Tom Szaky, Founder & CEO, Terracycle, spoke with us about the company's purpose to eliminate the idea of waste by making things that are non-recyclable, recyclable. Terracycle works with brands to create national collection points for each category of waste. The collected waste is either reused, upcycled or recycled. Terracycle gives items destined for the landfill a new lease of life through their circular solution.

PINE BEACH — Officials and residents here say they have 18-year-old Lindsey Van Zile to thank for launching the campaign that led to the borough’s first $2,000 grant from Sustainable New Jersey and a new native garden at Pocket Park. “I was tired of looking at the overgrown weeds, and seeing how bad the area looked when I was riding my bike,” said the teen, who lives near the park at the corner of Riverside and Motor roads. Last year, Van Zile began going to Borough Council meetings to persuade council members to help with her quest to revitalize the park. The council agreed to pass a resolution to apply for the grant. “She (Van Zile) walks her talk,” Councilwoman Susan Coletti said of Van Zile. “She is the one who wrote the grant, and executed her plan.” “I just wanted people to be able to come here and enjoy nature, its beauty,” Van Zile said. In addition to the council’s help, Van Zile also sought the help of the American Littoral Society and its Bayscape for Barnegat Bay program. “The program was created for just that purpose, to help individuals with preserving and protecting the bay area,” said Helen Henderson, Atlantic Coast programs manager and Barnegat Bay projects director. “Anyone can participate in the programs and create native plant gardens and become stewards of the land,” she said. Van Zile said her parents, Marcy and Robert Van Zile, have always been environmentally conscious. Her father works for a pharmaceutical company and her mother is a Clean Ocean Action volunteer. “I guess I get my drive to preserve and recycle from my parents,” she said. “It must have rubbed off on me.” The work to create the garden included clearing the land of debris and tilling the land. Van Zile purchased the plants including blazing stars, foxglove and bush blueberry plants. The area is lined with stone pavers and has a tiled stone that was designed for the garden by Van Zile’s neighbor, 9-year-old Taylor McCue. Van Zile recently graduated from Toms River High School South. She has received multiple awards for her volunteer work, and also started a recycling program in the town. Through the program, she collects empty yogurt cups and granola wrappers to send to Terracycle, a Trenton company that recycles the materials into new products. “They pay me money for the recyclables. So far, I have $500 coming to me,” she said. The windfall will go to the environment, of course, says Van Zile, who heads to Lynchburg College in Virginia in August and plans to become an environmental lawyer: She expects to buy garden enhancements, such as signage to identify its plants.

Albe Zakes, global VP, communications at TerraCycle, has been using Basecamp for a little more than two years. How do you use it? Once you log on it takes you to the main dashboard where you can see the shared calendar, to-do lists, and all the most recent file uploads. On the right side of the main dashboard page is a matrix of every client we have in every country. It's almost like a file folder system, and it provides easy access to our clients in all countries. For example, if I'm looking for Nestlé in Brazil I can access all information for that client right there. You can set it up to get email updates on any specific client or country. I also get a daily digest that notifies me of everything that has happened that day. So if a press release or new pricing has been added to a client's section, it's really nice because I can just click on the update email and it takes me directly to that client's section. If there's an issue, it's usually with uploading or accessing files, and we either call or email customer support. They've been really good and are very responsive to emails. How does it serve your business needs? We operate in 23 countries and have about 100 different clients across those countries, and many of our clients operate in multiple countries. For example, we do work for Kraft in Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, the US, the UK, and all the Nordic countries. So it's crucial for us to have a system like this. How does it serve your business needs? We operate in 23 countries and have about 100 different clients across those countries, and many of our clients operate in multiple countries. For example, we do work for Kraft in Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, the US, the UK, and all the Nordic countries. So it's crucial for us to have a system like this. Before Basecamp we were duplicating a lot of work. If someone on one of my teams needed to put together a media kit, press release, pricing update, or presentation for a client, they created those from scratch. As a global manager, I was spending a lot of time editing and re-editing the same documents for different countries. Because there's a specific section for every brand in each country, if I've just worked with my team in Canada on a really terrific presentation for Kraft and my team in Mexico has a presentation coming up, I can send them to the Canada section for Kraft and tell them to base their presentation on what we did in Canada. It works the same way for campaigns. For example, we ran a very successful program in the US collecting oral care waste for Colgate. About a year later we launched a similar program in Germany, and I sent my German PR manager to Basecamp to access the Colgate US file and use the materials there as the template for the German campaign. It really cuts down on reviews and editing I have to do since it's based on materials I already created and approved. It's also been a lifesaver when traveling. For example, my laptop died on the way to a major meeting in the UK with Johnson & Johnson.  Without my laptop or my notes I would be going into the meeting blind. Because everything was in Basecamp, I was able to use someone else's laptop and get all the information I needed including the presentation we were going to give, the office location, names of the people we were meeting with, and the agenda. Within 10 minutes, all the knowledge and assets I needed were at my fingertips again. It's pretty invaluable to be able to access all of that information from anywhere.

