Waste isn’t always the sexiest topic.
When I tell people about the green business that I run and what we do, for some it’s a topic they would prefer to avoid thinking about. Once something is placed in the rubbish – it’s out of sight out of mind. But our waste ends up somewhere, whether it is at the local tip or in our oceans.
Eco entrepreneur Tom Szaky believes some of the profits reported by the corporate world are absurd. His own company,
TerraCycle, has given $20 million to charities over ten years and each year processes 50 million kilograms of waste. This year the company, with 120 staff, will bring in $25 million or more but will only keep 1% as profit.
A recycling company is encouraging smokers to collect their used butts so they can be turned into new products.
TerraCycle Australia has joined with Australia Post so people can post their waste - free of charge - from anywhere in Australia.
Spokesperson Anna Minns told 3AW Breakfast they now operate in eight countries.
Through a partnership with the Nashville Clean Water Project, Bridgestone Arena is set to become one of the first venues in North America to collect and recycle used cigarette butts. Nashville Clean Water Project’s new recycling program, The Cigarette Waste Brigade®, is a partnership program with the international upcycling and recycling company TerraCycle, which takes difficult-to-recycle-packaging and turns it into affordable, innovative products.
The Indiegogo money is for the Nashville Clean Water Project to launch the Cigarette Waste Brigade and form partnerships with local businesses and organizations to clean up the mess, plus print literature explaining the effort. The nonprofit will work to gather the butts and turn them over to TerraCycle, a Trenton, N.J.-based company that incorporates them into plastic pallets
TerraCycle, of Trenton, N.J., was founded in 2001 by its CEO Tom Szaky and began by selling liquid fertilizer made from worm waste products in reused containers. The company quickly grew into a business that specializes in making consumer products from pre- and post-consumer waste in a process known as “upcycling.” For products that cannot be reused or turned into another product, the company recycles the waste and makes something completely new out of it. In addition to cigarette butts, TerraCycle also recycles used gum and diapers.
Through a partnership with worldwide recycling pioneer TerraCycle, the shopping center recently signed on to participate in a Cigarette Waste Brigade, in which cigarette butts are collected and recycled into plastic pellets for industrial use.
From glue sticks to flip-flops, TerraCycle has embraced hard-to-recycle waste with open arms. And with this new collection scheme, the company is taking on the country's most pervasive type of litter: Cigarette butts.
Once the 7 foot meter is filled, the discarded cigarette butts will be sent to
TerraCycle in New Jersey. The company collects difficult to recycle products and repurposes them.
And the winner was....TerraCycle, the Trenton company that recycles and upcycles just about everything you could think of. They pay schools and charitable institutions to send them stuff, then they make something cool out of it and resell it ... and manage to make a profit along the way.
