For Dylan Balcom, saving the planet is important enough to get involved in the most hands-on – and entrepreneurial – way he can.     “Not every 13-year-old boy drops off a box of trash to a UPS store,” the Charlestown teen admits with a wry grin. He’s started a program at his school to collect non-recyclable trash he sends to TerraCycle, a company based in New Jersey that donates 2 cents to Charlestown Middle School’s student council for each piece of waste.     The company uses the trash as the base materials of different products. Dylan has an impressive collection of these “upcycled” goods, which include lunch boxes and school supplies and often bear the logo of the snack company that produced the original, discarded packaging.     Dylan’s sister Alexis Balcom, 18, remembers discovering the program last year, the summer before Dylan started 6th grade.     “Mom and I were going back-to-school shopping and we found these folders that were made out of Lay’s (potato) chip bags,” she said. “I remember thinking it was perfect for Dylan because he was so interested in recycling and the environment.”     The folder had the company’s contact details on the back. “We spent that entire night surfing the website and setting up the account, and I just remember that he was really excited,” Alexis said.

Toronto-native Tom Szaky (pronounced Zack-ee) has been spinning trash into gold since 2002, when he founded Terracycle with a friend out of his Princeton University dorm room. It started with selling worm food in used pop bottles, but soon transformed into turning waste into backpacks, picture frames, binders, pencil cases and more. All of these products branded with the logos of the same companies that produced the waste to make them. Would you buy a backpack made from stitched together Capri Sun pouches, or a three-ring binder composed of M&M wrappers? This is all stuff that can't be recycled, but with Terracycle's innovative "upcycle" technique Szaky is able to have waste producing companies foot the bill for garbage collection, while partnering with other expert product manufacturers who substitute their normal building materials with Terracycle's scientifically manipulated garbage. To learn how he does it, check out part one of our interview. Read on to get inside Szaky's own entrepreneurial DNA and learn how he turned his most devastating failures into his greatest successes. What made you believe you could actually make quality products out of garbage? You just do it. You just try. You take a leap of faith. You say, "I'm not going to discuss it anymore, I'm not going to theorize over it, I'm not going to do an academic paper on it, I'm going to simply do it. Then what happens is you start doing it and then you start screwing up. In the process of screwing up you realize what you need to do differently to make it successful. That has basically been the guiding principle of Terracycle ever since we began: Just try and then learn from the mistakes. We've had more mistakes than we've had successes, but then you focus and grow the successes and that's how you have a successful business.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone would get excited about sorting trash. But each Friday, the third graders at Newtown Elementary School beg to do just that. In fact, they like it so much that they forgo recess just to sift through used drink pouches, chip bags, and snack wrappers. There is a reason for their enthusiasm. The students are recycling for TerraCycle, a Trenton-based company that accepts certain types of waste to make products like bags, picture frames, toys, trashcans, and more. Best of all, the school gets money in return for the products they send in to recycle. The school began its effort in October, after parent Kathy Skalish learned about the initiative. “I’m a recycling junkie,” Skalish said, adding she worked with the school’s administration to make the program happen. So far, the school has collected more than 8,350 drink pouches, which TerraCycle uses to make tote bags and backpacks. They’ve also collected more than 4,200 snack bags and more than 450 Ziplocs, which they’ve just begun recycling. In return for their efforts, TerraCycle gives them 2 cents an item, or $260 since October. TerraCycle bins are located throughout the hallways and in the cafeteria.

