TerraCycle got a cover story in the magazine El Empaque, continue reading this post to read the article.

Forget recycling. Reusing materials discarded in the manufacturing process is a growing force behind a fresh new industry.      (...) That scale that Looptworks' Hamlin is aiming for is already happening on the post-consumer end of the upcycling market. If Etsy is considered the epicenter of do-it-yourself upcycling, then New Jersey-based TerraCycle takes on that same function in mass upcycling. The company turns actual garbage into hundreds of products, like Oreo wrapper backpacks and bicycle chain picture frames. With a large-scale collection infrastructure developed over the past 10 years, TerraCycle nabs about 1 billion pieces of garbage every quarter that ultimately end up on the shelves of big-box retailers like Target and The Home Depot. Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle, started the operation <http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219310#>  as a humble provider of worm poop while he was a Princeton University freshman. But over the years the company's increasing fortunes have mirrored the burgeoning opportunities in the green market. In 2009, sales revenue hit $7.5 million; in 2010, it jumped to $20 million. Since January, Szaky has added operations in nine more countries, bringing the total to 20. There's also serious behind-the-scenes innovation happening. Terra-Cycle employs "polymer scientists" who are immersed in figuring out ways to manipulate paper, organics and plastics into materials like a new plastic lumber and textile made from Capri Sun drink pouches. Meanwhile, teams of designers are figuring out how to make jackets from Doritos bags and luggage from energy bar wrappers. "The market is ripe for more innovation," Szaky says. "[Valued] at $12.5 million, TerraCycle is, without any debate, the biggest upcycler in the world. But compared to other industries, that's small--and that means there's way more opportunity."

Forget recycling. Reusing materials discarded in the manufacturing process is a growing force behind a fresh new industry.      (...) That scale that Looptworks' Hamlin is aiming for is already happening on the post-consumer end of the upcycling market. If Etsy is considered the epicenter of do-it-yourself upcycling, then New Jersey-based TerraCycle takes on that same function in mass upcycling. The company turns actual garbage into hundreds of products, like Oreo wrapper backpacks and bicycle chain picture frames. With a large-scale collection infrastructure developed over the past 10 years, TerraCycle nabs about 1 billion pieces of garbage every quarter that ultimately end up on the shelves of big-box retailers like Target and The Home Depot. Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle, started the operation <http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219310#>  as a humble provider of worm poop while he was a Princeton University freshman. But over the years the company's increasing fortunes have mirrored the burgeoning opportunities in the green market. In 2009, sales revenue hit $7.5 million; in 2010, it jumped to $20 million. Since January, Szaky has added operations in nine more countries, bringing the total to 20. There's also serious behind-the-scenes innovation happening. Terra-Cycle employs "polymer scientists" who are immersed in figuring out ways to manipulate paper, organics and plastics into materials like a new plastic lumber and textile made from Capri Sun drink pouches. Meanwhile, teams of designers are figuring out how to make jackets from Doritos bags and luggage from energy bar wrappers. "The market is ripe for more innovation," Szaky says. "[Valued] at $12.5 million, TerraCycle is, without any debate, the biggest upcycler in the world. But compared to other industries, that's small--and that means there's way more opportunity."