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."

The Social Innovation Summit Landmark Ventures launched the Social Innovation Summit 3 years ago to convene socially conscious businesses, non-profits, corporations and investors to explore technology innovations and partnerships that solve problems around clean air and water, poverty and more. Recycling Everything We Touch Dynamic 31-year old CEO Tom Szaky founded TerraCycle in 2001 to attack recycling with a vengeance! TerraCycle works with more than 100 major U.S. brands and in 22 other countries to collect used packaging and products otherwise headed to landfills. It repurposes the waste into creative materials and products to be sold online and through retailers. Waste ranges from food wrappers to dirty diapers to cigarette butts. TerraCycle’s mission is to recycle everything we touch and eliminate the idea of waste all together! What Tom Szaky discovered is that recycling is all about economics. He developed a Corporate-sponsored Waste Program with Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturers like Kraft to pay consumers to help collect non-recyclable packaging. The waste is then converted into eco-friendly products. TerraCycle has won repeated awards for social change, recycling and sustainability.

The Frank K. Hehnly Elementary School Recycling Crusaders consist of 35 fifth grade students. The Crusader advisors are second grade teacher, AnnMarie Estevez, and computer teacher, Diane Rizzo. The students encourage the entire school to use the recycling bins outside of the classrooms. They meet twice a week to go through the bins to clean, box up, and mail various items for recycling: drink pouches, recycled cell phones and ink cartridges are sent to Terracycle; bottle caps are sent to Aveda; soda tabs are sent to the Ronald McDonald House. The students also have a recycling question of the week. The whole school is involved and has a chance to answer the question. On Friday three students are picked and win a prize. The fifth graders have enjoyed working all year with the recycling program and making a difference in taking care of the Earth.  

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GOLD: TerraCycle TerraCycle’s business model is to eliminate waste by offering free recycling fundraisers to any school, non-profit, corporation or individual/family for any type of man-made waste. The program incentivizes the collection of common packaging and products ranging from candy wrappers to cosmetics, packaging to cigarette butts. “Brigades” collect waste that TerraCycle then turns into more than 1500 new products, ranging from recycled park benches to upcycled backpacks. These products are available online and at major retailers ranging from Walmart to Whole Foods. There are currently more than 40 programs that range from food packaging (like drink pouches and candy wrappers) to office supplies (like pens and tape dispensers) to personal products (like cosmetic and beauty packaging to diaper packaging). For every item returned, TerraCycle donates two-cents (or the local equivalent) to a school or non-profit of the collector’s choice. TerraCycle operates in 22 countries, minimizing the global threats of landfill and incineration on humans and the environment. So far, through TerraCycle, 32 million consumers have diverted 2.5 billion units of waste from landfill and incineration, while earning over 4.5 million dollars (US) for schools and myriad non- profits. For example, the drink pouch is a ubiquitous waste stream found in every school cafeteria in America. In order to offset the estimated 11 BILLION pouches that go to waste every year in America alone, TerraCycle partnered with Honest Tea and Capri Sun to start the Drink Pouch Brigade. The free recycling fundraiser was an opportunity for two competitors to put aside their corporate differences and do the right thing for the environment. Since the Program was founded, over 70,000 organizations – including 57,000 schools – signed up for the program. As of December 2012 they helped collect over 164 MILLION drink pouches and collectively earned over 3.2 million dollars. The collected pouches are upcycled or recycled into a variety of products. School items like pencil cases and backpacks that help to complete the education for kids. The students get to see what the pouches they helped collect are turned into for a second life. Pouches are also recycled into more utilitarian products like park benches, picnic tables and railroad ties. TerraCycle’s programs are sponsored by some of the world’s largest companies. These major companies include Kraft Foods, Nestle, Mars, Inc., Kimberly-Clark, Frito-Lay, Kashi, Sanford, Elmer’s Products, Inc, Logitech, Old Navy, Clif Bar, Sprout Baby Food, 3M, Malt-O-Meal, Colgate, Palmolive, L’Oreal, and BIC.