i have heard of terracycle before – who hasn’t seen those cute little pop art totes and pouches they make out of recycled juice pouches and gum wrappers? but i have only recently become aware of the business as a whole, with their model and goal. the company was started by a college student to win a “business start-up” contest of sorts. the idea was, “why pay for materials for manufacturing when there is so much usable material going to the landfills?” their first product was plant food/fertilizer which was quickly picked up by large outfits such as wal*mart. but as the company grew, so did their capacity to adapt and reuse the most common “land fillers.” terracycle now has almost 60,000 locations around the country (and more available all the time) where people can get paid to drop off juice pouches, zip top kitchen bags, cheese wrappers, yogurt containers, and many more.