The king of garbage Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle, came here this month for the first reuse conference to show us how to recycle everything from chip bags to dirty diapers.            For Tom Szaky, the world is divided into items that can be recycled and items that no one has yet found a way to reuse or recycle. He is determined to find creative ways to reuse all garbage – energy bar wrappers, juice bags, yogurt containers and even dirty diapers. “A landfill is just a poorly managed warehouse,” Szaky, CEO of US-based TerraCycle, remarked recently to explain his philosophy of reusing garbage in innovative ways to create products and reduce the amount of raw materials which are used up. In less than a decade, he has transformed the idea of what garbage is and commercialized it in ways that no one else has ever done. Szaky was the keynote speaker at the first Reuse conference hosted by the Pardess Hanna-Karkur Local Council earlier this month. It was the first in a series on practical ecology at the Theatrical Arts Center in Pardess Hanna. Szaky and his company specialize in transforming garbage destined for landfills into new products, like backpacks made out of Capri juice packs, planters made out of Danone yogurt cups and many more items, which are now carried by major US retailers like Walmart and Target. TerraCycle has expanded its operations into 13 countries and, six months ago, TerraCycle came here. It takes a few years to build up a critical mass to implement its model, but Szaky was enthusiastic about his company’s entry into the local market – especially as the Packaging Law goes into effect this year. “There’s no garbage in nature. Garbage is a man-made idea and it is only 50 or 60 years old,” he said. “There are two big drivers of garbage: Consumption (we buy way more than we need), and complex materials (plastic, Styrofoam),” he said during a dynamic and polished presentation outlining his modest roots in wormdropping fertilizer to the TerraCycle model of today which relies on people to sort and send their garbage back to the company. “The world is willing to pay to get rid of garbage. It’s the only commodity like that.” There are two types of garbage, Szaky explained, recyclable and non-recyclable. A pen, a toothbrush or a dirty diaper are examples of traditionally nonrecyclable products. “Eighty percent of products are not recyclable. What is done with them is correlated to how much land is available. In the US, most of it goes to landfill. In Europe, most is burned for energy,” he said. According to Szaky’s viewpoint on garbage, objects have two values: their content and their form. A plastic bottle has the plastic it is made out of and the form in which it was created. “There are a number of solutions for garbage: Putting it in a landfill is the worst, since it has no positive value. Neither the content nor the form is utilized. If you burn it, then you use the caloric value. If you recycle it, then you get the value of the plastic. But if you reuse it, then you get its full value.” SZAKY’S JOURNEY to garbage began nine years ago, when he was a freshman at Princeton <http://newstopics.jpost.com/topic/Princeton_University> . Originally from Canada, he went back to visit a friend during break and discovered he was trying to grow some plants in his basement. His friend had discovered that worm droppings made great fertilizer. “I thought to myself, what a great business – how to take garbage and make it into fertilizer,” Szaky told the spellbound crowd. Returning to Princeton, he contacted the university administration to get massive amounts of organic material to feed his worms. “We rotated the organic material on a conveyor belt and added air. Within 24 hours, the organic material got warm. The concept relies on the philosophy that no animal likes to sit in its own poo. Worms went toward the middle away from their excrement. We timed the conveyor belt to go at the rate of the worms – an inch every five hours,” he recalled. Now Szaky was in the organic fertilizer business, but with one problem – no one would invest. He dropped out of school to focus on the business. Without investors, he needed to keep the overhead as low as possible. Therefore, he hit on the idea of packaging the liquid fertilizer in used soda bottles with used spray tops. “Every single aspect of the package is garbage except the label. We even got a license from Coca-Cola and Pepsi to package sh*t in their bottles and sell it,” he said to a roar of laughter. So now, he had a product that was cheaper than any other fertilizer on the market. “So what did I do? I tried to sell it to Walmart – the biggest retailer in the world. They ordered 100,000 bottles in four weeks. I said no problem, left and got all my friends to help. We made delivery on time. As a result, we got a factory. Then every other retailer quickly signed on,” Szaky said. Four years later, it’s a $4 million a year business. SO HOW did Szaky get from worm droppings to becoming the king of garbage? To package his fertilizer in used soda bottles, he needed a lot of them. So he and his company set up a bottle brigade where ordinary people could sign up on its website, fill up a box with bottles and TerraCycle would pay for shipping and give a donation of a few cents for every bottle collected to charity. “However, the cost was a million dollars a year,” he said. “So I approached Cliff, Danone and Honest Tea and asked them: Would you be interested in sponsoring our bottle brigade? Instead of sponsoring our brigade, they said, ‘We have a problem – we make yogurt containers, juice pouches and energy bar wrappers that are not recyclable. Can you figure out a way to do something with them?’” According to Szaky, a juice pouch costs half a gram of carbon to move to a landfill. Burning it for energy releases 6.3 grams of carbon; if you recycle it, it saves twice as much energy, and if you upcycle it (make it into something better), the