With that, companies can no longer brush off sustainability's importance. Yet, several global companies have already led the charge with creative (and cool) initiatives. Let's take a look at some of the most notable examples. The Coca-Cola Co.: Sustainability? No Sweat That world-renowned red bottle has dedicated part of its sustainability efforts to branded fashion. The Coke Store sells hoodies that are made of 50 percent cotton and 50 percent recycled plastic bottles. They promise superior softness. Unilever: Turning the Tide Unilever is committed to the plastics problem, particularly in the big blue seas, and is working with TerraCycle, a recycling company, to make product bottles that are comprised of 80 percent recycled plastic and 20 percent reclaimed ocean plastics. PepsiCo: Let it Shine! Big companies have big power needs. PepsiCo announced a power pledge to be 100 percent renewable energy with wind and solar technologies throughout their global operations—at plants and offices. With their high energy needs to produce snacks and water, they are shining the light on their efficiencies. Boxed Water: Forget the Plastic Ditch the plastic water for Boxed Water, and take the no-plastic pledge. That’s what Boxed Water is trying to do. The company’s 100 percent recyclable “boxes” of water, the company says, is more efficient to produce and distribute. Instead of reusing, they want to divert the potential 8.8 million metric tons of plastic that get tossed in the ocean. Patagonia: Whatever They Could Find! The outdoor-clothing company offers a fleece made of 100 percent recycled polyester materials: reclaimed soda bottles, recycled waste and other recycled clothes. They also use ocean plastics for rain jackets and have since the 1990s. They’ll make clothes out of anything these days! Into the Deep Original Bagel Company’s Dave Harris took his family to Cancun for the holidays. When he decided to snorkel a reef he had SCUBA dove decades ago, he thought it’d be a stellar experience for the clan. What he didn’t expect was the snorkeling guide’s “lecture” to the group about the depleted reef life, a sad reality. “Seeing them then (30 years ago), and seeing them now? It is pretty staggering. And depressing,” Harris says. Harris took to the real-life impact of a personal experience, leaving him with motivation and inspiration for his company’s sustainability efforts.

Trash is a human invention. It is a concept that is foreign to the natural world, and a fairly modern one. Today’s complex materials and mass production have given way to products and packaging designed for single-use. These developments have made our lives more convenient and products more affordable, but most of the resulting waste isn’t accepted by public recycling systems and ends up as garbage.

Bringing awareness to this is key to helping us change the way we think about the world’s limited resources. Seeing garbage as something other than a useless problem is the first step to a less wasteful and more prosperous world. Keyword: seeing.

At TerraCycle, we are on a mission to eliminate the idea of waste and do this in a number of ways. Many of you may be familiar with our national recycling programs, our work integrating beach litter into bottles, or the new Loop initiative to move consumables into durable packages. But one of the more visual, easily understood representations of what we do is upcycle “trash” into useful objects, including art.

 

 

If you visit our offices around the world, you’ll see what I mean. Desks and tables made out of old doors, a Statue of Liberty made of toothpaste tubes, and phone booths repurposed into mini conference rooms. Our largest, the aptly named “Bottle Room,” exists in the middle of our global headquarters and is defined by four walls constructed of clear two-liter plastic bottles, items often thrown away.

 

 

We have an entire team of Design Junkies dedicated to finding solutions for needs around the office and creating new, visually stimulating artworks and products for brand partners. We also work directly with local and international artists to provide material they can use to create art

For example, TerraCycle’s Artist in Residence EdE Sinkovics, turns trash into statements about waste by creating assemblages out of discarded materials, such as cigarette butts into portraits of presidents (Lincoln, The Sustainable Republican, 2018), retired canvas mail bags and old tires into sculptures (Rhino Stamp, 2014; Elephant, 2014), and wine corks into human figures (Madam Cork, 2014).

 

 

His latest work, The Dirt of Venus, reimagines Botticelli’s famous Renaissance painting, The Birth of Venus. A conversation starter, Venus bears vibrant resemblance to its inspiration while entirely made of trash — ocean plastic, to be exact. These artworks face the viewer with uncomfortable truths. Even the most difficult-to-recycle materials can in fact be made into something useful, even beautiful. And, there’s a lot of plastic pollution out there!

These art pieces currently hang in the special art exhibit Scrapped: A Collection of Upcycled Artwork, our first show in partnership with Downtown Trenton Association at Broad Street Bank Gallery open through April 13. The collection, which includes on-site installations and mixed media pieces of varying styles, also includes on-site installations from acclaimed aerosol artist and friend of TerraCycle Leon Rainbow and Brendon Lopez (Streets Keep Callin, 2019), reclaimed textiles artist Heemin Moonin in collaboration with Dororthy McNee (Green Palace, 2019), and TerraCycle employees.

 

 

Scrapped is in line with our mission to change perspectives and connect people through shared experiences. All the featured art utilizes discarded and otherwise “scrapped” materials. Designed to encourage viewers to question their day-to-day lifestyle and their impact on the planet, the upcycled art show transforms garbage into artistic visions that connect the dots between us and the things we throw away.

This exhibit will be back next year, but we intend to continue changing perspectives with our work upcycling and recycling unconventional materials and striving to offer the public a connection to sustainability that empowers and inspires them.

 

 

Creativity and community hold the key to solving the world’s greatest problems, including pollution and waste, and art is a language that brings people together. This Earth Month and beyond, find the educational information, media, music and art that moves you, and share it to change the story about trash.

The reason behind companies bringing their products to market can be critical to how they go about selling them. That’s according to executives from leading CPG companies who participated in the “What’s Your Why?” panel at the recent New General Market Purpose-Driven Summit, which was moderated by Mack Elevation founder Dan Mack.

"Why does waste even exist?" That’s the question at the heart of TerraCycle’s own existence. Since 2001, the company has been taking hard-to-recycle waste and turning it into raw material for use in new products. It operates in over 20 countries and engages over 60 million people.

"Why does waste even exist?" That's the question at the heart of TerraCycle's own existence. Since 2001, the company has been taking hard-to-recycle waste and turning it into raw material for use in new products. 

Envision Plastics has launched a bottle made completely from materials at risk of becoming marine debris. The reclaimer says its first 100 percent OceanBound plastic container is being used by Primal Group’s Vita brand of personal care products. “Envision is proud of the work we are doing by collecting and recycling OceanBound Plastic, but we are excited that it was able to displace 100 percent of the virgin resin in the bottle and colorant,” Dan Ferus, general manager of Envision Plastics, stated in a press release.

It is estimated by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish.[gallery orderby="title"]

Tom Szaky, the Hungarian-born CEO and founder of TerraCycle, dreams of chewing gum, cigarette butts and ocean plastic. His Trenton, New Jersey-based company aims to accelerate the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, a breakthrough in materials science, energy storage and other technologies, by cleaning up after heaps of waste and inventing inputs for items spurned by ordinary recyclers.

Procter & Gamble is the latest brand to use ocean plastics in its packaging in a bid to boost home recycling rates Procter & Gamble announced this month that it is worked with New Jersey-based recycling experts TerraCycle to make bottles for its Fairy washing up liquid with 10% ocean plastic and 90% post-consumer recycled plastic.

Global: A bottle made completely from post-consumer and ocean-reclaimed plastics has been launched by Procter & Gamble (P&G) for its flagship Fairy brand of washing-up liquid. The aim of the project is to ‘drive awareness of the issue of ocean plastic pollution, inspire consumers to physically participate in beach clean-ups and recycle household waste’, according to the company.