The local TerraCycle Brigade collects difficult-to-recycle waste to make eco-friendly products. It’s a case of one man’s trash being another man’s treasure. TerraCycle is a global company that collects nonrecyclable and difficult-to-recycle waste and uses it to make affordable, eco-friendly products. For each piece of 'waste' sent in through collection programs called Brigades, TerraCycle pays the UPS shipping charges and awards two points, which can be redeemed for specific charity gifts on TerraCycle.net or converted to 2 cents to be donated to the charity of the collector’s choice. While most municipalities accept glass, aluminum, tin and specific kinds of plastic for recycling, TerraCycle is focused on uncommonly recycled items. The company partners with consumer packaged goods manufacturers to upcycle consumer products. With upcycling, the waste is simply cleaned and shaped, sewn, or fused into new products, such as backpacks, messenger bags, lunch boxes, school supplies, shower curtains, and kites.

I am completely inspired by Tom Szaky’s approach to changing, and changing, and changing his business model to ultimately achieve his organization’s mission. Tom is the CEO of TerraCycle, a recycling company, who described in this New York Times boss blog how he kept adapting his business model until he got it right:

We can't stop working to turn the Earth's health around. We have to continue recycling, reducing and reusing. We have to find new ways every day to minimize our carbon footprint. There are opportunities everywhere. Take, for example, the Clif Bar you're currently munching. TerraCycle [1] is now offering 2 cents for every Clif Bar wrapper you collect (you have to sign up first), so that they can turn them into funky eco-cessories, reducing the amount of wrappers that end up in landfills each year. And they aren't stopping at Clif Bars; Nature Valley and PowerBar wrappers are accepted as well. If you don't eat energy bars but gobble up tubs of yogurt and gallons of juice, TerraCycle is collecting yogurt containers and drinkpouches. Sounds good, and easy, to me.

Teacher Heidi Hanner who is leading the “Garden” effort explains how Field Park students learn to conserve, “We just started the TerraCycle program,” she said. “We collect and send in items that would otherwise be trash (used Ziploc bags, juice pouches, chip bags, Clif Bar wrappers) and they are made into something else.”

TerraCycle transforms trash into everyday products. Worm poop. Those two words mark the beginning of Tom Szaky’s ten-year-and-running quest to found and champion TerraCycle, a company that uses upcycling techniques to turn garbage that is usually difficult to recycle, such as packaging, into other, functional items. It all started after high school graduation, right before he entered Princeton University. “My friends started growing pot in their basement at the end of senior year,” said Szaky. “When I went to Princeton, they went to Canada and started using worm poop in compost to grow the marijuana, and they got amazing results.” Szaky was sold. He drew up a business plan and six months later dropped out of Princeton and dedicated himself to running his new business full time. ‘We spent the first few months just shoveling organic waste,” said Szaky. “Before we knew it, the company just got bigger and bigger.”

TerraCycle transforms trash into everyday products. Worm poop. Those two words mark the beginning of Tom Szaky’s ten-year-and-running quest to found and champion TerraCycle, a company that uses upcycling techniques to turn garbage that is usually difficult to recycle, such as packaging, into other, functional items. It all started after high school graduation, right before he entered Princeton University. “My friends started growing pot in their basement at the end of senior year,” said Szaky. “When I went to Princeton, they went to Canada and started using worm poop in compost to grow the marijuana, and they got amazing results.” Szaky was sold. He drew up a business plan and six months later dropped out of Princeton and dedicated himself to running his new business full time. ‘We spent the first few months just shoveling organic waste,” said Szaky. “Before we knew it, the company just got bigger and bigger.”

TerraCycle transforms trash into everyday products. Worm poop. Those two words mark the beginning of Tom Szaky’s ten-year-and-running quest to found and champion TerraCycle, a company that uses upcycling techniques to turn garbage that is usually difficult to recycle, such as packaging, into other, functional items. It all started after high school graduation, right before he entered Princeton University. “My friends started growing pot in their basement at the end of senior year,” said Szaky. “When I went to Princeton, they went to Canada and started using worm poop in compost to grow the marijuana, and they got amazing results.” Szaky was sold. He drew up a business plan and six months later dropped out of Princeton and dedicated himself to running his new business full time. ‘We spent the first few months just shoveling organic waste,” said Szaky. “Before we knew it, the company just got bigger and bigger.”

Eco-friendly students at Cape Cod Hill School in New Sharon are collecting food waste off lunch trays to make their own compost and they are collecting empty juice pouches, chip bags and cookie wrappers for Terracycle, a nationwide program that pays schools to collect non-recyclable waste that is converted to other products. So far, the project has made more than $500. Mt. Blue Regional School District board members this week heard from teachers Katy Perry and Patricia Murray and Principal Cheryl Pike on the growing environmental activism. Working on the Terracycle recycling project are, from left, Colton Nason, Hunter Robbins, Brianna Jackson, Ben Christopher, Dawson Adams and Addisyn Davis.

McMurrer rode the momentum from last year's contest even further, as she used the impetus of the contest to start, with the help of local mom Karen Baker, the TerraCycle Juice Pouch Brigade in the schools. The brigade is another one of those win-win-win propositions. The kids recycle their juice pouches at conveniently located receptacles within the schools, the schools get $0.02 per pouch that goes to TerraCycle, and TerraCycle turns the pouches into totes, backpacks, pencil cases, lunch bags – in total, 185 items for the home, office, garden, pets, school and more. Besides the first place winners each winning a $100 savings bond, donated by PNC Bank, all of the contest winners (first through third place) each won a prize donated by TerraCycle.