energy savings are 10 times as great. Thus backpacks and shoulder bags made out of juice pouches, planters made out of yogurt containers and trash cans out of cookie wrappers were born. The TerraCycle system relies on one key element: sorting the garbage into similar materials. “The problem with garbage is that it’s all mixed together. What if you could separate it into its components? There are 300 different types of garbage. We can make a fence or bricks out of juice wrappers. We can make a trash can out of cookie wrappers by melting them down. “Separation is critical to maximize value. Cookie, candy, chip wrappers are all different polymers. There are three categories of garbage: flexible waste (which we can upcycle), rigid waste (we can put something in it) and complex waste (which consists of multiple polymers – we can shred and separate every polymer),” Szaky explained. “So far, TerraCycle has put 30 million plants in old yogurt cups. There is a TerraCycle Cliff bar shoe. “One billion pieces of waste are collected every two months. The real problem is how to collect just toothbrushes or just pens? What to do with it once it’s been collected is simple.” His solution – enlist individuals and groups to collect specific items and send them in. During the first year of operations in a country, only a few thousand sign up. The next year, more and more. Now, there are more than 18 million people collecting all over the world. The company displays a counter of how many people are collecting, how many items have been collected, products made and money given to charity on the top of its website. Most of the major companies have partnered with TerraCycle, and it uses their facilities to produce the products. At TerraCycle headquarters in Trenton, New Jersey <http://newstopics.jpost.com/topic/Trenton%2C_New_Jersey> , scientists and design teams figure out how to reuse or take apart every type of product. The concept has taken hold so well that advertisers from the UK to Brazil have begun using the positive value of TerraCycling to market their products. “The point is to create the infrastructure for non-recyclables on the scale of recycling. Today, we collect 2 percent of juice pouches a year – one million every two days,” Szaky said. “How is awareness created? We do tremendous amounts of advertising. The TerraCycle logo appears on packaging. Fifty billion packages per year will have the logo and how you can upcycle it by the end of 2011.” In addition, it is going to launch a Facebook game soon and it already has a TV show on the National Geographic Channel. A TerraCycle center will be at every Walmart in the US within three years. TERRACYCLE MAKES money by being paid to collect and then sell the garbage as raw material. The companies are willing to do so, because they save money using the garbage instead of more new raw materials, Szaky explained. There are also royalty fees for use of the logo. One of the issues that truly environmental companies need to take into account is the total energy cost to produce their products. If more energy is used to make the product than the product saves, it has a negative net environmental value. Szaky said TerraCycle calculates its energy costs in terms of carbon. It compares the amount of carbon released or used to create a product from scratch to the cost of creating one of its products. Even with the shipping costs, “it still ends up being less carbon than making a product from scratch,” he said. And now, TerraCycle has entered the Israeli market. Szaky explained how his company sets up a market in a new country. “We’ve been in Israel for six months and we’re speaking with all the major brands. By September, we hope to start collecting. The way it usually works, the first month we collect nothing, the second month, still nothing, and by the third month, a few thousand items. “Then it takes off. We store the garbage in a warehouse until we get a critical mass. The first year, we collect one million pieces of waste. The second year, a few million and then we start making products. Day one is always very small.” He said 50% of the collection points are at schools from kindergartens to universities. “There are a wide-range of personalities who collect. There are green crazies on the Left who do it for the environment. There are people who do it for the money we donate to charity. “The easier the system is, the better. We always offer prepaid shipping labels. Here, the Internet is everywhere, so we will use that. In countries without widespread Internet penetration, we set up phone support,” he said. “The new Packaging Law is already creating awareness and the infrastructure for the Packaging Law is good for encouraging the use of TerraCycle’s infrastructure.” TerraCycle never uses the public infrastructure, it always has its own private infrastructure, he added. But the Packaging Law will mandate sorting garbage, which is useful for encouraging TerraCycle’s model. TerraCycle Israel representative Moran Twena said it had presented the idea to Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan <http://newstopics.jpost.com/topic/Gilad_Erdan> and his team “and they liked it very much. We talked about collaborating and we passed them certain life-cycle analyses. It turns out that there is even a carbon saving if you ship the collected items abroad to be made into products and then bring them back rather than using virgin materials.” For now, TerraCycle is intent on setting up its collection networks here and will only discuss with the brand name manufacturers the use of their factories to produce products after a critical mass has been reached, she said. So perhaps next year, or the year after, the newest fashion items will be Bamba bags, or energy bar sneakers or another of the upcycled TerraCycle products. TerraCycle is on the Internet at www.TerraCycle.net <http://www.terracycle.net/> . For more on reuse, go to www.reuse.org.il <http://www.reuse.org.il/> .

