From its humble beginnings selling worm-poop fertilizer, this New Jersey product manufacturer upcycles retail trash into retail treasure. Each and every product on this earth has a life span,” said Tom Szaky, CEO and vice president of licensing and product development at TerraCycle, Inc. “The end-of-life reality of a bag of potato chips is that the food ends up in the toilet and the bag ends up in the garbage. Same with a pen; you buy a pen, the ink runs out. The only difference is, some products can be recycled easily and others not so easily.”

Tom Szaky, for example, built an international “green” business, Terracycle, ignorant of the required technology for converting worm excrement into fertilizer. He was completely naïve to the ways to package and sell the product, not to mention finance his early investments. He learned by doing: by jumping in, by making small mistakes and a few big ones, and by using his native intelligence and scrappiness to invent solutions to unexpected problems. Slowly, the landscape became clear. Szaky not only discovered the nature of this particular economic environment, he invented the environment itself.

Winte learned about TerraCycle, a company that pays for trash and makes items out of it, about two years ago and started saving some of the acceptable items last spring. At about the same time, she started talking to other people about it and was led to Grow Berlin Green, the nonprofit that will benefit from the sales proceeds of trash collection. TerraCycle will send checks to Grow Berlin Green to pay for the items deposited in the containers at the park. When she accumulates enough of any one item, she will mail it to TerraCycle. The pay is not much, about 2 cents per item, and many items must be accumulated. For example, TerraCycle pays 2 cents each for 500 empty drink pouches for a grand total of $10. For some other items, like candy wrappers, the sender is told to fill a provided box, but is not told how many should be sent. Boxes or bags for mailing the items are provided. Pre-paid postage labels are also provided.

Tom Szaky, co-founder and chief executive officer of TerraCycle Inc., a company that has become the most eco-friendly brand in North America, will be the guest speaker for the Allan P. Kirby Lecture in Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 7 in the Dorothy Dickson Darte Center. The event is free to the public. TerraCycle is well known for TerraCycle plant food, a fertilizer made from worm feces available through retailers such as Walmart, Whole Foods and Home Depot. The company manufactures more than 50 consumer products. Other products include garbage cans made from crushed computers, handbags made from energy bar wrappers and juice pouches and eco-friendly binders and pencils. The company won more than 100 environmental and social awards. It has three manufacturing facilities in North America with headquarters located in Trenton, N.J.

Teracycle is a private business founded in 2001 by two freshmen of Princeton University, Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer. It specializes in making consumer products from used and discarded materials. The green company is working to save the planet earth and setting an example for the rest of the world to follow. It started of its operations by creating a continuous flow process to take garbage from several areas and have it processed by the worms into fertilizer. It later expanded its span of operation and diversified its production into ‘up-cycling’; producing a range of consumer products from post-consumer content such as making children’s backpacks from used Capri-Sun drink pouches.

Terracycle <http://terracycle.net/> , founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky when he was a 19 year old Princeton freshman, began by selling all-natural plant fertilizers using old plastic soda bottles. The chemical fertilizer was literally "all-natural" because it was harvested from vermicompost <http://www.redwormcomposting.com/ecopreneurs/ten-things-i-love-about-terracycle/> : earthworm waste. Nearly ten years later, Terracycle products are being sold at major retailers like Walmart, Target, The Home Depot, OfficeMax, Petco and Whole Foods Market.

The young men and women who covered walls with graffiti art yesterday had no concerns about police shutting down their party -- the event was part of a legal celebration hosted annually by TerraCycle, the Trenton-based company that converts biodegradable waste into high-yield fertilizer.

Have you heard of TerraCycle <http://www.terracycleshop.com/> ? They make environmentally friendly and affordable products, made from non-recyclable waste materials. They have over 50 products that sell at retailers such as Walmart, Target and Petco. TerraCycle products range from fertilizers to household cleaners to backpacks and toys. Their goal is to find unique uses for items that would go into landfills, and eliminate the idea of waste. TerraCycle also has a national program called TerraCycle Brigades <http://www.terracycle.net/Brigades> . This program allows you to earn cash for trash (money paid to schools and non-profits). You may choose which "Brigade" you want to join to begin collecting. Some of the Brigades include: Drink Pouch, Aveeno Beauty, Chip Bag, Writing Instruments and Cell Phone. Payout ranges from $.02 per item to $0.25 per item for cell phones.

Tom Szaky's ambitions to turn one of America's fastest-growing private companies into a multi-billion dollar global empire didn't have glamorous beginnings. Szaky's Trenton-based TerraCycle got off the ground eight years ago out of a Princeton University student business plan contest. Szaky's idea was to establish a company that would transform biodegradable waste into high-yield fertilizer made from worm poop. Szaky, 28, drew his inspiration for the fertilizer plan from the success he and some of his Canadian high school buddies had in growing robust plants in fertilizer made from worm poop. He decided to drop out of Princeton during his sophomore year to give his full attention to the waste-into-fertilizer business he dubbed TerraCycle. Today, the company that Szaky founded in 2002 with a $20,000 machine for feeding organic waste to millions of little worms that would turn that waste into fertilizer has moved well beyond being merely a fertilizer-specialty manufacturer. It is a high-profile player in a niche corner of the recycling market known as "upcycling," in which used materials such as aluminum drink pouches, plastic soda bottles and plastic food wrappers are collected and transformed for use in new products without being broken down into their raw material components.

TerraCycle <http://www.terracycle.net/>  has an extensive, far-reaching recycle-able materials collection system running nationwide.  These collected bottles, lids, wrappers, bags and more are brought together and recycled into so many cool (and once again useful) products:  From purses to shower curtains to flower pots.  As their “Terracycle” saying goes, “Send us your trash, and we’ll make it into cool products!”