Compostable packaging. Two words that, for much of 2010, brought cringes to the faces of American packaging designers. Why? We all know what a disaster <http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/02/big-lessons-from-the-sunchips-packaging-fiasco.php>  the first Sunchips compostable packaging launch was, at least in the U.S. It was the first high-profile mainstream effort to do so, and consumers crumpled it quickly because of the high decibel bag. Thankfully, Frito Lay didn’t just call it quits, but instead came back fighting with a newly quieter bag <http://www.packagingdigest.com/article/512905-Ta_da_Frito_Lay_presents_quieter_compostable_SunChips_bag.php> , cautiously being rolled out now. But let’s say that issue gets fixed and other mainstream brands find their courage to go the compostable or biodegradable route, too. There’s a larger problem here which, with for all the showboating about what a silver bullet for CPG these options are, needs to be addressed: It’s a pain in the ass to actually get this supposedly compostable packaging to actually compost! You and I both know this: Unless you happen to have professional level facilities or be the most skilled backyard composter in four states, you simply won’t get the results that people are expecting to happen. And these unmet expectations will lead to a deeper, less vocally expressed disaffection for green products that’s more difficult to address. So what can be done? One option as I see it is to develop curbside compostables collection by all municipalities. Make it as normal as putting your recyclables in the blue bin. Or if that’s not looking feasible under the current infrastructure where you are, have a private company do it in tandem with the current recycling/waste collection. Before you write this off as an impossibility in today’s economy, look at San Francisco’s success <http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/mandatory-composting-law-success-san-francisco.php%5D%20in%20implementing%20exactly%20this.%20%5Bhttp://sunsetscavenger.com/residentialCompost.htm>  in implementing exactly this <http://sunsetscavenger.com/residentialCompost.htm> . Yes, it did in part involve phasing in a law that it’s mandatory that all compostables get put in the green bin, which may or may not fly in other places. But what we’d all do well to learn from is how San Francisco has monetized the composting. They’ve made it a desirable, locally sourced material for farmers, gardeners and the increasing number of restaurants that grow their own food and can now further tout their local credentials. Finding customers for compost is much easier than the intricate web of suppliers and buyers of recyclable materials. There’s another solution: You may not know it, but TerraCycle started business making worm compost based gardening products. So yeah, we know a thing or two about composting! With our well established packaging collection Brigades <http://www.terracycle.net/brigades> , we could just as easily begin collecting your company’s compostable packaging. This does two things: It bypasses additional cost to local municipalities to start composting programs for the increasing number of compostable packaging options, and you avert consumer frustration with their home efforts lack of success. More gets successfully composted, and Brigade participants get paid per piece collected, benefitting a place of their choice: their school, community group or a favorite charity/NGO. Or do we need to think beyond composting? Given that sustainability poster child Portland, Oregon, is just now doing tentative testing of curbside compostables collection <http://www.kgw.com/news/local/Portland-Announces-Curbside-Compost-Collection-90796139.html> , it’s clear that this route is going to take a while. We’re happy to do our part, composting packaging and upcycling it, but we’re only part of the answer here. It’s time for you as packaging designers to take the reins, coming up with options that always, always keeps in mind consumers first, along with applicability to current systems, and acceptance by stores that will stock these items. Frito Lay is to be applauded for having taken the initiative, bravely stepping forward as the first mass market food product with compostable packaging. The consumer reaction was unfortunate, but it’s proved a learning experience, both for Frito Lay, and all of you out there working on new, greener packing options. So readers, let’s have it. How can packaging be improved to work better all around? How can we all help composting and the collection of it be as normal and everyday as recycling has become?

  In addition to teaching them about subjects normally covered in school, Silver and Adamczyk are teaching them the importance of helping others. The children in the program have been collecting spare change and Frito Lay potato chip bags to participate in Wish Giving, the core program of One Simple Wish. The potato chip bags are “upcycled” and turned “affordable green products” by TerraCycle in Trenton. Terracycle gives the school 2 cents for each bag. That might not seem like a lot until you see the piles of potato chip bags and realize it can add up to a nice sum of money, which in turn will help someone else. The students  put the chip bags into groups of 25, as a way of working on their counting and math skills, not as a requirement for TerraCycle.

Two women at Gulfside Elementary School manage the recycling program at the school and collect non-recyclablle packaging to send to TerraCycle.

From there it goes to Burton's garage in Holiday, where it's sorted and shipped to various recycling programs sponsored by Coca-Cola Recycling Program, Pepsi and Waste Management, and their latest venture with a company called Terracycle. For the green at heart, there's a bounty of items that aren't on the typical recycle list that Terracycle will take and turn into something else — candy wrappers, yogurt cups, empty tape dispensers, glue bottles and the plastic store wrapping on paper towels and toilet paper. Done with that grated cheese? They'll take the wrapper. Empty tube of toothpaste? That, too, along with your old toothbrush. "It's all stuff the county won't pick up; stuff you can't recycle in your blue bags," said Rash, who discovered the program while surfing the Internet. "And we get money for it. Two cents for a candy wrapper and 2 cents for the drink pouches." That might seem like small change, but it adds up — $634 so far this year funneled into the school's ABC program to help needy students or to buy classroom supplies.

Just to give you some background, in my first article, I highlighted the following:  Ecophones (gives cash for a multitude of items,) TerraCycle, who pays for items that ordinarily go in the trash, and Staples, who now gives Staples money for print cartridges along with Laptop Lunches, and many others.  What I love about this prior article is the amount of comments from people providing additional green fundraising sources. So, be sure to check out this article for great ideas.

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.

DCS Montessori School recently teamed up with TerraCycle to start turning collected waste into new products and materials, ranging from park benches to backpacks. TerraCycle recycles and upcycles used packaging from familiar products like Capri Sun, Lays, and Oreos. Out of this comes more than 1,500 various products available at major retailers. Founded in 2001, TerraCycle’s goal is eliminate the idea of waste. This year, the Montessori school is participating in two “brigades,” which are national programs to collect specific previously non-recyclable or hard-to-recycle waste. First, the school will collect old cell phones from now until the end of the year by placing collection boxes near the main office and by the front doors. DCS Montessori has asked all students and parents to send in their old cell phones to benefit the environment and the school. Later this year, the school will select another brigade.