Instead of getting people to go against their will and desires to sacrifice things for sustainability, what if we just acknowledge that most of us are selfish, and learn to play into that? How did we even get to our global waste crisis today, and what do we need to do to address this issue on a national and global level? Tom Szaky is the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, an innovative company that’s becoming a global leader in recycling waste that’s traditionally difficult to recycle, shares his wisdom with us today. Let’s dive in.

The solution lays in adopting zero-waste strategies and being extra careful what you recycle. You can also recycle your beauty product containers through TerraCycle on campus by putting them in the green bins located in the dorm bathrooms and trash rooms.

Oral care products, such as toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes, may seem impossible to recycle. After all, how would a recycler remove all of that extra toothpaste from the tube or disassemble a toothbrush for recycling? Let’s take a closer look at this recycling mystery to get the low-down on keeping our pearly whites healthy without contributing to landfill waste.

4) Help your candy wrappers rise from the dead! If you’re really crafty, you can take your used candy wrappers and make cute barrettes, hair bows, and broaches. For a simpler option, send your candy wrappers to Terracycle’s Candy Wrapper Zero Waste Box. There, candy wrappers are repurposed and used to make notebooks, tote bags, and much more.

The Live Like Coco Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on helping kids in the Santa Cruz area grow up healthy and pursue their dreams, is offering the community an easy way to recycle used art supplies through TeraCycle's Zero Waste Boxes for pens and makers.

Yes, yes … grow up. The Long Beach Environmental Alliance is inviting everyone from do-gooders to students looking for service hours to those particularly drawn to bending, to come help clean up a bit of the city, specifically those parts inundated with cigarette butts.

At the end of the competition, Legg had collected more than 5,000 beauty and personal care containers, topping college competitors on 50 campuses to win Garnier’s Rinse, Recycle, Repeat: College Competition, created in partnership with TerraCycle and DoSomething.org.

TerraCycle, a Trenton-based business that specializes in hard-to-recycle waste, is one of the few companies globally that accepts all parts of e-cigarettes. It has been recycling e-cigarettes since 2014.

The company TerraCycle, for example, has devised ways of collecting waste like ocean plastics, cigarette butts, chewing gum and even dirty diapers, and then processing it so it can have a new life.

Recycle, recycle, recycle — Recycling is one of the easiest things a school can do to go zero waste; place bins for in common spaces to increase access. TerraCycle has teamed up with PepsiCo Recycling to help teachers and administrators encourage collection of cans and bottles. Separately, TerraCycle offers programs for common school items that are not typically recycled, such as pens, pencils and art supplies.