In CEO Tom Szaky's office, the table are made of recycled dorrs, the walls are built of empty soda bottles, and an arsenal of Nerf weapons is kept close at hand. Shooting wars break out from time to time between the boss and a militia of fresh-faced TerraCyclers.

You as packaging designers manage some amazing feats: Simultaneously satisfy picky company leaders, fickle consumers and just plain crazy marketing people! You’re to be applauded–it’s a tough balancing act. But I have something further for you to consider. Your packaging, for the most part, has one use. What you create encompassed countless hours of meetings, designs, redesigns, factory tooling, wrestling matches and so on. It’s the front line of how your company’s products are seen in the world. It’s the final leg of the marathon that began with coming up with the idea for the product, perhaps testing it out with consumers, a final iteration chosen, then finished when someone decides to grab one of your products off the shelf and buy it. But once the wrapping’s off, the bottle’s empty, the usefulness is done, that’s the end of the story. Some of it gets recycled. A lot of it doesn’t. Either way, all that brand equity you’ve put into the product is being wasted. Say again? Yes, when your packaging has no end of life solution, it’s clumsily being made for you, typically. Terracycle since the start has been about providing one that companies have much more control over: Upcycling it into new products, which often directly use the packaging in its original form in durable goods, retaining brand equity for much longer then one use. Designing for recyclability is a noble idea and one to be encouraged but, with a fairly limited range of materials, getting recycled in the U.S., it’s just not always possible. Or, in the case of food packaging, safe. It’s time, both for the sake of saving resources (financial and environmental) to design for reuse where possible, and upcycling by companies like TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net>  where it’s not. In both cases, you’re benefitting the company due to extended presence in a consumer’s life, showing you’re out for more than just the sale, and you’ve done your part to keep waste out of the landfill, or worse, littering the ground. Is there a downside to changing/expanding the way you think about packaging? It could cost more. It could take additional time and resources to implement. In the case of SunChips <http://www.packagingdigest.com/article/510820-Frito_Lay_withdraws_noisy_compostable_SunChips_bag.php> , it could cause consumer backlash. Yes, sometimes we’re great at coming up with reasons why not. In this economy and any time really, I suggest we all get much less skilled in that arena, and start finding ways to say yes. To better packaging solutions that use less, save more, serve customers just as well, and live on beyond first use. It’s, in my opinion, the only sensible thing to do. What are your thoughts? Being in the packaging design trenches, where are some opportunities for improvement? Where are the road bumps? Where are the emerging solutions? What are some recent successes to emulate, learn from? Jump into the comments, below.

by Tom Szaky of TerraCycle, Trenton NJ Student brigades collect hard-to-recycle trash for TerraCycle. Photo credit: TerraCycle 2010 may have been a rocky year in many ways for a lot of us out there, but something amazing happened in the last three months of the year: Public schools in New Jersey on average doubled how much waste packaging they collected and sent to TerraCycle! What was the catalyst, you say? A surplus of Halloween candy wrappers perhaps? All the packaging from holiday parties and gifts? Nice guesses, but no. It was cash.   Walmart Foundation <http://walmartstores.com/CommunityGiving/203.aspx>  sponsored a contest with us called Trash To Cash <http://www.facebook.com/TerraCycle?v=app_10442206389>  that rewarded the top 6 collecting Brigades <http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/02/www.terracycle.net/brigades>  at New Jersey public schools with grants between $5000-$50,000 dollars, a total of $125,000. The numbers were astounding: The lowest of those winners sent us 22,921 pieces of packaging! The highest clocked in at 52,640. This, for 2 months of collections. Mind boggling, how much trash they helped divert from the landfill. On many levels, the program was a great success. Not only was a large amount of trash diverted, it nearly doubled earlier figures. Not only is there money going to benefit public schools that can surely use it, engagement has increased among the Brigades. Perhaps most significantly, there is new incentive for schools to jump onto the Brigade train, further increasing both the amount and the locations that difficult to recycle packaging is being prevented from ending in a landfill. Hopefully, the momentum created by the Trash To Cash contest continues on long afterwords. Still, toubling questions remain. What does it say about our society if it takes money to motivate the average person to such levels of behavior? Why did a noisy compostable bag motivate people to protest loudly <http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/02/big-lessons-from-the-sunchips-packaging-fiasco.php> , forcing Sunchips to roll back to non-recyclable, non-compostable packaging, for all but one of its products? With changing climate, ecomonic shifts, and dwindling resources, there will need to be some major changes in people's lifestyles. Will they be willing or capable? Is money going to have to be the motivator? Readers, I'd like to hear from you. Is money the answer to a rapid, durable increase in eco friendly behavior? Have you seen it working elsewhere? And if not, what other paths to change have you seen out there that are working? Got a new, as yet to be done idea to share? Let's hear it!

