Selskapet TerraCycle tjener penger på å betale for folks søppel. De lager nye produkter av avfallet og jobber nå for å kunne gjenvinne både sigarettstumper og bleier. Les artikkelen i Ny Tid-13.04.12

Tom Szaky wants to be the rag-and-bone man to the world, collecting the  rubbish no one else wants – cigarette butts, razors, expired pills and  plastic food wrappers – and turning an enormous profit by finding new uses  for it. His US-based company TerraCycle already has rubbish collecting and re­cycling  operations in six countries and expects to launch in 11 more (including  Japan, Australia and Sweden) in the next year. He launched TerraCycle in  Britain last September and in Ireland this month. 'We’re just a $40 million company at the moment,’ he says. But he plans to  become the Google of garbage. 'A billion-dollar company doesn’t seem that  big… why not!’

You’ve probably seen them in the cereal aisle at the grocery store: bags of bargain cereal with one-off names like Cinnamon Toasters, Apple Zings and Honey Nut Scooters. The titan of bagged cereals, the Minneapolis, Minn.-based Malt-O-Meal, has found a niche in offering cereals almost identical to name-brand products from General Mills, Kellogg’s, Post and Quaker Oats at a reduced price. But where do all those cereal bags go once their sweet contents are consumed? As it turns out, nine Springfield schools collect the bags for recycling – and they make a little cash for their efforts. The Malt-O-Meal Cereal Bag Brigade is a schools-only program sponsored by Malt-O-Meal and run by TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based start-up that pays a pittance for recyclable trash and makes it into new products like kites, durable totes and even fences.

Today consumers are encouraged to buy organic, to grow organic, and to shop from local producers. In defense of Lewiston townspeople, they patiently waited their turn for Harold or John Micheel to plow their garden plots for spring planting. There were scads of vegetables eaten fresh from the garden and canned for the winter ahead. It’s hard to fathom that there’s a $7.4 million company today that makes products entirely out of garbage! You can read about 28-year-old entrepreneur Tom Szaky in April’s Reader’s Digest, in an article by Donna Fenn. Along with his partner Robin Tabor, Szaky is spearheading the new industry dubbed “uncycling.” (Another one for Webster!) Waste comes from “fundraising collection brigades, operated by schools and nonprofit organizations and sponsored by packaged-goods companies like Frito-Lay” (and Kellogg’s and Kraft.) Kraft’s Jeff Chahley reported, “We’ve helped divert 50 tons of waste from going to landfill, and contributed over $250,000.”

TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky has turned garbage into a revolutionary new industry.