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.”
How many juice pouches does one elementary school use over the course of about two years?
One school, Anchor Bay's Lighthouse Elementary in New Baltimore, has used approximately 44,640 since October 2009, second-grade teacher Rebecca Eckstein said.
The dedicated collection of the used drink pouches has earned the school a place in the top 100 collecting schools of TerraCycle's Drink Pouch Brigade. This is a program that has helped the recycling company reach the milestone of 50 million pouches collected; it has also assisted the school's Parent Teacher Group to benefit students.
The school learned that it had earned the honor from TerraCycle in December 2010, and received a plaque made of recycled drink pouches in the mail in January, Eckstein said. The plaque is currently displayed in a school hallway.
The dedicated collection of the used drink pouches has earned the school a place in the top 100 collecting schools of TerraCycle's Drink Pouch Brigade.
This is a program that has helped the recycling company reach the milestone of 50 million pouches collected; it has also assisted the school's Parent Teacher Group to benefit students.
Even the Ivy League isn't immune to dropouts. Tom Szaky -- a Canadian who didn't know that Princeton was in New Jersey until he got to campus -- left college after two years. Szaky was on fall break during freshman year in Montreal when he saw a bountiful weed (yes, that kind of weed) harvest that owed its success to worm and organic waste. The light bulb went off, and he began packaging worm waste in used soda bottles that later ended up on the shelves of
Home Depot and
Walmart. Over the next year, he would head home after class and work on his business, the way college basketball players head to the gym to work on their free throws. He didn't solicit help from professors and says the faculty was "hands-off" in that respect. By his sophomore year,
TerraCycle was taking off -- he had a logo, a name and a diversified body of products -- and it was now or never.
"I would have loved to stay in school, but TerraCycle was starting to grow and I was putting more time into it," says Szaky, 28, also a member of the AOL Small Business Board of Directors. "I took a semester off, which turned into a permanent leave."
The business has evolved since 2003 -- kites made of Oreo wrappers and picture frames wrapped in bicycle chains, part of the company's "upcycling" line of products, helped catapult revenues to $7.5 million in 2009 -- but he still spends time on campus as a guest lecturer and thinks teaching could be a fun career down the road. For now, he's focused on waste, and he's able to indulge his inner dork with the science of composting. Looks like he didn't need that behavioral economics degree after all, much like other dropouts who felt the need to quit school and
carpe diem.
"I have nothing against school," says Szaky, author of
Revolution in a Bottle. "TerraCycle was happening, and that was the decision at the moment."
Maxwell Elementary School pupils are saving the world. And they recently received an award for their efforts.
Lynn Davidson/McDuffie Mirror
TerraCycle Inc. named the school among the Top 100 in the nation for recycling drink pouches. Lauren Taylor, of TerraCycle, said Maxwell Elementary was ranked because it had collected 44,517 drink pouches by October.
"Obviously, the children there are passionate about recycling and aware of what steps they can take to protect the environment," Ms. Taylor said. "It's great to see them taking part in such a large-scale project."
A certificate in a frame made from shredded drink pouches was sent to the school and presented during a faculty meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 19. Maxwell Elementary was one of only four elementary schools in Georgia to receive the recognition, according to Ms. Taylor.
TerraCycle provides free waste-collection programs for hard-to-recycle materials. The company transforms the waste into affordable green products, according to its Web site. The company recently reached a milestone. It has collected 50 million drink pouches -- the equivalent to 20 school buses in weight, 480 football fields in length, enough to stretch across the Grand Canyon nine times if laid side-by-side.
"So, the children at Maxwell Elementary helped because the 44,000 they collected contributed to that," Ms. Taylor said.
TerraCycle collects drink pouches, soda bottles, chip bags, candy and gum wrappers, zip-close bags, cheese wrappers, coffee containers and Lunchable containers and turns them into tote bags, lunch bags, book bags, coolers, clipboards, picture frames, bottles, fences and other items, which are sold at Target, Kmart, Walmart, The Home Depot and via its Web site,
www.terracycleshop.com.
During the past two months, several Floral Street School students with the help of the eco-friendly organization the Dumpster Divers, collected over 2,000 empty juice box pouches and snack bags, which will be sent to the eco-friendly company Terracycle. Terracycle collects various types of trash and creates new products, such as coolers and backpacks, to be sold in major stores across the country, such as Walmart, Target and Home Depot.
Terracycle upcycles consumer waste into new salable goods. They primarily harvest their raw material from schoolchildren as part of charity drives, though they are now placing recycling stations at certain Walmart stores. At the Walmart centers they pay 3 cents per piece, but only for a narrow range of product packaging; the website supports a wider range of recyclables.
The spirit of the project is wonderful, but the problem is that it creates zombie advertising and branding for these undead consumer objects. Which is actually not all that surprising, as the Walmart program is sponsored by the very brands whose packaging are featured in the upcycled goods.
Yesterday I bought a bag of M&Ms. I know that sounds exciting, right? Well, when I got home, I noticed that on the back of the bag there was an infinity sign and the name Terracycle. Next to that it says, "Mars is turning used candy wrappers into eco-friendly products," and gives the website terracycle.net <
http://terracycle.net/> . I proceeded and checked out the website.