When left to her own devices, nature will execute a perfect cycle of reuse and compost by which no bi-products are left behind.  Humans, by contrast, execute a cycle of consumption and complex materials that leaves behind billions of pounds of bi-products known as garbage. Eighty percent of what we buy is discarded as garbage just thirty minutes after purchase.  Because it would be nearly impossible to move away from our culture of consumption and convince people to return to a time of patching, mending, and making do, it becomes necessary to scrutinze our garbage. Garbage is the only commodity in the world we pay to get rid of.  The vast majority of our waste ends up in a landfill–five billion pounds per year in the United States–where it has no value.  But what if instead of throwing our money away, we diverted some of the garbage from the landfill and turned it into something of value?  It is with this concept in mind that Tom Szaky led his worm poop empire <http://www.terracycle.net/histories>  called TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net/>  to begin collecting items of garbage and turning them into useful things.  The TerraCycle team of designers is tasked with envisioning new uses for items previously deemed garbage.  Scientists then test the chemical properites of the items and determine the feasibly of the designer’s ideas.  Using these methods, all items collected by TerraCycle are upcycled (made into another product for reuse) or recycled (broken down to their most basic parts and made into something different).  The idea behind TerraCycle is one of those brilliantly simple ones that beg the question, “why didn’t I think of that?”  (Because you lack the business savvy and persuasive charm that Szaky possesses.) Szaky has taken a concept familiar to previous generations (and poor college students) and adapted it to our modern culture of consumerism.  Just as our grandma upcycled a worn button-down shirt into handkerchiefs, cleaning rags, and quilting squares, TerraCycle transforms used juice pouches into a fabric that can be fashioned into a coin purse or a book bag.  TerraCycle does not advertise; its brand partners do.  It is the brands who puts the TerraCycle logo on their products and introduce their consumers to the concept <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RIwGZx-1JTc> .  On its own, TerraCycle generates buzz by averaging 7-15 articles a day, maintaining a high-traffic website, and being invited to participate in television shows.   In just a short few years, TerraCycle has significantly impacted diversion rates and given value to garbage.  They have yet find a product that cannot be upcycled or recycled and have plans to expand their organziation across the world, in AMC movie theatres, Wal-Mart parking lots, in print, and even on Facebook.

On this edition of Recycle What?!? THE POUCH. Here’s a question I get asked all the time…Are Capri Sun packages recyclable??? For me I always thought the answer was yes, due to the commercials where they showed backpacks, laptop bags and other items made from recycled Capri Sun pouches. However, I was wrong, after some research I found that Capri Sun pouches ARE NOT recyclable! What?!?!?!!! The deceit! LOL. Okay, I won’t take it that far. So Capri Sun pouches are not recyclable in the “conventional” sense, meaning, you probably should not throw them in your recycle bins; however, Capri Sun has a pretty interesting recycle program, it’s called “Terracycle”. In short, it works by juice guzzlers sending in their empty Capri Sun pouches, the company uses the empty pouches to make new and cool items such as backpacks, etc., and then they make the items available for purchase online. In the end, not all is lost for the Capri Sun lovers, if you sign up for the “Terracycle” program you will be doing your part in keep these non-recyclable juice pouches from filling up our landfills. You can find out more information at http://brands.kraftfoods.com/caprisun/be-green-earn-green.aspx NOTE: The “Terracycle” program is geared towards schools and organizations to help them earn money, so if you do not have children, perhaps you can speak with a local school or organization and donate your empty pouches. So again Recycle What?!? Capri Suns ARE NOT recyclable in the “conventional” sense, but they ARE recyclable in the “technical” sense. So save up those pouches, send them in for your own school or organization or donate them to a school or organization.

Parents and kids at the K-2 school finished fifth in a statewide recycling contest sponsored by TerraCycle, a company started by a Princeton University dropout who sold organic “worm poop” fertilizer in used soda bottles and then branched out to make lunch bags, fences and other products from hard-to-recycle materials. TerraCycle partners with major brands to create products from packaging that otherwise might pose a public relations problem for them. The company was founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky, then a 20-year-old freshman at Princeton. When his worm fertilizer idea only finished fourth in the Princeton Business Plan Contest, he left school to develop the concept and won a $1 million competition. He turned down the money to retain control of the company. TerraCycle now operates from a Trenton headquarters decorated by graffiti artists. The company has turned nearly 2 billion pieces of trash into a line of 246 recycled and “upcycled” products sold by the likes of Walmart and Whole Foods Market. More than $1.6 million has been generated for schools and charities. On Earth Day 2009, Tom Szaky published Revolution in a Bottle: How TerraCycle is Redefining Green Business.