft Foods to Colgate-Palmolive work with TerraCycle to create solutions for waste that is currently not recyclable — things like toothpaste tubes and cookie wrappers. These companies pay TerraCycle to run collection programs, covering the costs of shipping and typically making a donation of 2 cents for every item collected to the charity or school of the collector’s choice. We also collect post-industrial waste — like excess packaging, misprints, etc. — directly from these corporations The waste ends up in one of our warehouses, the biggest being right next door to our headquarters in Trenton. Then TerraCycle works with major manufacturing companies to produce products from the collected waste. To accomplish this, TerraCycle’s science team develops a range of materials from each type of waste and then our products team works with the manufacturer to turn the material into something that can be sold. The idea is to lessen the need for virgin materials and render previously non-recyclable items recyclable. The resulting products are then sold at major retailers like Wal-Mart and Target.